About this app
About Hippo Splash
“We have tried hard to protect all our sites and the colleagues who work in them, but the combined impact of higher employer National Insurance contributions, wage inflation, increases in gambling taxes and wider economic uncertainty has left us with no choice,” said Chief Executive Jo Whittaker in a statement to iGB at the time the closures were announced.
Evoke also closed 200 of its William Hill stores in April of this year for the same reason.
Stella David, CEO of Entain, has also warned against the potential rise of MGD to Entain’s operations, forecasting a increamse of £100 million in operational costs, if the policy were to go through.
How to play Hippo Splash
“I don’t think the successful studio of the future necessarily has hundreds of people,” he says. “It could be a relatively small group of extremely talented people with great ideas, strong brands and a very good understanding of players, supported by technology that does much of the heavy lifting.”
That would also shift the basis on which studios compete. If sophisticated development capabilities become accessible to a wider range of creators, scale alone becomes less of an advantage.
“It becomes less about how many developers you employ and much more about how creative you are and how well you understand the player,” Curwen says.
How to play Hippo Splash
Last month, GiG Software plc announced plans to acquire an 80% stake in Evoke’s 888Africa, in a deal valued at up to €16.4 million ($19.1 million).
To fund the acquisition, the company intends to raise €2.5 million through a directed share issue and €6 million through convertible debt. The deal marks its return to B2C after becoming a pure play B2B platform play in 2023.
Richards tells iGB the deal is expected to be completed around the end of September and provides GiG with a “profitable, cash-generative B2C operator” and a footprint in some of Africa’s fastest-growing regulated markets.
