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About Gold King
Jackpots and free-to-play may be very different propositions, but Wilson judges both against the same unromantic measure: whether they produce value for the operator.
For free-to-play, that process can begin before the customer has committed money. “It’s about building muscle memory, providing achievable incentives to players and gamification,” Wilson explains. By lowering the barrier to participation, a free-to-play game can provide an accessible first interaction with an operator, while repeated play builds familiarity and creates a reason to return.
The format, however, cannot simply be copied and pasted from one market to the next. “We’ve found that the more localised the offering, the better,” Wilson says. “We’re talking about building anything from sumo wrestling to Love Island, as well as the headline sports. Ice cage fighting has been a popular one in a certain market for us.”
What is Gold King?
“That dual value is really the point of the deal,” he explains. “Owning a leading local operator gives us direct, ground-level insight into regulatory developments, player behaviour and payment infrastructure across several African markets, insight that is very difficult to build from the outside.
“Over time we expect that knowledge and local presence to help us open conversations with other operators looking to enter or expand in Africa, in the same way our historical B2C experience in Europe underpinned our platform proposition there.
“So this is not an either/or. It is a B2C acquisition that we expect to strengthen our B2B pipeline on the continent.”
About Gold King
Between H1 2024 to H1 2026, Lottomatica and Cirsa have grown their revenues at CAGRs of 13% and 11% respectively.
“The combined entity will be able to deliver the same rate of growth and the same rate of shareholder distribution, but with a larger pro forma free float and liquidity,” Angelozzi outlined.
“So you get the same stable and predictable growth and you get the capital returns. You get no additional risk, and you get the benefits of the new markets and the online opportunities on top of the synergies, which are also pretty significant. So that’s why this makes a lot of sense to us.”
