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About Lucky Double
Recently, Margaret Dunn, portfolio director at WorldGaming, interviewed Sergey Kastukevich, chief technology officer at SOFTSWISS, in a primer of both Tech Race and ICE Hall 7. The pair also shared their perspective on the development of AI in the industry.
Tech Race Summit 2026 takes place on 10 September in Warsaw. It gathers the experts working on the technology behind today’s digital businesses.
According to Kastukevich, Tech Race Summit is filling a genuine void. Although he has seen plenty of business-focused conversation in iGaming, there is almost no dedicated space for engineering and technology discussions.
What is Lucky Double?
– Real App, a social sports app built around live play-by-play, named FanDuel as its first prediction market partner. The partnership brings FanDuel’s odds and contextual markets directly into the app’s live sports experience. Fanatics Sports & Casino is adding some upgrades to its Fair Play offering. Among the changes, Fanatics has added first-half injury protection for player props. The option proved to be valuable for fans in Wednesday’s opener when Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold left the game after the team’s fifth offensive play.
– According to the American Gaming Association, an estimated $40 billion will be wagered on the NFL via prediction markets this year. Last week, on the first full day of the 2026 college football season, Kalshi reported nearly $250 million in trading activity on college football.
Matt is primarily responsible for long-form feature coverage on complex sports betting scandals. He also provides coverage on finance, M&A and other technological developments.
About Lucky Double
In July, Fertitta’s General Counsel Steven Scheinthal told the Nevada Gaming Control Board that the company had a letter of intent from banks to finance the transaction but was waiting for better borrowing conditions. Fertitta is assuming nearly $12 billion in Caesars’ debt and is committed to a $6.6 billion financing package.
“Our hope is that in the next few months there will be a window of opportunity where the market will be hotter and [it’s] a more interest rate friendly environment where we can go raise the money and then just put it in an escrow account,” Scheinthal said at the time.
That window Scheinthal had hoped for seems to be moving further away. Caesars’ proxy filing showed that even during negotiations in the spring, Fertitta refused to go above its $31-per-share offer “due to higher financing costs and increased macroeconomic risks”. From the end of 2025 to late April of this year, higher borrowing costs had resulted in “approximately $40 million per year in additional costs from when the process started”, the filing said.
