Fengshen

About Fengshen

The research also found profiles of influencers known as tipsters, sports traders and “professional gamblers”. They sell access to groups, predictions, spreadsheets and other products related to betting, while presenting gambling as an income-generating activity.

According to The Intercept, some content even uses expressions like “leaving the CLT [Brazilian labour law]” and “your dream income” to promote this type of activity. There are also screenshots of alleged user earnings and posts that present gambling as a kind of investment.

These professional content creators on Instagram aren’t limited to sports betting. There are niches of creators focused on casino games, like the controversial Fortune Tiger, with a communication strategy similar to that of sports betting.

What is Fengshen?

“I started thinking about how to combine the really great monetisation of randomness in casino games with the attention loop of social media platforms,” Yashin says. “The idea was: what if you could bet on the result of a short video or a short TikTok?”

That question eventually became Swipe Games, a Cyprus-based business that is well on the way to establishing swipe games as a casino category in its own right. Still in its commercial infancy, the company has rapidly gained traction across the industry since beginning sales late last year.

Instead of asking players to select individual titles from a conventional lobby, Swipe Games takes its cues from the social-media feed. Players enter an endless stream of short videos and have three to five seconds to choose between three possible outcomes. For example, in a football penalty shoot-out game that could mean a goal, miss or a save.

How to play Fengshen

The acquisition follows another recent French omnichannel agreement that saw Tipico and Betclic owner Banijay Entertainment’s gaming arm acquire JOA’s network of 33 regional casinos across France. 

Banijay did not disclose any financial details, except that the acquisition would be supported by funds managed by Blackstone and Kings Park Capital.

Merkur represents the gaming and leisure division of the Gauselmann Group, a historic German family-owned enterprise specialising in gaming machines, software and casino operations across Europe.