Q&A: Per Eriksson, CEO, Net Entertainment

eGaming Review (eGR): What accounts for your strong growth in 2013 and Q4 in particular?

Per Eriksson (PE): Much of our growth came from mobile as well as new geographical regions. We’re still seeing strong growth in Italy and Scandinavia but our main focus was to enter the UK market fully and not to just have a few operators on board. We’re still seeing small numbers in the UK for its market size but it will continue to be a big focus in 2014 because we’ve only just started to scratch the surface.

eGR: Are your partnerships with UK operators now starting to bear fruit?

PE: Yes but some more than others. We have some operators which are fully up and running whilst others only have a few games but it’s nice to have that potential in the contracts we have signed.

eGR: How close are you to signing deals with Betfair and Betfred?

PE: I can’t give a particular date, it will just take the time it takes but hopefully we will have them sooner rather than later. I have learned that when we want to talk about signing deals with other operators there’s quite a lot of bureaucracy before we get the ink on paper.

Every new operator is positive for our revenues and these two firms are huge which will certainly add to our top line. We are interested in having contracts with more operators but we are only press releasing the Tier-1 operators. So if we find good-sized smaller operators then we are more than happy to sign deals with them as well.

eGR: How much does the UK currently account for your revenues?

PE: We only disclose the revenues of our top three countries – Sweden, Italy and Norway ““ but I can reveal that the UK is currently in seventh place. A year ago it wasn’t even in our top 10 but now the target is to make the UK our number one as it’s the biggest market in Europe and it feels natural to have the UK as the biggest market for us as well.

eGR: You’ve spoken before about entering the Dutch gaming market. How important could this be for Net Entertainment?

PE: Very important as it’s a market roughly the same size as Sweden where we have been very successful. The information we have so far as is that we can use the same technical aspects that we used when we launched games in Italy and Denmark so the costs shouldn’t be too high. As the market regulate is expected to regulated in 2015, we need to start the job now and we are already talking with potential partners. We need to be prepared and do our homework before the formal application comes.

eGR: What other markets are you interested in?

PE: Spain is very interesting as we have a lot of traffic from there. If it opened up for slots then it has huge potential for us as we already have operators that have a presence in Spain so we’d love to have it as a regulated market as well.

eGR: How was ICE for Net Entertainment

PE: It was a fantastic show and we showcased our new branded game Aliens which proved a great success. It’s different to other slots games because we have used real-time 3D technology so you get the feeling you’re playing a computer game rather than just a slots game.

eGR: How important is it to have branded games such as Aliens in your portfolio?

PE: Our plan is to continue to release more branded games. We see them as a fantastic acquisition tool to get new players into the casino, particularly those who have not been exposed to online casino before but just like the brand – we learn quite a lot from seeing the behaviour like that. Branded games are here to stay and we will launch one or two more in 2014 like we did last year.