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What is Greedy Wolf?
While sports event contracts remain the headline-grabbers for prediction market operators, there’s evidence that other categories are experiencing growth. As Bernstein points out, cryptocurrency event contracts account for at least 20% of the turnover on the two largest prediction markets.
In another encouraging non-sports sign, one of those operators notched just $2 million in commodities volume last year, but that figure surpassed $410 million in August alone and is approaching $600 million on a year-to-date basis.
Bernstein estimates the global market for financial contracts will grow to $900 trillion by 2035, up from $700 trillion last year, and if prediction markets capture just 0.5% of that total, volume would increase by $4.7 trillion per year.
How to play Greedy Wolf
There is a second complication. The relentless flow of Commission statements may eventually make enforcement less damaging rather than more.
“The regulatory failures are unhelpful but perhaps the sheer number and regularity of them has made them less remarkable, such that they become ‘wallpaper’,” Waugh says.
He argues that some lawyers and licensees believe the Commission’s presentation of cases is detached from the operational reality but feel they have little option other than to accept the “regulator’s truth” when settling.
What is Greedy Wolf?
Thanks to the “rapid growth of crypto currencies” and globally recognisable branding through marketing and sponsorships, this handful of operators are generating the majority of illegal gambling traffic across Europe.
The report also cites brands targeting a specifically banned vertical or product within a jurisdiction as driving black market activity. While markets across Europe have many examples, one such flagged in the report is that iGaming remains illegal for licensed operators in France.
“The largest black market operators have scaled to create recognisable brands with traffic that can compare to domestically licensed operators,” the report’s authors wrote. “The top group of sites by common owner has a 12% share of traffic, while the largest single brand has 10%.”
