Betsson boss on M&A: “We’re not finished yet”

Betsson will keep the chequebook out for the foreseeable future as the operator looks to further diversify the business with additional regulated acquisitions outside the Nordics region, its CEO Ulrik Bengtsson has said.

The Stockholm-listed operator has been busy on the acquisition front in the previous six months, acquiring horseracing operator RaceBets in a deal worth €40m and TonyBet’s Lithuanian business for up to €6m.

Betsson is also expected to complete its acquisition of NetPlay TV in April 2017 after reaching an agreement to buy the company for £26.4m.

Speaking to EGR Intel, Bengtsson said the company would remain active in industry consolidation as it looked to increase its share of regulated revenues and build a balanced portfolio of brands.

“We are not finished yet,” said Bengtsson. “We have a clear strategy on [M&A], we want to find companies which are primarily outside the Nordics but are in Europe, companies that are operating in regulated markets or have a clear path to regulation.

“We like operators which are sub-scale in the face of regulation, so either technology or volume makes it hard for them to carry the compliance cost. If they have third-party technology that’s also very beneficial to us.”

Meanwhile, the Betsson chief is backing the investment it has made to its sportsbook operations after it was revealed sportsbook revenues dropped by 15% during the final quarter of last year to SEK264.4m (£23.8m).

“We’ve made a lot of investments in our sportsbook throughout the year, in particular in the second-half, increasing the amount of simultaneous events and live trading markets that we offer, working a lot on the scalability of the sportsbook and launched cash out plus a number of other functions,” said Bengtsson.

“The last bit to all of that is to deploy the new mobile sportsbook on the OBG platform and that’s going to happen soon and hopefully we will see the effects of that in the second half of the year.”