In the MIXI – A Japanese behemoth eyes Australia as its next betting growth market

MIXI, the Japanese company at the centre of a takeover bid for PointsBet, has built a profitable betting business in Japan’s highly regulated sports betting market in just five years. It is banking on its social betting focus making a similarly major mark in Australia.

When publicly listed Japanese company MIXI launched in Australia via the betM brand during the post-pandemic wagering boom, it barely made a ripple.

New wagering brands, enabled by the availability of white-label betting platforms, were popping up every week in Australia throughout this period. The number of corporate bookmakers jumped from 27 to 88 in the two years from March 2021 to March 2023.  

With a brand not unlike many of the other fresh faces, there was nothing to suggest betM may stand out from the crowd.

But the difference was that this was the first Japanese-owned company to have secured a betting licence in Australia. It wasn’t just any Japanese company. MIXI is a behemoth.

MIXI is about to make a major mark on the Australian landscape through its proposed acquisition of PointsBet in a $350 million deal, which has the support of the PointsBet board and will go to a shareholder vote in June.  

So who are MIXI?

What started out as a job search company, ‘Find Job’, in 1997, developed into a social network platform under the MIXI brand in 2007 and then a gaming company through the wildly popular Monster Strike, which now boasts over 60 million global users.

First publicly listed in 2006, it has a market capitalisation of over AU$2 billion, with a multi-faceted business in lifestyle, digital entertainment, business and investment.

In 2019, it acquired NetDreamers, the owners of Japan’s largest horse racing site, Netkeiba, which boasts a monthly audience of over 17 million.

MIXI holds interests as diverse as professional football (Tokyo FC) and basketball teams (Chibajets), apps which help you find the closest sports bar (Fansta), the best beauty salon (minimo), facilitate family photo sharing (FamilyAlbum) and news and stat sites on cycling (netkierin), auto racing (keitan) and baseball (Weekly Baseball Online).

Most significantly, in 2020 it secured TIPSTAR, a free-to-use social betting app allowing fans to bet on cycling and auto-race events through in-game coins or real money.

The relatively narrow scope of sports available for betting in Japan horse racing, bicycle racing, powerboat racing and motorbike racing, plus the tightly regulated nature of this market has meant it has not been a target market for global wagering companies.

Still, over 8 trillion yen, or AU$85 billion is turned over across these four legal sports each year. Racing, through both JRA and NRA, represents around half of that, while ‘boat racing’ is next best at around a quarter.

In the 2024 financial year, the TIPSTAR business generated around 25 billion yen, or AU$270 million for MIXI. It is already profitable.

Having developed its social betting product, MIXI looked to leverage that through global opportunities.

“In expanding our overseas business, our strength in viral marketing is one of the MIXI Groupʼs advantages,” MIXI Group president Koki Kimura said in the company’s 2024 annual report.

“As in the Japanese domestic market, we can avoid engaging in a marketing war with competitors, which would involve huge promotional costs.

“The MIXI Group has also achieved high-profit margins for the social network MIXI and MONSTER STRIKE. The common feature of these businesses is that they gain new users through word of mouth at zero cost. In our betting businesses also, we seek to generate large profits by designing our services in a way that allows people to invite their friends to join in on the fun.”

Licenced in the Northern Territory through the name MGB Australia, betM entered the Australian market in 2022.

“We are developing betM, the first social betting service by a Japanese company to compete in the large and continuously growing Australian betting market. We will utilize the expertise we have accumulated through TIPSTAR to innovate in the Australian betting market,” Kimura said.

“We will utilize our expertise gained in Japan and continue to invest in the Australian market in phases to develop betM, the betting service that everyone uses to bet with their friends.”

Fast forward around three years and while betM’s profile in the Australian market has yet to reach significant heights, besides a sponsorship with the Paramatta Eels, MIXI is at the heart of the biggest corporate takeover proposal of 2025.

Its move on PointsBet took the market by surprise, although rumours that an overseas player was circling the publicly listed bookmaker had been around for months.

 “MIXI’s goal is to globalise social betting, a new form of entertainment to be enjoyed with friends,” Hiroyuki Kano, partner of Clayton Utz which has been advising MIXI on the acquisition, said last month.

“MIXI’s acquisition of PointsBet supports this vision, combining its TIPSTAR social betting product with PointsBet’s strong foundation in the Australian market.”

The battle for PointsBet – BlueBet steps up the chase for its sweet spot

PointsBet, the ASX-listed bookmaker, has decided on Japanese giant MIXI as its suitor of choice in the takeover game. But spurned BlueBet won’t go down without a fight in its quest to seal a takeover which would set it up as a major player in the Australian market.

The StraightBren O’Brien

A counteroffer for PointsBet from BlueBet, now betr, emerged on the same morning.

Betr CEO Andrew Menz told The Straight he felt his company’s offer for PointsBet offered better value to shareholders and a better offering to the Australian market.

“It does make a lot of sense to have a number of Australian-owned operators here and not be pushing everything offshore. And PointsBet could be the next example of that,” Menz said.  

PointsBet issued a statement on Thursday saying that the funding issues it had identified in the BlueBet offer have ‘not been adequately addressed’ and it does not intend to pursue the BlueBet offer. 

That puts MIXI firmly in the box seat. So what could it bring to the Australian market? 

The concept of social betting is somewhat nebulous, and varies in definition, but has been pioneered in Australia by the likes of Dabble, who have looked to utilise social connectivity to boost wagering engagement.

It is this which MIXI has always seen as a key to unlocking value from the ultra-competitive Australian market.

“Because the Australian market has an extremely high growth rate, the competition among numerous competitors is fierce. However, this market does not have a betting service with social characteristics like we have in Japan,” Kimura said before the PointsBet proposal was announced.

The great consolidation myth – Why the number of corporate bookmakers in Australia hasn’t changed

Despite a significant downturn in turnover and greater taxation and regulation, there are still around 100 online bookies in Australia. Bren O’Brien dives into why the ‘great consolidation’ of corporate bookmakers hasn’t occurred.

The StraightBren O’Brien

On announcing its bid for PointsBet, MIXI confirmed this approach.

“To further expand our social betting service in overseas markets, we have determined that the best course of action is to pursue synergies by leveraging PointsBet’s business platform to improve and expand our betting systems and operations and combining our expertise and strengths in social features gained through our domestic business,” it said.

The other advantage for MIXI in acquiring PointsBet is to secure knowledge and technology from a mature Australian sports betting company that could be brought back into Japan should sports betting regulation be liberalised in the future.

Fifteen years ago, it was the global betting powers of the UK and Ireland which swept into Australia’s corporate betting landscape. They developed many of the products and strategies which they are so successfully employing now in recently regulated markets such as the United States and Brazil.

It makes perfect sense for MIXI to follow a similar game plan.