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SPORTS DIRECT BRINGS THE ‘ULTIMATE LIFESTYLE DESTINATION’ TO BIRMINGHAM WITH NEW FLAGSHIP STORE

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Sports Direct is opening a brand-new flagship store, in the heart of Birmingham, bringing a modern, innovative, and sleek experience to the city, following over £10m worth of investment.

Located on New Street and spanning four floors, the supercharged store will be the ultimate lifestyle destination for customers. Home of USC, GAME, Evans Cycles and a Belong esports arena all under one roof, Sports Direct Birmingham will combine interactive experiences and unrivalled product choice for customers, helping to champion the legend in everybody.

USC will have a dedicated area in-store, giving trend-focused customers the chance to shop the most iconic premium lifestyle brands in one space, whilst GAME and Belong will offer the latest games consoles and accessories alongside an enhanced gaming and social experience in the city centre. Evans Cycles will also offer a market-leading selection of bikes, parts, accessories, and clothing, together with a fully equipped bike workshop service.

State of the art store innovations include a bra studio, featuring a unique multi-brand bra finder tool designed to help women find the right bra for their sport; specialised sporting areas including a permanent golf putting green, running gait analysis, and Jordan basketball performance challenge, as well as a My ID Customisation area where customers can have products customised with limited edition designs.

The launch of the store also coincides with Sports Direct’s spring running campaign, ‘Get Set’, which seeks to provide a fresh perspective on the meaning of ‘fast’. In-store technology will bring to life the stories of real runners across the UK, showing it’s more than just PBs and distances covered – it’s about making running accessible for all.

Michael Murray, Chief Executive of Frasers Group, continues to be at the forefront of the brand’s monumental transformation and has been leading the development of Sports Direct’s strategy.

Speaking of the opening, Michael says: “As Sports Direct continues to evolve and expand, we’re excited to be opening our second flagship store in Birmingham. As one of the largest cities in the UK, Birmingham follows our first flagship in London and brings with it a significant investment into the city, alongside an unrivalled offering of sports and fashion under one roof.

“Sports starts at Sports Direct; and as the leading destination for sports and lifestyle, we work collaboratively alongside our brand partners such as Nike for Sports Direct and CP Company for USC, to inspire our consumers with the best product choices and experiences through our flagship stores.”

Birmingham is the second flagship location to open, following the success of Sports Direct’s first flagship on London’s Oxford Street, which reopened after an impressive £10M refurbishment last year. The ‘flagship’ strategy is an all-new proposition for Sports Direct, bringing the best of sports to the consumer with an unrivalled product choice and world-class experiences through Sports Direct’s new design and brand vision.

Sports Direct’s parent company Frasers Group is committed to raising the bar for retail with investment and expansion plans already announced for this year, with Sports Direct’s Manchester flagship set to open later this year.

 

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Brais Pena Chief Strategy Officer at Easygo

Stake Goes Live in Denmark Following Five-Year Licence Approval

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Stake, the largest online casino and sportsbook globally, today proclaims its official entry into Denmark after obtaining a five-year online casino and sports betting license. The shift reinforces Stake’s enduring dedication to enhancing its global growth strategy.

Denmark is often seen as a regulatory success within the European online gambling scene, and Stake has now introduced its flagship, internationally recognized product to the Danish market. Players will unlock access to Stake’s top-tier casino and sportsbook, showcasing exceptional games, cutting-edge technology, and an exceptional user experience, all provided with a strong local emphasis.

Starting 1 March 2026, Stake Denmark will set up its new headquarters at Parken Stadium, the national football stadium of Denmark and the home ground for FC Copenhagen.

Peter Eugen Clausen, Managing Director at Stake Denmark, said: “Denmark has one of the most well-regulated and competitive gaming markets in Europe, and that’s exactly what makes it so exciting. With Stake’s arrival, Danish players can expect a fresh, world-class experience backed by global scale and strong local focus. We’re raising the bar in terms of product, transparency, and entertainment, and I believe increased competition from brands like Stake will only drive the market forward in a positive way.”

Brais Pena, Chief Strategy Officer at Easygo, the technology company behind Stake, said: “Denmark marks our entry into the Nordics and represents a clear win in one of Europe’s most mature and high-value markets. With each new market, our momentum continues to build as we deliver on our global expansion strategy.”

Since its inception in 2017, Stake has positioned itself as the top betting and gaming brand globally by continually presenting advanced technology and novel gaming experiences for players around the globe. Upon entering Denmark, Stake maintains its dedication to player safety and responsible gaming, guaranteeing that gambling stays enjoyable, secure, and entertaining by providing extensive tools and resources that assist customers in comprehending and monitoring their gambling behavior.

The post Stake Goes Live in Denmark Following Five-Year Licence Approval appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

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Why operators are choosing to buy in their AI strategy

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In an industry where margins are thin and player loyalty is fleeting, customer experience has become a key differentiator for operators. As AI becomes a core operational requirement, leadership teams face a clear choice: build proprietary technology in house, or partner with purpose built AI CX providers.

Alex Gould, CTO at Conduet, explains why more operators are choosing the latter.

 

What industry-specific CX challenges can an exterior solution address ‘out of the box’ compared to a generic build?

Generic AI struggles in sports betting and iGaming because player inquiries are shaped by complex, domain-specific rules and edge cases. Questions about settlements, promotions, withdrawals, or cash outs are rarely straightforward. They depend on wager structure, timing, eligibility criteria, and operator-specific logic.

