BETFAN, a new legal Polish bookmaker, has established cooperation with Playtech – a technological leader in the gambling industry. Under the long-term agreement, BETFAN is the first operator in Poland to introduce to the market the offer of Playtech Virtual Sports, namely ultra-realistic virtual games in the most important sports. The offer will include such games as: football, basketball, tennis, greyhound racing, horse racing, speedway and track cycling. The new product is a response to the growing popularity of virtual sports in Poland. According to the estimates of Playtech, they currently account for 20-25% of all sports bets in Poland.

t is a unique product on the Polish market in terms of world quality animation. Playtech Virtual Sports in BETFAN have been already providing players with a wide selection of virtual games, enabling them to bet on their favourite sport 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Together with Playtech, we plan to develop this product in Poland and gradually introduce innovations and modifications. Currently, there are over 12 million active players of various types of online games in our country. We intend to use the huge potential created by this market. Focusing on modern solutions, we want to take an appropriate position on it and provide our customers with an even more interesting betting offer – says Piotr Sienkiewicz, CEO of BETFAN.

Playtech Virtual Sports are unique ultra-realistic simulations of virtual sports games in 3D. They were developed in the latest technology, based on the world’s best animations using motion capture technology, so that they provide a highly realistic gaming experience. For richer player experience Playtech Virtual Sports provides statistics for all teams and athletes in each discipline, allowing for analysis of historical performance and team form prior to placing a bet. The games also use a commentary for all disciplines, currently available in English. At the beginning Playtech Virtual Sports in BETFAN will operate in a desktop version, i.e. available on desktop computers, and ultimately a mobile version with an app will be prepared. The new product meets all the requirements of the Polish Gambling Act.

– The implementation of Playtech Virtual Sports in BETFAN is a breakthrough step for both companies on the Polish market. We provide players with the most realistic virtual games, which will be available on all channels, platforms and devices. BETFAN’s offer will include, among others, stunning visual basketball, football tennis, horse and greyhound racing as well as rooted in the hearts of Poles speedway and cycling. They allow users to bet fast matches with a very dynamic action and achieve winnings in a short period of time. In the future, the offer will be enriched with new, best-in-class live bets on Football League and Trotting – said Tomasz Mogiła, Country Manager at Playtech.

Alena Schillerová, Finance minister of the Czech Republic, has revealed that an exclusion register to block a range of individuals – both voluntarily and involuntarily – from gambling would launch next year. The incoming exclusion register follows on from the 2017 Gambling Act, which legalised iGaming in the Czech Republic for the first time.

Individuals on this list will not be allowed to gamble at all, whether that be online or land-based. People who have been declared bankrupt, are on welfare, or have been treated for gambling addiction will all be added. There shall also be an option for players to voluntary exclude themselves, if they want to.

“We will publish documentation at the turn of this year and begin testing, so that this register is operational in mid-2020,” Schillerová said.

“Currently, all indicators of online gambling are growing. The proportion of online players is increasing, and sports betting is the biggest problem. Young men are particularly at risk from developing problems. This is what our next steps are targeting. It’s not a matter of deleting new technologies from life. Instead, we’re looking to find a balance for their use,” Jarmila Vedralová, National Drug Policy Coordinator in the Czech Republic said.

• Hiro Capital announces its second deal with a lead Series A investment in Prague-based LIV, the breakthrough VR streaming platform;

• LIV is a next-generation game streaming platform, built to empower Virtual Reality streamers and game stream audiences to interact with each other in fun and meaningful ways – https://liv.tv/;

• LIV’s proprietary technology turns stream viewers from passive spectators into active participants in the game and brings the streamer’s real-world moving body into the live digital VR stream;

• LIV connects Game Developers, Streamers and Audiences to create the ultimate VR spectator experiences

• Hiro Capital and LIV first connected at Slush Helsinki in November 2018, and are pleased to announce this Series A investment concurrent with Slush 2019.

• This Series A round includes co-investment from leading Central European technology VC Credo Ventures and London-based Seedcamp;

LIV – the Mixed Reality game streaming platform – has secured $2.6m in funding to expand its development team in order to accelerate its revolutionary streaming technology and  integrate more third-party games studios.

The Series A funding round has been led by Hiro Capital – the new Games, Esports/Streaming and Sports technology VC Fund led by Inspired Entertainment co-founder Luke Alvarez, Games Workshop co-founder Ian Livingstone CBE and Cherry Freeman, co-founder of LoveCrafts. LIV is Hiro’s first Streaming/Esports investment.

LIV was Seed funded by leading technology Seed investors Seedcamp (London), Techstars (Los Angeles) and Credo Ventures (Prague) together with Jaroslav Beck from Beat Games and VR legend Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus Rift. Credo Ventures and Seedcamp are also participating in this Series A round alongside Hiro.

LIV was founded in 2016 by AJ Shewki (Dr Doom), Steffan “Ruu” Donal and friends – a team of ex-competitive gamers, Twitch streamers, game developers and nerds who tried early VR HMDs and became convinced of VR’s huge potential in the future of Entertainment and Esports. Yet when they tried to broadcast their adventures in VR, they found the spectator experience was broken.

“The tools used for broadcasting traditional PC games couldn’t show the intensity of what we were experiencing as players” says Dr Doom, CEO and co-founder of LIV. “In VR, your body is the controller and that’s part of the magic. As a player, you are fully immersed in VR, but unless we can show the player’s body interacting with their VR environment, the 2D stream audience is missing out. And that’s how we got started — we wanted to level up the VR spectator experience.”

Doom continues: “Our mission at LIV is to connect Game Developers, Streamers and Audiences to create the very best VR spectator experiences. We are now in full swing, with hundreds of VR games integrated, (including from leading developers like Beat Games, Cloudhead Games and Survios), thousands of VR streamers (like Ragesaq and VROasis) and billions of views to date of LIV-powered game streams on Twitch, Mixer, YouTube etc.

“Our next releases will add dynamic lighting, progression systems and other cool features as the LIV Play platform becomes a massive scale MMO for live gaming spectator-ship. We are obsessed with creating shared hybrid game experiences where audiences play an integral role in the success of the streamer’s game. We’re super pleased to bring in investors like Hiro, Credo and Seedcamp who share our vision of the future”

Luke Alvarez, Managing Partner of Hiro, said: “Hiro is excited to be investing in LIV as our Fund’s second deal and as our first in Esports/Streaming. Doom and his team are super smart, passionate gamers and streamers, living and breathing in the Mixed Reality world which they are empowering with LIV. While the VR market is still small, the streaming audience is huge.

“At Hiro, we believe in Digital to Real World Convergence and we like tech that brings these worlds together, getting people out of their seats in creative communities. LIV delivers on these values and our team is looking forward to working with Doom and team as they take LIV into the future.”

Ondrej Bartos, Partner at Credo Ventures, said: “VR has been a promising space for quite a while, and we believe it is exactly the kind of tech that LIV is bringing that will be vital to unlock the potential of the market. We at Credo are also big believers in founder market fit which in this case definitely is there – Doom and his team are bringing a solution that they as gamers and streamers needed, and as the current uptake shows they were not alone. We don’t see too many teams as passionate, experienced and competent as LIV.”