OpenBet has taken Loterie Romande’s JouezSport sportsbook live on its platform, completing a supplier switch that the Swiss lottery operator first agreed in March 2025. The launch covers online betting, self-service terminals and Loterie Romande’s network of around 2,350 retail points of sale.

Loterie Romande is the exclusive regulated sports betting operator for Switzerland’s six French-speaking cantons. Under the Swiss framework, large-scale lotteries and sports betting are reserved for two licensed operators: Loterie Romande in the French-speaking west and Swisslos for the German- and Italian-speaking regions.

From FDJ to OpenBet

JouezSport previously ran on technology from FDJ Gaming Solutions, the B2B arm of France’s FDJ United. The trade press reported the migration this week, and OpenBet’s own announcement describes the deployment as its “next-generation” sportsbook. Neither side disclosed the contract length or any financial terms.

The original agreement, announced from London on 26 March 2025, covered OpenBet’s digital front end and support for LoRoPlay+, the self-service betting terminals Loterie Romande was rolling out across its retail estate. The deal also brought in OpenBet’s managed trading team, which the supplier says runs around the clock with more than 100 traders.

The launch package has several parts. OpenBet supplies the sportsbook platform itself. It also provides its Managed Trading Services, which it describes as AI-enhanced odds and risk management. The OpenBet Trading System is pitched as a “multi-vendor orchestration hub” that pulls data, trading services and content through a single integration. Cash Out is live from day one on Loterie Romande’s digital channels.

Jean-Luc Moner-Banet, chief executive of Loterie Romande, said OpenBet’s “technology, track record and customer-centric approach meant that they were best placed to understand our specific requirements, and the natural choice to evolve the experience for our players.”

Nikos Konstakis, president of OpenBet, pointed to Cash Out at launch and to the supplier’s “unwavering commitment to responsible gaming and regulatory compliance” as central to the partnership.

Lottery business

The deal adds to OpenBet’s lottery portfolio. The company says it powers sports betting for more than 20 lotteries worldwide, and it is a Gold Contributor to the World Lottery Association, of which Loterie Romande is also a member.

Lottery sportsbooks are an attractive segment for B2B suppliers. They tend to be long contracts with state-backed monopoly or near-monopoly operators, and their large retail networks rely on stable omnichannel technology rather than rapid marketing-led growth. They also carry demanding compliance requirements. Switching a live omnichannel product between platforms is a significant undertaking, which helps explain the gap of around 18 months between signing and go-live.

OpenBet also used the announcement to cite scale. It said its platform processed more than 175 million bets and over $3bn in stakes for its customers during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which it called its largest betting event, without an outage.

Swiss context

Switzerland’s Federal Act on Money Games came into force in January 2019. It keeps sports betting within the lottery operators’ remit and lets the authorities block unlicensed foreign gambling sites. Loterie Romande distributes its profits to public-benefit causes in the French-speaking cantons, including culture, social projects and sport.

For FDJ Gaming Solutions, the loss of JouezSport removes a reference client close to home. For OpenBet, the Swiss launch is another state-lottery sportsbook running on its full stack of platform, trading and orchestration, the model the supplier has been promoting to lottery operators that want to modernise their betting products without building their own trading capability.

Matchbook has completed the acquisition of Betdaq, bringing together two of the longest-running betting exchanges in the UK and Ireland. The deal, announced on 14 October, was for an undisclosed sum and will see Betdaq’s customers migrated into Matchbook’s single pool of liquidity.

The existing Betdaq service will remain open for trading until 21 October 2026, after which customers will be able to withdraw funds until 4 November, according to Racing Post and the trade press. Matchbook said customer balances are protected under the operators’ regulatory obligations.

Liquidity the main prize

For an exchange, scale is everything. Prices and the size of bets that can be matched depend on how many customers are trading on each side of a market, and both Matchbook and Betdaq have spent years competing for second place behind Betfair, which dominates exchange betting in the UK and Ireland.

Matchbook said combining the two pools should deliver deeper liquidity, tighter spreads and larger fills at the prices customers want. Chief executive Ronan McDonagh said the company’s ambition was to make exchange betting “the first choice for bettors”, and that Betdaq customers should find that “their funds are safe, their options are clear”.

“In one combined pool they should find better prices and deeper liquidity than either exchange could offer alone,” he added.

Desmond exits again

The sale marks a second exit from Betdaq for Irish financier Dermot Desmond, who founded the exchange in 2000. It began trading the following year. Desmond sold Betdaq to Ladbrokes in 2013, and it passed to GVC Holdings, now Entain, with the Ladbrokes Coral takeover in 2018. Desmond bought it back from Entain in November 2021 for an undisclosed fee.

