About this app
What is Euphoria Super Stars?
The VGT dispute and construction reset are the latest chapters in a long and bumpy road for Bally’s since winning Chicago’s sole casino licence in 2022. Work has been halted for debris overflow and for unapproved contractors, and the company faced an $800 million funding gap that was eventually filled through a financing agreement with Gaming and Leisure Properties. Potential interference with city water lines also necessitated a significant redesign of the hotel plan.
At one point, the IGB ordered a temporary work stoppage at Bally’s permanent casino following reports of alleged ties between an unapproved dumpster service with organised crime.
Bally’s has been granted two years’ worth of extensions for the permanent project. State law allows for two-year temporary licences, but the Illinois Gaming Board approved an extension to three years in 2023. That pushed the deadline to this September, but Bally’s ultimately received another year’s worth of extensions through language included in the state’s omnibus revenue bill that was passed in June.
About Euphoria Super Stars
Across the market, operators delivered high double-digit gains compared with Labor Day weekend, which featured a full slate of college football games but no NFL contests. Two operators, DraftKings and Underdog each saw triple-digit growth, delivering weekly increases of 125% and 119%, respectively. Three others, Polymarket, Crypto.com and Novig, saw gains of at least 30%, led by Polymarket with a weekly increase of 46%.
One interesting nugget surrounds weekend figures at Kalshi, where volume on Sunday only surpassed prior daily activity by $34 million, BofA data shows. Typically, Sunday volume for the quarter dwarfs that of College Football Saturdays due to the voracious demand for NFL offerings. BofA analyst Shaun Kelley attributes the irregularity to the possibility that Kalshi is “over indexing” on college sports.
Kelley also cited improvements at Robinhood as a possible factor for the regression at Kalshi. Just before the NFL season, Robinhood took a minority stake in Crypto.com and struck a deal to begin routing NFL contracts to OG.com, the site’s regulated prediction market platform.
How to play Euphoria Super Stars
“Peru has been quite successful in channelling customers into the regulated framework,” Rossi comments. “The risk is that this channelisation can decrease in favour of the black market. We know the black market won’t have any consumption tax.
“There should be, in my opinion, a review of the whole ISC or consumption tax framework and find a kind of alignment or a better way to get an income in terms of taxes, but that should be balanced in order to avoid the disruption of businesses and a migration of customers to the illegal market.”
Atucha warns there is a tipping point where higher taxes can undermine channelisation, citing the UK and Germany as important case studies.
