Clucking Hell

How to play Clucking Hell

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.

Papaya concedes that it cannot immediately pay the $719 million judgment, arguing that allowing the company to pay the penalty over multiple years would “preserve … the rights of all parties.”

How to play Clucking Hell

“So we just see creating one of the biggest groups in the world in gaming terms. And we’ll be sharing the long-term plan that Lottomatica has, which is very attractive. So I mean, the risk is minor, and we feel very well protected and joining this long-term plan will be a plus to our people.”

Lottomatica will absorb Cirsa through an EU cross-border merger, with Lottomatica as the surviving entity.

Angelozzi was asked about previous cross-border M&A that had failed to deliver on initial expectations and why he felt this time was different.

How to play Clucking Hell

Some analysts have questioned whether this deal marks the beginning of an M&A spree for GiG as it looks to re-enter the B2C space.

But that isn’t the case according to Richards: “We are not signalling plans to re-enter B2C elsewhere; Africa is a distinct case: a high-growth, underpenetrated region where owning a local operator makes strategic sense in a way it may not elsewhere.”

There’s also a financial constraint, with Ahlberg noting that GiG has used its available cash and is raising additional capital to fund the 888Africa transaction, meaning he doesn’t expect the company to pursue further B2C acquisitions in the short term.