Great Blue

What is Great Blue?

In the six months to June, Entain’s online net gaming revenue rose 7% in constant currency. Revenue in Britain and Ireland increased 13%, while the company maintained its full-year guidance for online net gaming revenue growth of 5% to 7%. So why is its stock price still so under pressure?

One answer is that the industry is no longer being valued primarily on the promise of endless growth. The market instead wants to see profit, cash generation and manageable regulation maintained across all facets of a listed business. Ed Birkin, managing director of H2 Gambling Capital, says the longer-term decline in gambling stocks runs much deeper than just changes to earnings forecasts.

“The industry share price declines have been much more severe than the cut to earnings projections which means that, while there may be some weakening in some companies’ fundamental growth drivers, the valuations that investors are putting on them have been the main driver of share price declines – although weaker fundamentals lead to lower valuations, so the reality is that they’re completely intertwined.”

About Great Blue

NetEnt also attaches its Elevate suite of paid bonus-entry and feature-boost options. That reflects the wider industry move toward giving players direct routes into bonus play rather than waiting for natural triggers.

For NetEnt, now part of Evolution’s game-supply operation, Demon Beats fits a pattern. The studio tends to iterate on proven mechanical families rather than pivot into adjacent categories such as crash or instant-win formats. The Avalanche engine is a durable part of the studio’s identity, and returning to it positions Demon Beats as a portfolio continuation rather than an experiment.

The staggered rollout matters too. With early access preceding general availability, operators get a short exclusivity window before the game reaches the wider market. For an established supplier, that structure shows how NetEnt keeps leaning on brand-recognizable mechanics to stay competitive against a crowded field of content providers.

About Great Blue

Meanwhile, EGI continued to grow and a year later, meaning now, it’s taking off. I’m thinking at this point I really have to put all my focus on EGI and probably let go of my column, but I liked it too much because Bill allows freedom of expression, not to be taken for granted, especially not in this censorific world.

So just around the time my subscription base is starting to take off and I’m wondering whether I should focus on my own stuff entirely and drop everything else, knowing the End is Near anyway, I get a call from Bill, saying that CalvinAyre.com (will no longer publish gambling news).

Same thing that happened in 2012. I’m sad, but once again, I’m just beaten to the punch. My whole adult life has been that way and I can’t really explain how or why other than to say it I’m constantly being pushed in the direction I’m already going in.