Global gaming supplier Zitro has partnered with leading iGaming platform provider and content aggregator ORYX Gaming to add its growing games portfolio to ORYX Hub.

Charlie Allen, former director of global brand partnerships at ESL, has launched a new commercial esports and gaming agency, Road House.

The new company focuses on working with its clients to help them navigate the esports and gaming landscape and understand the mass potential of brand partnerships in a booming industry. Founded back in late 2020, Road House consults with brands, agencies, rights holders, publishers, and tournament organisers from all over the sports, media & entertainment world.

“Despite the challenges the industry has faced due to the pandemic, it is still a very promising time for esports right now. I’ve learned a great deal from working in this fascinating sector over the past few years and it felt like the right time to launch Road House,” Charlie Allen said.

“During my years at ESL, I spoke with many C-suite level executives from across many different sectors in the traditional marketing world, and what I discovered is that the broad, open ecosystem of esports can prove rather daunting to them. They really needed it explaining to them – like about how esports is consumed, who plays where, how many people are tuning in, and how can we positively engage with them?”

The commercial agency works with clients on RFPs from across both the endemic and non-endemic world, and the appetite to reach new millennial audiences that these brands have never managed to reach before is definitely on the rise.

Global digital performance publisher XLMedia has provided an update for the year ended 31 December 2020.

For the Full Year 2020, XLMedia expects to deliver revenue of approximately $54.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of approximately $11.5 million (excluding transformation costs and share-based payments).

As detailed in the first half results in September, the Company is pursuing a multi-track approach to recovering the Casino vertical, where a number of sites were penalised by Google early in 2020. This process is being carried out in conjunction with a fundamental rationalisation of the asset portfolio, significantly reducing the overall number of sites and upgrading the quality of those remaining, with a concentration on highly-engaging content and enhanced functionality to drive increased traffic and build consumer loyalty.

The approach to recovering the Casino vertical is an orderly combination of, i) submitting to Google for reconsideration certain sites which have been rebuilt in-house or in conjunction with a partner, ii) developing some entirely new sites, where this is the better strategic option, iii) de-indexing sites which are immaterial and may have a negative impact on the authority of the premium websites, and iv) disposing of sites which no longer fit with the direction of the business.

“We have now completed the core development work on all the rebuilt sites we will take forward and have commenced the submission process to Google for reconsideration. To date, we have been successful in having the penalty removed for three of the ten sites we wish to recover, Casino.pt, Casino.gr and CasinoKiwi.co.nz. Learnings from both successes and initial rejections are being applied to the ongoing refinement of the remaining sites and we will resubmit those sites in due course. We will provide a further update on the Casino recovery process with the Financial Results for the Year Ended 31 December 2020, currently expected on 13 April 2021,” XLMedia said.