Hoop Kings

What is Hoop Kings?

The shift to AI is also changing how Grenstad thinks about recruitment. A team working on the player journey, for example, needs people who understand casinos, iGaming and what a strong player experience should look like.

“I would not necessarily prioritise senior Java or front-end specialists in the same way as before,” Grenstad explains. “Technical skills remain important, particularly for people who can assess architecture and ensure systems remain reliable, but domain knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable. I’d rather take someone who’s good in the domain but doesn’t know any Java.”

That raises a question about how future developers will enter the industry. If Cubeia no longer needs front-end traditional junior Java developers in the same way, the traditional path from junior programmer to senior engineer becomes less clear.

What is Hoop Kings?

The report also cites brands targeting a specifically banned vertical or product within a jurisdiction as driving black market activity. While markets across Europe have many examples, one such flagged in the report is that iGaming remains illegal for licensed operators in France.

“The largest black market operators have scaled to create recognisable brands with traffic that can compare to domestically licensed operators,” the report’s authors wrote. “The top group of sites by common owner has a 12% share of traffic, while the largest single brand has 10%.”

Beyond offering crypto payment solutions, a number of black market operators are licensed in “light touch” offshore jurisidictions which use opaque offshore operating structures to help to obscure company ownership and make local enforcement against these companies complex, the report noted.

About Hoop Kings

In his interview Done framed these closures as part of a broader decline in high street retail venues. He predicted that by 2030, betting shops could disappear entirely. 

“I believe that by 2030 we will have no betting shops. The high street will be dead. We’ve already worked it out that with the increases in taxes and salaries and other wages it won’t be worth operating,” he said.

Betfred currently sponsors Britain’s five classic horse races, including the Epsom Derby. Done said the company had yet to agree on extending those sponsorships amid the tax uncertainty, warning that reduced regulated gambling provision could push problem gamblers towards the black market.