Lion Festival

What is Lion Festival?

Online gambling participation over four weeks reached 39% (16% excluding lottery-only players), while in-person gambling participation was 29% (18% excluding lottery-only players). 

Top non-lottery activities during the period included scratchcards (13%), betting (10%) and online instant win games (8%). 

Betting skewed male, with 16% of men gambling on betting compared to 4% of women. Age-wise, overall gambling participation peaked among 45- to 64-year-olds (56%-59%), when excluding lotteries the highest participation was among 35- to 44-year-olds (35%). 

How to play Lion Festival

50 Cent previewed the project on Instagram on Sept. 17, 2026, framing the venture as the long-overdue legitimization of a game that always played by its own rules.

“For a hundred years this game lived on the corner,” he said in TCS/JOHNHUXLEY’s press release. “Now it’s got a dealer, a pay table and a seat at the table in a real casino. Same dice, new floor.”

Cee-lo—derived from sì wǔ liù (Chinese for “four-five-six”)—is played with three six-sided dice. Popular among Chinese-American players as early as 1893, it was adopted by hip-hop culture in the late 1970s and became a fixture on the street corners of Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

Nas, the Notorious B.I.G., and Jadakiss all referenced the game in their music. Kool G Rap called his 1995 album 4,5,6, and its title track included the line “Headcrack, time to get the bread”—the lyric that most likely inspired 50 Cent’s casino adaptation.

What is Lion Festival?

Wazdan has boosted its presence in the Eastern European market, with the company signing a new content alliance with SlyBet, a prominent provider of iGaming experiences for the local market. 

The online casino has benefited from the supplier’s advanced and player-favorite titles since August 10, 2026, but the partnership was only announced recently. The implementation of Wazdan content was made possible through EGT Digital. 

Wazdan is already present in the Bulgarian iGaming market, which has been expanding rapidly over the past several years. Notably, the supplier has teamed up with WINBET and ELITBET in the past, two other prominent local operators, with SlyBet only adding to the company’s local footprint and momentum.