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What is Rise Of Merlin?
In January 2024, before locally licensed online operators were active, the Authority said it had recorded about 510,000 monthly cases of Botswanans participating in illegal online gambling.
Sunbet Botswana launched its online sports-betting platform in February 2025 and reported a 4,700% increase in sign-ups during its first month. As this was an operator-reported figure, the company did not publicly disclose the comparison baseline or absolute number of registrations.
The Authority said licensed operators accepted P150 million in wagers in March 2025, paid P135 million in winnings and generated P15 million in gross gambling revenue. It also estimated that only about 40% of Botswana’s estimated 550,000 active bettors were using licensed local operators, leaving a substantial share of demand with unregulated platforms.
About Rise Of Merlin
“Just better margins,” he says of that decision. “I think it’s more defendable. It’s the area that fewer people can do well. So I think it’s more defendable margin, more ability to get long-term contracts and beneficial positions.”
Singles can be profitable, but parlay pricing requires the market maker to calculate the correlations between multiple outcomes and respond dynamically to individual requests. It is a skill set built over years in the sharper regions of the existing sports betting ecosystem.
Marantelli identifies White Swan and Susquehanna as two firms operating at industrial scale in parlays, with Jump Trading, Mojo and DL Trading among the possible leading group. Below them are numerous smaller syndicates, some managing between $5 million and $10 million, alongside sports-specific specialists.
About Rise Of Merlin
Online betting on sports in Japan is in general is not permitted, with the exception of four sports – horse racing, bicycle racing (keirin), motorboat racing and motorcycle racing – each rigidly controlled and regulated directly by the government or government-affiliated public corporations.
However, punters can still get their betting fix through the country’s official toto system, which offers authorised products covering soccer and basketball.
Under Japan’s penal code any betting that creates the possibility of gaining or losing property on a matter whose “outcome depends upon chance” may constitute gambling.
