Lion Dance

About Lion Dance

In Sweden, Spelinspektionen recently flagged affiliates and social media as key channels for black market advertising and how affiliate networks redirect search traffic towards unlicensed operators.

Regulators have so far focused mainly on monitoring paid advertising. In Germany, the GGL credited an updated Google ad policy with reducing black market visibility. Yet, it acknowledged that illegal operators could still achieve visibility in organic search through SEO manipulation. 

This points to a wider shift towards addressing organic search signals and domain-level practices such as doorway pages, an issue also raised in the UK, where research has linked black market migration to search-driven promotion and SEO exploitation.

How to play Lion Dance

Troubles continued as it faced declining growth within its digital business. Reports of failed integrations amid a frenzy of acquisitions further dampened Entain’s reputation and the operator subsequently committed to a major turnaround effort to cut costs and return its digital business to growth.

Efforts to update its legacy tech were also set in motion, and short-lived CEO Gavin Isaacs told iGB at ICE in January 2025 that his biggest challenge in the role was to modernise its core platform.

The operator declined to comment on losing its spot in the FTSE 100, but recent sentiment from the senior management team has been positive in recent quarters as its turnaround efforts have shown green shoots amid growth returning to its core markets. This is despite various regulatory and tax headwinds across Europe.

About Lion Dance

Are you listening, Oh you gaming industry execs? If you’re a CEO reading this, or a CFO, and you’re struggling with shut down casinos and mounting debt, I’m talking to you. You have only a few months at most to protect your companies from a hyperinflationary nuclear bomb that is about to go off and destroy everything in its path. The fuse is being lit as I write this. I will now describe the fuse.

About 18 months ago I wrote this weird, esoteric, wacky article. I made the case that once U.S. dollar interest rates went negative, all commodities would warp into backwardation. Meaning, the spot prices for all commodities would become more expensive than their futures price. This is now happening. Almost all commodities are now in persistent backwardation. All grains, sugar, lumber, and cotton; energy including natural gas and both Brent and WTI crude oil; base metals including copper, tin, and iron ore. They are all in backwardation now, and some have been that way for months now. The CRB commodities index is now climbing at its fastest pace ever, doubling since March.

And this is with various forms of lockdowns persisting in Europe and the U.S., which should mute industrial demand for commodities. Paper currencies are dying. That’s what’s happening, pure and simple. And they are about to get their death blow.