The French gaming enterprise FDJ has purchased Sporting Solutions, with ambitions to utilize Solutions’ trading proficiency to broaden its customer-facing operations within the French national market and develop its lottery-focused business-to-business ventures globally. Nevertheless, incorporating the British firm into FDJ’s extensive framework will be crucial to the agreement’s triumph.
Last week, most media outlets publicized the news, but it actually garnered minimal attention, leading to limited scrutiny.
This is a positive development for FDJ, and to some degree, the Sporting Group. The French national lottery only discloses information when it desires to, and has consistently adhered to this practice after acquiring operators and providers.
When iGamingBusiness.
We contacted the firm through electronic mail, aiming to gain further insight into the takeover, encompassing the strategy and reasoning behind it, and what we could anticipate from FDJ in terms of product offerings. The firm replied: “We appreciate your inquiry. FDJ Group will not be providing any additional commentary on the acquisition announcement of Sporting Solutions, which was published yesterday. We anticipate sharing new developments with you shortly.”
Conversation regarding the media silence. It’s comprehensible that there’s media attention in a major gambling entity like FDJ, Europe’s second-largest lottery operator, entering the business-to-business sports wagering sector.
Solutions’ Strength
Is it noteworthy that FDJ declined to engage with industry reporters? Not truly, but it doesn’t present the group in a positive light, particularly after its previous venture into business-to-business, the acquisition of LVS, which quietly vanished without a trace.
An industry insider who has collaborated with both companies, speaking on the condition of anonymity, stated that the Sporting Solutions acquisition signifies that FDJ “has obtained a fantastic team, a fantastic business-to-business expert, and they will utilize this team to secure agreements with other lottery organizations globally.”
In his perspective, Sporting Solutions is improbable to follow in the footsteps of LVS, which “was a small, fledgling company when it was acquired, whereas Solutions possesses a robust corporate presence and culture and is unlikely to fade into the FDJ monolith.”
The merging process will not be simple, but it has the possibility of greater strength.
Even though the French betting company FDJ’s business plan appears straightforward – “eventually being able to set prices and trade its own betting products in its home market and expand globally with a business-to-business customer base primarily concentrated on state-run lotteries” – the two organizations have very distinct cultures. “One is a highly commercialized British betting expert, the other is a large government-owned operator with very different ways of thinking and working,” said an anonymous source.
A former Solutions worker told iGaming Business that, in terms of what FDJ will acquire, “FDJ will gain robust trading and technical skills, integration with numerous platforms and partners, algorithms covering nearly all major and minor sports, and the capability to provide trading models so operators can self-trade.”
The drawback is, “the spread betting business is deeply embedded throughout the company, and it’s difficult to separate from (fixed-odds sports), so it’ll be intriguing to see how they handle that.
“Solutions has a fixed-odds platform it acquired from Grand Parade, but it’s not compatible with FDJ’s LVS legacy platform,” the former employee added.
Moreover, the possible market scope for Solutions goods and services is presently not extensive, as major operators are bringing significant sporting events in-house, thus Solutions is only obtaining the long tail, and numerous smaller operators have already switched to providers like SBTech or Kambi.
However, in actuality, the public relations event mentioned at the start of this piece merely demonstrates how FDJ operates;
The latter point is accurate, even though FDJ will target worldwide lottery operators and bring Solutions to new areas, SG Digital/OpenBet is already engaging in the same practice and is further along; both commercially and in terms of product integration.
Furthermore, Sporting Solutions serves numerous companies that will now be competing directly with it for substantial contracts, even if this is an acceptable aspect of the igaming supply chain.
This does not imply that the project will not be successful, but it will not be straightforward, and from a cultural standpoint, it is as challenging as a purely technical or business endeavor.
To exemplify this, a contact who has collaborated with both teams stated that he has been aware of the agreement for a while. But even the Sporting Solutions executives he routinely contacts are unaware of when it will be announced, and have not had face-to-face discussions with FDJ senior personnel to address the matter.
Its probable that similar occurrences will transpire, and the team’s inadequate communication will become a hot topic. The primary query is whether this will negatively impact Solutions in the long term. As the adage goes, communication is paramount.
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