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What is Boomshakalaka?
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig is currently the lone sitting commissioner for an agency that traditionally features a bipartisan group of five. Selig has repeatedly defended both the legitimacy of prediction markets as financial assets and the role of the CFTC in overseeing them. The CFTC under his direction has embarked on a series of rule proposals regarding prediction markets, although detractors argue that the proposed changes still allow for sports contracts and in some ways could be seen as a tightening of the belt to make a Supreme Court review look more favourable.
“It’s not a question of whether innovations like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets will transform our markets. It’s a question of where this innovation will take place and who will write the rules,” Selig said during a meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee on 20 August, which featured the CEOs of Kalshi, Polymarket, DraftKings, CME Group and more.
Jess has covered the global gaming industry since 2022. A native of Reno, Nevada, he’d like to note that it’s Ne-va-da, not Ne-VAH-da.
How to play Boomshakalaka
“It’s profitable, it’s growing and it was for sale from a distressed vendor,” he says. “That combination rarely appears in regulated Europe, where scaling a B2C brand means paying up for customers against Flutter and Entain on thin margins.
“Africa isn’t saturated, but I wouldn’t call it easy either. Betway and the local incumbents are well dug in. The difference is that you’re competing for a market that’s still forming, at a fraction of the acquisition cost, and the operating margin is there if you get the payments and the product right. The risk is regulatory and currency rather than competitive.”
GiG’s immediate priority following the completion of the deal will be disciplined integration, says Richards. This includes bringing 888Africa’s financial reporting, compliance and operational processes in line with GiG’s standards.
About Boomshakalaka
The reforms, announced at the end of August, introduced a package of what it referred to as “evidence-based” legislation.
As well as a statewide exclusion register, the package also set out to reduce the number of poker machines from the current figure of 87,000 across 2,100 clubs and hotels.
The government said it aims to achieve this by increasing the forfeiture rate when gaming machine entitlements are traded from one in three to one in two.
