George Daskalakis, co-founder and CEO of Kaizen Gaming, is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire a minority stake in Championship club Bristol City.
Daskalakis is understood to be making the investment alongside Sandford Loudon, a financier whose Oakvale Capital advisory firm has worked across the sports and gaming sectors.
Kaizen Gaming owns Betano, which operates across 20 markets and counts 13 million customers globally, making it one of the biggest names in international sports betting.
Betano served as Aston Villa’s front-of-shirt sponsor last season and has struck partnerships with Bayern Munich, Benfica, River Plate and Sparta Prague.
The brand was also FIFA’s first official betting partner at the recent World Cup and partnered with UEFA for Euro 2024.
Bristol City owner Steve Lansdown has reportedly invested around £280m of his own fortune in the club since taking control nearly three decades ago.
Whether the consortium could eventually move beyond a minority stake remains unclear, with it unknown whether the deal includes an option to increase to majority control.
Daskalakis would be joining a growing queue of investors circling English football, with deals also swirling around Liverpool, Chelsea, Crystal Palace and Leicester City.
Gambling regulation may feel uniquely modern and complex, but history suggests governments have been wrestling with remarkably similar questions for thousands of years.
Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, was apparently a keen dice player, once describing a holiday during which he and his companions “played all day long.”
He reportedly lost 20,000 sesterces in the process, equivalent to around A$150,000 in today’s money, suggesting high-stakes gambling is far from a modern invention.
His successor Claudius took things a step further, having a gaming board fitted to his carriage so he could keep playing while travelling.
The Council of Elvira ruled that Christians who gambled for money could be excluded from communion until they stopped, representing an early form of behavioural sanction.
The underlying lesson for today’s regulators is that ancient governments tried social stigma, legislation and religious sanctions, yet none managed to make gambling disappear.
As The Conversation puts it, the enduring attraction is the hope that the next throw, bet or game might turn everything around.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Labour chair Bridget Phillipson has written to the Gambling Commission asking it to examine allegations against two companies linked to Reform UK donors.
According to The Guardian, Phillipson wants the regulator to investigate Montenegro-based Tether.bet and UK-based Fispay over allegations they operated without the licences required to serve British consumers.
Tether.bet was linked to George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster and long-term Farage ally, and issued a closure notice on its website on 12 August.
Fispay is owned by Mowbray Jackson, Reform’s data protection officer, though Jackson has denied that Fispay provided gambling facilities, saying the company “exclusively” brokered private jet travel.
Crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who has given Nigel Farage £5m, owns payments firm IFX, which the Sunday Times reported processed payments connected to another company handling deposits and winnings.
Cottrell’s lawyers insist his relationship with Tether.bet was limited to being a customer and friend of its owner, while Harborne’s representatives said IFX operates in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
Under the Gambling Act 2005, providing gambling facilities in Britain without the appropriate licence is unlawful, and the Gambling Commission must now decide whether to act on Phillipson’s request.
