Fertitta buyout clears Caesars shareholder vote, MGM eyes reverse buyout of People, Inc

Fertitta Entertainment has got a go-ahead from Caesars Entertainment’s shareholders to purchase the company and take it private. The vote saw 93% of all shares represented at a vote on Tuesday, September 22, back the deal.

​The acquisition vehicle of businessman Tilman Fertitta has finally achieved what the man has long coveted - the acquisition of Caesars, expanding on his gaming and hospitality empire, which already includes Golden Nugget.

​Additionally, Fertitta owns a 12.3% stake in Wynn Resorts. Despite the approval by the Board, Fertitta Entertainment would still have to wait for final closing conditions and regulatory approvals. In the meantime, Caesars Entertainment has set an obligatory closing date by mid-2027, after which a daily penalty will apply.

Business and finance

Betfred has officially ended its support for the Super League, a rugby competition, and will no longer provide financial aid to the organization, the company confirmed this week. The support ends after 9 years, with Betfred announcing its first sponsorship campaign in 2017.

​In a statement, Betfred owner Fred Done attributed the difficult decision to the increasing operational costs that are affecting the business across all verticals, forcing it to pull its support from the competition. Betfred is just one of a few companies in the UK right now to have announced similar cost-trimming moves, with others, such as Entain and Evoke, resorting to betting shop closures as well as laying off people.

​MGM Resorts International and Barry Diller’s People, Inc. have not been able to come to an agreement over the potential acquisition of the former company. People, Inc. withdrew the bid on Tuesday and retains its 27% stake in the company, as reported by Casino Guru News.

​However, a newly surfaced report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) suggests that it may be MGM Resorts International that is now actually on the move, trying to secure People, Inc. and buy out the company. There has been no official comment by MGM at the time of writing.

Laws and regulations

Missouri’s Attorney General’s Office has taken aim at both Polymarket and Kalshi, among others, America’s leading prediction market platforms, over their offering of event contracts, which the state’s top attorney has characterized as "illegal gambling."

​Missouri AG Catherine Hanaway has sent cease-and-desist letters to six prediction market platforms urging them to leave the state voluntarily. In response to this, a Polymarket US spokesperson had this to say:

​"Polymarket US maintains that prediction markets are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under a federal framework, not a patchwork of state rules."

​Missouri’s AG’s Office is targeting Polymarket, Kalshi, Underdog, Robinhood, Crypto.com, and Novig.

​In the meantime, Polymarket and New York State are caught in a legal battle - with both parties filing litigation against the other.

​NYS preemptively launched a lawsuit alleging that Polymarket was offeringillegal gambling in the Empire State on Thursday, September 24, which led to a counter-lawsuit by Polymarket, which filed a complaint of its own against the state and officials in its Gaming Commission in federal court.

​Both parties have presented familiar arguments, i.e., that Polymarket’s sports event contracts are illegal and that Polymarket is a federally regulated exchange and therefore not subject to local gaming laws.

​Responsible gambling

Last week, the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) and Families and Friends of Gamblers (FFOG) announced the upcoming launch of a new campaign that seeks gambling reform in the United States.

​Now, two leading voices in Congress, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Representative Paul Tonko, confirmed their intention to support the initiative called Truth and Integrity: The Movement for Gambling Reform.

​In a recent New York Times expose, the media argued that DraftKings may be using AI to send promotional incentives to players who are likely to lose more money.

The company has responded by saying that it did not engage in any practices that were not common in consumer-facing industries, and argued that the reporting was sensationalist and tried to depict events differently.

​The report drew from the accounts and testimonies of former employees, with a DraftKings spokesperson having this to add on the matter:

​"And it asks readers to accept, on the word of a few former employees, that DraftKings should not have evolved our development efforts from an unvalidated, early-stage data model to a regulator-informed, evidence-based responsible engagement system."

​The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) has once again addressed the controversy over accepting donations from prediction markets. The NCPG openly said that prediction markets are causing harm and that the organization was interested in identifying this harm and helping minimize it.

​However, the NCPG said that it was completely neutral on the legality of the issue and whether prediction markets were designed as a way to skirt gambling laws through sports event contracts. You can find out more in Casino Guru News’ full reporting here.

The voice of the industry

Martin Calvert has recently joined All-In Global as Marketing Director, bringing years of multilingual and regulated-industry marketing experience to the company's AI translation platform, CRAIG. In this interview, Calvert discusses how CRAIG is reshaping the economics of localization for iGaming brands, why he's skeptical of AI hype despite believing in the product, and why human linguists, not just automation, remain central to getting it right. Read the full interview here.

​NeverEnding’s Head of Business Development, Volodymyr Saratovskyy, reflects on the company’s first year and the journey from starting from scratch to establishing a growing presence in the iGaming landscape. For Saratovskyy, the philosophy has always been to start small, build trust, and let results speak louder than promises, an approach that continues to shape how NeverEnding works with its partners. As Saratovskyy puts it, "we let the product and the results do the talking."

​Not least, Oleg Rezanovich, CEO and founder of Bubble Gaming, explains why a large catalogue is no longer enough to stand out, how the exclusive development model works, and what 127 days of Joker's Lucky Box at Lemon Casino have shown.

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Image credit: Casino Guru News