Malta: all our coverage

The Stockholm-listed affiliate will pay the sellers of a Japan-focused business it bought for €2.0 million in 2019 about 40% of what it still owed them, mostly with a Bank of Valletta loan. Before the news the market valued the whole company at about a quarter of the old bill; the deal still waits on the bank.

The Curaçao Gaming Authority has set out its fullest account yet of the breach of its licensing portal, blaming a German researcher and weighing civil action. The same document dates the unlawful access from December 2025 to September 2026, and says nothing about what was taken or who has been told.

Casino Guru has opened nominations for the fifth edition of its awards, adding a Player Protection Advocate of the Year category to the line-up. Nominations close on 15 February 2027, and the winners will be announced at a ceremony in Malta on 26 May 2027.

The Stockholm-listed affiliate blames generative search and falling rankings, and because more than 90% of its new customers come on cost-per-acquisition deals, the damage reached its accounts at once. Two months after finding no sign of impairment, it expects to write down €30 million to €35 million of intangible assets.

Malta-based Wildz Group says Finland's National Police Board has granted it a five-year gambling licence starting on 1 July 2027, the first award any operator has announced under the new regime. The board has not confirmed it, and a year ago it was weighing a marketing prohibition against the same group that would have ruled it out.

A week after scrapping the licensing portal at the centre of the Casino Secrets leak, the Curaçao Gaming Authority is still adding licences to its register and has moved its forms to its main website. It has not published how applicants and licensees should file anything while the portal is gone.

The Stockholm-listed slots supplier says the Malta Gaming Authority has extended its licence to peer-to-peer games, the class that covers poker and betting exchanges, so it can supply prediction markets to operators. A European gambling regulator is licensing as gaming a product that Washington proposed six days ago to define as a swap.

The Casino Guru Awards return on 15 October, building on a record year for nominations and more than 150,000 votes in public voting categories. New developments are also on the way, including a stronger focus on player protection and a brand-new project that goes beyond the usual category line-up.

The Irish Presidency's revised negotiating box for the EU's 2028 to 2034 budget lists five new revenue sources, and a levy on online gambling is not among them. Europe's racing bodies, who had asked Dublin days earlier to keep horserace betting out of any such levy, welcomed the omission but warn the idea still has strong support in the European Parliament.

GiG Software says PowerPlay is its fourth brand live in Alberta and the first to run its SportX sportsbook in the province. In May, PowerPlay said its 13 July launch date was "locked"; its arrival was reported on 1 October, and neither company has said what held it up.

Three appeal judges have unanimously reversed the High Court on which law decides whether Georgian rulings stop Spribe reopening copyright ownership and copying in London. It is a procedural win for Aviator LLC, not a finding of infringement, and whether the Georgian rulings bind the English court is still undecided.

IZI Finance, the Maltese group that runs the island's National Lottery and the Dragonara Casino, took more than €1 billion in stakes in a year for the first time and doubled its pre-tax profit to €14.4 million. Its lottery concession has under six years left to run, and the bond it sold in March to fund growth abroad runs almost four years beyond it.

The first episode of iGaming SkyTalk, recorded on a parasail over Golden Bay, puts Omnitronix architect Tobias Liauw in the air to talk about prediction markets and AI. He doesn’t expect event contracts to displace the industry’s core verticals. He expects them to be built into them.

The Curaçao Gaming Authority will not bring back the portal a hacker used for nine months, and is ending the service arrangements behind it. The seal that lets anyone check a Curaçao-licensed domain is affected too, and its replacement has not yet been published.

The team behind iGaming SkyTalk, the new interview series recorded on a parasail 200 metres above Golden Bay, explains why the industry needs another show, why it opened with an architect rather than a chief executive, and why the format is only half the pitch. "The setting gets your attention. The conversation has to earn the rest of it."

Betsson Group has set up the Betsson Foundation to coordinate its community and sports giving. It has published a governance outline and one project in Peru, but no funding commitment, no board and no spending figures to judge it by.

The affiliate has lowered its 2026 outlook for the second time in five weeks, blaming Brazil's ban and a weak third quarter, and has lined up a €50 million loan and a €50 million share issue from its largest shareholders to clear €91.5 million of bonds due in December.

The government wants operating a betting site to carry four to six years in prison and has asked Congress to treat the bill as urgent. At the same time, operators' associations have asked the Supreme Federal Tribunal to suspend the ban, arguing that it fails the Constitution's own test for a provisional measure.

GiG Software has signed a share purchase agreement for evoke's African operator and says the proposed deal will be finalised by 30 September. The signing puts a clock on the deferred payment and, for the first time, numbers on the business GiG is buying.

The Malta Gaming Authority has suspended a casino and betting licence on four grounds, including a clause that covers unmet financial commitments. The notice says players must still be able to see their accounts, but it says nothing about withdrawals.

A flat 5% tax and a device levy give way to rates by game type, but only on play by people in Malta. The bigger change for the island's exporters is VAT: most remote gaming loses its exemption, which lets operators recover input tax.

The Malta Gaming Authority and its chief executive sought an injunction in Germany against Lilith Wittmann. She says the Berlin judgment bars her from hacking the regulator again but lets her use its documents. The court has not published its reasoning.

Lilith Wittmann has claimed responsibility for the breach the Curaçao Gaming Authority disclosed this morning, says she has had access since December 2025, and has begun releasing material with broadcasters in five countries. She says the full list of ultimate beneficial owners is still to come.

The Curaçao Gaming Authority says the access has been contained and its source identified, and that it has found no compromise of core infrastructure, but it has not yet established what information was reached. The portal is the single channel for every licence application, supplier filing and incident report under the LOK.