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How to play Rio Stars
But Entain warned the current timeline, which would enforce the ban by August 2027, was not timely enough, allowing unlicensed operators to sponsor Premier League clubs for another full season.
Premier League clubs are prohibited from any form of gambling front-of-shirt sponsor, after a voluntary ban came in from the start of the 2026-27 campaign.
But Entain found 11 of the current 20 Premier League clubs still hold sponsorship or advertising arrangements with operators that don’t hold a UK licence, up from the government’s estimate of eight.
How to play Rio Stars
Another bettor noted that gambling debts fractured personal relationships: “Sports betting ruined my six years of friendship because I couldn’t pay back the borrowed loan from my friend. He stopped talking to me.”
Americans wagered nearly $167 billion on sports in 2025 through regulated sportsbooks, an 11% increase year-over-year, according to data from the American Gaming Association (AGA).
The blurring line between financial investing and gambling has been accelerated by the rise of prediction markets—exchanges offering event contracts that are federally regulated as financial derivatives. U.S. News found that over 40% of active sports bettors now also participate in sports prediction markets.
About Rio Stars
Game in a Box brings those stages into a connected workflow, giving creators greater control over a game as it evolves. The platform is already being used internally by Yggdrasil and is being piloted with selected partners ahead of its wider market release.
Curwen points to Raptor 2 as an example of what this means in practice. The game went through no fewer than 17 versions during its first couple of weeks of development.
“Speed of iteration is probably the biggest difference,” he says. “Traditionally, every significant change can create another development cycle involving several different teams. With Game in a Box, the creator can iterate much closer to real time.”
