Mondogoal has announced a major expansion of its daily fantasy sports B2B operations, after signing a deal with Sisal and Lottomatica in Italy.
What Mondogoal is doing in Italy
A white-label version of the Mondogoal DFS platform is now available on Lottomatica and Sisal web sites. The platform provides weekly cash prizes for the European soccer championships, and offers head-to-head matches as well as multi-player tournaments.
Mondogoal is incorporated and licensed for its global DFS operations in the Isle of Man but also has licenses from the UK Gambling Commission and the Italian ADM. It has business offices in the U.S. in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mondogoal CEO and founder Shergul Arshad said:
“The Italian market for daily fantasy is growing rapidly and we are well positioned by partnering with the biggest gaming providers in the country – among the largest in the world. To have massive global companies like Sisal and Lottomatica recognize the quality of the Mondogoal product and eagerly integrate it with their leading platforms is a big step for Mondogoal, daily fantasy, and global gaming.”
Lottomatica and Sisal are global in scale
Lottomatica is owned by IGT, which also owns GTECH. The group is the world’s leading lottery provider, and Lottomatica holds the license to operate the Italian state lottery.
SISAL is Italy’s second largest gaming operator. It was just bought by U.K. venture capital firm CVC, which also owns Sky Betting & Gaming.
Marco Tiso, Sisal Online Gaming Business Manager, said:
“Together with Lottomatica, we are setting up the first and largest DFS network in Italy. Sisal is pleased to enter into a solid partnership with Mondogoal, one of the daily fantasy football leader worldwide.”
In commenting on the purchase, LSR noted that Sisal had not yet entered the virtual sports betting market. Now that it has got a DFS product, virtual sports betting is the inevitable next step.
For Mondogoal, the deal is a huge coup
U.S. attention is all on the difficulties DFS businesses are having regarding legality and regulation. The huge investments made in market leaders FanDuel and DraftKings may not generate the returns expected and there is a mood of pessimism in the air.
The expansion of DFS in Italy, which is one of the largest gambling markets in the world, and where the population is particularly fanatical about soccer, is one of the best pieces of news the industry could receive.
Last year, at the Global iGaming Summit & Expo (GiGse), Shergul Arshad made a compelling case for the explosive growth of DFS in Europe.
He said that there were about 30 million fantasy players across Europe, half of whom were in the U.K.
“That’s smaller, but it’s a pretty damn big market,” Arshad said at GiGse. “And, the way we look at it, it’s not fragmented across six or seven sports. It’s soccer, and soccer and soccer and soccer.”
