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What is The Big Journey?
In April, a federal jury sided with Skillz (now operating as Firy Inc.) on its claims that Papaya deceived consumers by utilizing computer bots in its head-to-head mobile games.
Three months later, Judge Denise Cote ordered Papaya to pay Skillz $719 million in damages for poaching players from its skill gaming platform on the belief that Papaya had more players and therefore facilitated considerably faster peer-to-peer pairing times.
Papaya, headquartered in Israel, quickly secured a temporary stay of proceedings from the Tel Aviv District Court and filed a Chapter 15 petition with Delaware’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The Chapter 15 petition seeks to prevent Skillz from initiating collection efforts until its appeals play out.
How to play The Big Journey
The combined company will be listed on stock exchanges in both Spain and Italy, which Cirsa and Lottomatica are already market leaders in.Italy accounted for 57% of a combined group pro format adjusted EBITDA in H1. Spain made up 23% of that figure, with Rest of World at 20%.
Once the deal is completed, 80% of its EBITDA is expected to come from those two markets.
According to the deal investor deck, the combined group expects online betting and gaming to be its largest vertical, as it accounted for 48% of the group’s combined pro forma adjusted EBITDA in H1.
How to play The Big Journey
Its findings contained an all-too-familiar combination of ineffective systems, delayed interventions and inadequate source-of-funds controls. One customer placed approximately 4,800 bets in one day and 7,000 the next without being flagged. Another, whose payslips showed monthly earnings of about £2,000, deposited and lost £9,000 in four days.
“What is striking here is the level of activity that apparently failed to trigger effective intervention,” Williams says. “These were obvious indicators requiring further scrutiny, and it is difficult to understand why they did not result in more effective intervention.”
He adds that the recurring weakness is often not an absence of policies but a failure to ensure “technology, algorithms and operational processes actually work in practice”. Some of the QuinnBet issues followed a platform migration, underlining the need to retest controls whenever systems change.
