The Equalizer

What is The Equalizer?

Data Protection Commissioner Maria Christofidou said her office had reevaluated a 2022 legal opinion and now recognised a potential legal basis for more granular access to banking information.

Various MPs voiced concerns about the risk of privacy violations in accessing this data, and the potential social stigma around the information being shared.

Christofidou also floated the idea of issuing GMI recipients with a special card for in-person verification at gambling venues, but several MPs warned this could stigmatise welfare recipients.

What is The Equalizer?

As had been expected, the conclusion of the NFL season, which found the Tampa Bay Buccaneers handing the Kansas City Chiefs an embarrassing defeat, opened the doors for an increase in wagers in other sports. Football had dominated the charts since last September, but it’s now time for basketball to take the lead. On Bodog, NBA and NCAA Men’s Basketball are now the overwhelming go-to options for sports gamblers. 

This past weekend, college hoops wagers topped the charts on Bodog, garnering 36.88% of the action. That was about 2.5% better than what the NCAA received, and substantially more than that of the third-place NHL, which only picked up 10.17%. After that, the UFC/MMA made an appearance with 4.15% before different soccer leagues captured four of the remaining top-ten spots. The Premier League was the best, with 3.34%, but tennis and golf snuck in next. The Australian Open Men’s Singles picked up 3.21% and the Genesis Invitational grabbed 2.47%. Germany’s Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga and Italy’s Serie A rounded out the top-ten list, with Germany and Spain sharing 2.02% each and Italy getting 1.44% of the wagers.

Despite taking the top spot on the charts on Bodog this past weekend, NCAA games didn’t prove overly enticing to gamblers. The NBA captured almost all of the top-ten most-wagered events, with only one NCAA game making it to the list. Sports gamblers liked betting on the LA Clippers a lot, as the team’s games against the Utah Jazz and the Brooklyn Nets picked up 13.85% and 11.51%, respectively. In a surprise victory, the Clippers beat the Jazz on Friday, but couldn’t keep the run going and lost to the Nets on Sunday.

How to play The Equalizer

“Of course there’s already a filing for daily leveraged futures baseball ETFs — which are basically the equivalent of a corked bat with eight holes drilled in the handle that’s been dipped in pine tar,” wrote Ben Johnson, head of client solutions at Morningstar, on X.

As of yet, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hasn’t approved the aforementioned NHL futures ETFs.

For the right audience, likely professional traders and sophisticated retail investors, the CME futures on FutureSports indexes could amount to “Goldilocks” offerings because the derivatives aren’t standard sports bets nor are they carbon copies of the event contracts traded on prediction markets.