Roma

What is Roma?

“At a break or at half time you see 10 to 20 [gambling] adverts,” he says. “It’s come to a point that oftentimes I even hear my kids singing [gambling adverts]. They’ll just keep asking, ‘But Daddy, what is this? What does this mean?’

“Our position is unequivocal. Betting is an adult activity. Operators must maintain effective age verification, marketing must not target or appeal to children and regulators; parents, schools and communities must reinforce the same message.”

As part of Africa Safer Gambling Week, the AiA has also focused on the illegal market, with Kesitilwe highlighting that offshore operators are harmful for player protection.

How to play Roma

A US listing can improve access to capital without making the underlying business more attractive. London has a capital-markets problem. Gambling has an investment problem. The two overlap, but they are not the same thing.

Frank Fantini, founder and publisher emeritus of Eilers-Fantini, thinks the change began before Covid. “There is a tendency to look at the world as pre-Covid and post-Covid,” he says. “But the decline in gaming began earlier than that with the slowdown in new jurisdictions and new projects.”

The US land-based casino market had begun to mature and the number of obvious new markets and projects was shrinking. Online gambling offered a new source of growth, particularly through the expansion of legal sports betting. That opportunity was quickly reflected in share prices.

What is Roma?

That familiarity is important. Swipe Games is not asking social-media users to learn an entirely new digital language when they arrive at a casino. Its proposition is that the behaviour they already perform almost instinctively – watch, decide, swipe, repeat – can become the gaming mechanic itself.

“The video itself is the game,” Yashin explains. “We are as quick as crash games, but the pattern and the feel are more like betting. We are combining two different worlds – betting and quick games.”

The rise of prediction markets reflects the same broader trend: consumers increasingly want a simple, intuitive way to take a position on what happens next. Swipe Games brings that behaviour into a casino format, turning short-form content into an instantly playable experience with outcomes revealed in seconds.