A European Push For Daily Fantasy Sports: Global DFS Partners With Microgame In Italy


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Global Daily Fantasy Italy

Companies looking to offer daily fantasy sports have their choice of paths into the market.

They can start from the ground up, building their own brand and rolling out a fresh product to the masses. That path can be successful, as DraftKings and FanDuel might tell you. But it comes with some enormous costs centered around acquiring and retaining customers.

Other companies choose to focus on the platform alone and allow other companies offer it for them. Business-to-business (B2B) providers are software specialists who license out their creations. By letting others operate it, they can dodge the financial burden associated with customer acquisition. And these white-label products can be a good solution for an established brand that needs technical expertise in a new vertical.

Global Daily Fantasy Sports is a B2B provider, and it’s trying to become a player overseas. The young company has been signing deals in the hopes that its product can work in European markets.

Global DFS partners with Microgame

This week, Global and Microgame announced a two-year partnership to bring DFS to more customers in Italy.

Microgame began life in 1999 and has since grown to become Italy’s largest “gaming services provider.” Its products are licensed to almost a hundred different brands with a reach of around 650,000 customers. Most of them play online poker and bingo.

Global will now deliver its games to all of Microgames’ clients under the new partnership. The combined product should roll out in time for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Global’s contests are also available for golf.

Global’s other partnerships

Global entered the market with $8 million of private funding and a game plan. The company announced its launch alongside a partnership with NYX Digital Gaming. NYX has since been acquired by Scientific Games in a move aimed at the future US sports betting and online gambling market.

For now, Global’s focus is still on Italy specifically and Europe more generally. The daily fantasy sports industry has not yet seen real success around Europe, despite the presence of DraftKings in several markets.

Last year, the company acquired another DFS operatorMondogoal had existing partnerships with two other major Italy gaming entities, Lottomatica and Sisal. Global inherited those relationships via acquisition.

It now has considerably more reach than that with the addition of Microgame’s network.

Executives weigh in

Executives from both companies gave their thoughts in a press release issued by GDFS. CEO Darcy Krogh indicated that Global sees strategic value in its new partner:

This single integration gives all their brands access to our unique Daily Fantasy product and network and we’re excited to have them join. We are committed to growing our presence in this key market, and our partnership with Microgame is a very positive step for Global in pursuing this goal.

Microgame General Manager Marco Castaldo echoed those thoughts on his end of the deal:

We are very excited to launch Daily Fantasy Sports with Global. Microgame already manages the leading poker and bingo networks in Italy, and we expect the excellent Global games and our combined liquidity to drive growth in this very promising but currently underdeveloped vertical.