GiG to power betting for MRG’s new esports venture

MRG and Gamingzone Entertainment have enlisted Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) to support the planned launch of their esports betting joint venture in the first quarter of 2019.

The gaming operator and esports entertainment group, which announced their partnership in May this year, have now confirmed the venture will be called GLHF.GG, an abbreviation of “Good luck. Have fun. Good game.”

GiG will provide GLHF.GG with its GiG Core technical platform for esports and iGaming services.

GLHF.GG aims to create a global community for esports followers, offering odds on range of markets as well as streaming of events and other ancillary forms of entertainment.

“There is a massive engagement around eSports today with 200 million frequent viewers globally every day,” MRG chief executive Per Norman said. “Our ambition is to build the world’s most engaging eSports community together with Gamingzone Entertainment.”

In October, MRG said during a results announcement for the third quarter that it hoped to launch the venture before the end of 2019. Niklas Grawé was appointed as chief executive of the new business unit in September.

“With this great and very relevant name together with our idea on how to mix streaming, betting and gamification, we have the prerequisites to attract attention from this rapidly growing audience,” Grawé said of the new brand.

Robin Reed, CEO of GiG, added: “We highly value MRG’s and Gamingzone’s knowledge and experience in both igaming and esports and are delighted to enter the fast-growing esports vertical together with them, adding further scale to our ecosystem.”

Last month, GiG announced a 21% year-on-year increase in revenue to €37.3m (£33.2m/$42.3m) for the third quarter.