About this app
About Blue Oceans
The historic showdown between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers will take place at a venue located 7,971 miles from Levi’s Stadium, home of the last meeting between the NFC West rivals. Both teams are based in California, a fertile ground for prediction markets given a sports betting ban in a state with more than 39 million residents. But the Americans in attendance for Thursday night’s matchup (Friday in Melbourne) will not be able to live-trade from their seats.
That is because trading on prediction markets is illegal down under, according to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, the nation’s regulator on financial services. Last month, in perhaps the ASIC’s strongest warnings yet against the asset class, the commission reiterated that prediction markets are not licensed as financial markets to operate in Australia. Through the guidance, the regulator urged consumers to exercise caution before partaking in certain investments on offshore platforms which have not obtained licensing nationwide.
The advisory could be music to the ears of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose league has pushed a federal derivatives regulator in the US to enact more rigorous standards to help protect the integrity of professional sports. Ahead of the matchup, Goodell spoke with CNBC from Melbourne.
What is Blue Oceans?
These include shared hosting, DNS clusters, source-code strings, tracking systems, logos and favicons. The system can also follow redirects and other mechanisms that may not be visible through a conventional web request.
A website might initially appear to be a normal local site, while behind it sits an iframe, JavaScript redirect or a chain of other pages leading to the actual gambling destination.
“You have to follow that chain,” Madsen says. In some cases, that chain can involve multiple layers. “A site might redirect ten times before reaching the actual destination.”
How to play Blue Oceans
Other than Station, Las Vegas Sands had been the other largest non-union holdout in Las Vegas for many years. But when the Venetian-Palazzo was sold to Apollo Global Management in 2021, the firm had no issues with Culinary and ratified the property’s first-ever deal with the union in 2024.
The animosity between the sides has become political over the years. Station is owned and operated by the Fertitta family, who have been prominent Republican donors for many years. Culinary is a largely Democratic organisation that typically supports and endorses left-leaning candidates.
Last month, US President Donald Trump made an impromptu visit to Las Vegas, hosting a rally at Red Rock. Trump called the Fertittas a “beautiful family” during his remarks. Culinary, meanwhile, denounced the event and the Fertittas’ support of Trump and Nevada’s Republican Governor Joe Lombardo.