Desmond, who remains the largest single shareholder in Celtic, had kept Betdaq running as a niche exchange popular with racing bettors in Ireland. Its sale to a direct rival suggests that the economics of running a sub-scale exchange have become harder to justify.

Exchanges make their money by charging commission on customers’ net winnings rather than by taking positions against them, which means revenue scales with matched volume. Betfair, now part of Flutter Entertainment, launched its exchange in 2000, the same year Desmond founded Betdaq, and has held the bulk of UK and Irish exchange liquidity ever since. That network effect has made it difficult for smaller exchanges to close the gap on price and depth, particularly in the major horse racing and football markets where most exchange volume is concentrated.

Matchbook’s wider ambitions

Founded in 2004, Matchbook has sought to broaden its reach in recent years. In 2024 it partnered with easyGroup, the conglomerate behind easyJet, to launch the EasyBet exchange brand. It has also moved into prediction markets, beginning a UK rollout and positioning for a US entry as Kalshi and Polymarket drive renewed interest in peer-to-peer wagering.

That US opportunity gives added weight to the Betdaq deal. Exchanges and prediction markets share the same fundamental model, in which customers trade against each other rather than against a bookmaker, and both depend on the depth of the order book. A larger combined customer base in the UK and Ireland strengthens Matchbook’s hand as it tries to export that model.

The immediate test will be how many Betdaq customers make the switch before the 21 October cut-off, and whether the merged pool delivers the improvement in prices that Matchbook has promised. The deal also leaves Betfair facing one larger rival in UK and Irish exchange betting rather than two smaller ones.

Hacksaw Group has moved into prediction markets with the launch of a B2B platform that lets operators offer peer-to-peer event trading under their own brands. The Nasdaq Stockholm-listed supplier said on 15 October that the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) had approved an extension of its existing B2B critical gaming supply licence to add Type 3 gaming services, which authorises it to provide peer-to-peer prediction market services under the Maltese framework.

Hacksaw previously held Type 1 authorisation, which covers casino-style games of chance against the house. Type 3 is the MGA category for games where players compete against each other and the operator takes a commission, the same classification used for poker networks and betting exchanges.

How the platform works

According to the company’s announcement, operators keep ownership of their brands, customer relationships and front-end experience, while Hacksaw supplies the underlying technology and infrastructure. The aim is to spare operators the cost of building and maintaining a prediction market product themselves.

The platform includes what Hacksaw calls a connected volume framework, which pools peer-to-peer participation across its operator network. Liquidity is the central problem for any new exchange-style product, and Hacksaw said the shared pool gives operators access to broader capacity from launch rather than leaving each brand to build its own.

The release did not name launch partners or target jurisdictions. Hacksaw said its existing customers include some of the largest private and state-owned iGaming operators across multiple markets, and cited a Bernstein estimate that annual prediction market trading volumes could reach around $1trn by 2030.

“We believe our existing platform, distribution capabilities and operator relationships position us exceptionally well,” said Ana Vrabic Verdir, group chief executive of Hacksaw Group. Marcus Cordes, operational CEO of Hacksaw Gaming, added: “We have created a solution that enables operators to access prediction market capabilities efficiently and at scale.”

Growth moderates in Q3

The launch comes days after Hacksaw published a preliminary update for the third quarter. The company expects revenue of €57.5m to €58.5m for the three months to 30 September, up about 11% to 12% from €52.0m a year earlier. Adjusted operating profit is expected at €48m to €49m, against €42.1m, with an adjusted EBIT margin of about 83%.

Hacksaw said growth had moderated during the period because of softer market conditions and game performance below that of recent quarters, adding that results in its content business naturally vary from period to period. Its long-term financial targets are unchanged, and the full interim report is due on 3 November.

The preliminary figures leave the prediction markets launch as the clearest new growth line Hacksaw can point to when it reports. The company has spent the past year widening its distribution, recently going live with Sazka Hry in the Czech Republic and extending its partnership with bet365 into Spain.

A crowded field

Hacksaw is the latest established gambling supplier to push into a sector that has grown rapidly in the US through Kalshi and Polymarket, where the legal fight between federally regulated event contracts and state gambling law continues to escalate. Outside the US, operators have so far approached the product through existing betting exchange licences. Matchbook, for example, has begun rolling out prediction markets in the UK.

By routing the product through an MGA peer-to-peer licence and selling it on a white-label basis, Hacksaw is betting that regulated European operators will want prediction markets without the build cost or the US regulatory exposure. How quickly operators sign up, and in which markets regulators accept the product as a form of licensed betting, will determine whether the diversification offsets the slowdown in its core games business.