About this app
What is Knights Heart?
Marantelli says the London-based White Swan is a significant market maker on several secondary exchanges, accounting for as much as 40% of activity on some platforms. Its particular focus is the RFQ, parlay market.
“Just better margins,” he says of that decision. “I think it’s more defendable. It’s the area that fewer people can do well. So I think it’s more defendable margin, more ability to get long-term contracts and beneficial positions.”
Singles can be profitable, but parlay pricing requires the market maker to calculate the correlations between multiple outcomes and respond dynamically to individual requests. It is a skill set built over years in the sharper regions of the existing sports betting ecosystem.
How to play Knights Heart
The objective, he argues, is to make it harder for operators to simply replace a blocked domain with another one. “If they knew there was a tool that would find those new sites as well, they might become more cautious.”
It is a philosophy that sits within a broader shift in the industry’s approach to the illegal market. Domain blocking remains important, but regulators are increasingly looking at payments, advertising, affiliate and acquisition channels and cooperation across jurisdictions.
For example, on the role of pirate sports streaming in driving traffic towards illegal gambling, while regulators in markets such as Turkey are confronting large-scale unlicensed activity. The more fragmented and technically sophisticated the illegal market becomes, the more important the intelligence behind enforcement is likely to become.
How to play Knights Heart
Entain is trying to respond by simplifying itself. It has agreed to sell an initial 20% stake in Entain CEE for €425 million, implying an enterprise value of about €2.1 billion. The company says proceeds from the transaction and any future exit will be used to reduce debt and, subject to leverage objectives, return excess capital to shareholders.
The strategy is less about rapid growth and more about showing that a cash-generating business with falling debt and improving operations is undervalued.
By looking at four major gambling companies – Entain, Flutter, DraftKings and MGM Resorts International – it becomes clear why the sector should not be treated as a single trade.