Over 80% of player inquiries require pulling live, account-specific information from the PAM and applying it correctly within that broader rule set. Without purpose-built logic to interpret both the data and the edge cases around it, responses quickly become incomplete or incorrect.

This limitation is reflected more broadly in enterprise AI adoption. Research from MIT found that 95% of enterprise AI initiatives fail to deliver measurable business impact, often because broadly trained models are pushed into live environments without the domain context needed to handle real-world variability. What appears to work in controlled testing breaks down once exposed to operational complexity.

Purpose-built platforms are designed around this reality. By training on gaming-specific data, workflows, and failure modes, they can interpret live PAM data in context and handle both common and complex inquiries accurately from day one, without relying on extensive rules, manual escalation, or post-deployment patchwork.

How would you characterise the current skills gap within operator teams regarding AI implementation?

Operator CX teams are closest to the customer and understand where friction exists. The challenge is not identifying opportunities, but delivering AI that performs reliably in production. Turning insight into production-ready capability requires technical depth, dedicated ownership, and sustained iteration that sit outside the remit of most CX organisations.

Deploying AI in gaming requires expertise across model evaluation, conversation design, failure handling, and real-time interaction with PAMs and ticketing systems. It also requires ongoing investment to monitor performance, manage edge cases, and improve outcomes as volumes and player behaviour change. CX teams are structured to run day-to-day operations, which makes sustaining this work in parallel difficult.

As a result, many internal AI CX efforts stall or remain narrow in scope, not because the opportunity is unclear, but because the execution burden is too high.

What is the average time to market using a specialist platform, versus a full in-house build?

In-house AI efforts typically take 18 to 36 months to reach enterprise-ready scale. The delay is driven by the need to coordinate across CX, product, data, and engineering while establishing new ownership and operating models inside live CX environments.

A specialist platform compresses this timeline materially. With gameLM, operators can move from concept to live inbound CX in six to 12 weeks. Operators achieve 60%+ resolution within 90 days, scaling toward 80%+ shortly thereafter.

Why does a purpose built partnership model matter in iGaming & OSB CX?

In iGaming and online sports betting, the challenge is not adopting AI, but making it work reliably at scale. Generic platforms often shift the burden onto operators after deployment, requiring significant time and internal effort to adapt the technology to gaming-specific realities. That effort compounds as complexity grows.

A purpose built partnership model changes that dynamic. Instead of operators spending months closing gaps, AI is deployed using operating patterns already proven in live gaming CX. Common failure modes, escalation paths, and performance tradeoffs are understood upfront, reducing the need for downstream rework and ongoing firefighting.

Conduet applies this approach through gameLM, informed by operating a 500+ agent gaming CX organisation. That operating knowledge functions as an embedded R&D capability, shaping how the platform is tuned, prioritised, and extended alongside each operator’s environment. Inbound CX performance today directly informs the development of additional, gaming-specific capabilities such as reactivation, payments optimisation, and fraud prevention.

The result is a partnership model that delivers strong outcomes without transferring the hidden cost of adaptation and maintenance back to the operator, allowing CX capability to keep pace as the industry evolves.

 

Alex Gould is the CTO at Conduet, where he leverages his technical and strategic background to guide technology strategy and innovation. He is also the Founder and CTO of Everyday AI and previously founded computer vision company ViewX. Alex’s earlier experience includes roles at Primary Venture Partners and Bain & Company, and he holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) from the University of Canterbury.

The post Why operators are choosing to buy in their AI strategy appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

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Asian Market

Unlock Fortune with Jinero: A New Affiliate Program Built for Asian Market

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The Chinese New Year marks the launch of Jinero, a performance-led affiliate program designed to connect global partners with opportunities across Asian markets. Built around regional expertise and long-term growth, Jinero aims to provide affiliates with clear structures, local insight, and scalable results.

At the center of the brand is JINJI, a six-armed lucky cat symbolizing prosperity, unity, and shared progress. Inspired by Asian cultural traditions and adapted for the digital era, JINJI represents Jinero’s philosophy that sustainable success is created through collaboration, patience, and trust.

“Jinero was created as a golden gateway for affiliates who want to grow in Asia with confidence,” commented the Jinero Team. “Our goal is to turn deep regional understanding into consistent, sustainable performance. We focus on removing uncertainty and leaving partners with clarity, structure, and results — the pure mathematics of success. In our view, fortune is not something you wait for — it’s something you build through strong relationships and consistent action.”

One of the first brands to join the program is Longfu88, an online casino platform inspired by Asian heritage and focused on long-term player engagement. The brand combines traditional symbols of prosperity with a modern gaming environment that includes slots, live casino, and sports betting.

Longfu88 features a 25-level VIP program designed to reward loyalty and sustained play. Each level unlocks tailored bonuses, exclusive benefits, and enhanced recognition, creating a structured path for player progression. The platform’s localized design and gamified experience align with regional celebrations and user preferences.

To celebrate the launch, Longfu88 is offering a Chinese New Year promotion inspired by the tradition of red envelopes, welcoming players with a limited-time bonus.

With Jinero, affiliates are invited to expand across Asia through a partnership model built on cultural understanding, shared ambition, and measurable performance. The initiative positions affiliate growth as a strategic journey — one shaped by preparation, collaboration, and consistent action.

The post Unlock Fortune with Jinero: A New Affiliate Program Built for Asian Market appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

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