EGR Power 50 2023: 50-31

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50. Buzz Bingo

Closing out this year’s rankings in 50th place, Buzz Bingo makes its debut in the Power 50 after a year of firsts for the privately owned operator. Entering 2023 marked a new era for Buzz Bingo after former CEO Chris Matthews stepped down at the end of 2022 following a five-year stint in the hot seat. He was replaced by digital COO Dominic Mansour, who was given the task of continuing to steer the traditionally retail-focused firm into the online arena. To that end, in April, Mansour oversaw the launch of Buzz Bingo’s online casino, Buzz Casino, in partnership with Playtech, in what marked the first sister brand to launch at the company since it rebranded from Gala Bingo Clubs in 2018. A commitment to online development was underlined in October after digital operations director David Evans was promoted to chief product officer. The business is homing in on an omnichannel focus and has tapped Future Anthem to provide more personalised player journeys. Speaking to EGR in November, Evans mentioned the need to “omnify the customer experience”. He said: “We want to have single-app experiences, we want to create single-bingo experiences, pooling together prize money both online and in retail.”

49. Holland Casino

After making the Ones to watch list in 2022, Dutch state-owned Holland Casino has broken into the rankings this year. H1 group turnover increased €51.9m to €405.3m, however, online revenue fell by a third from €82.7m to €57.2m due to “increased competition and social choices”, according to the operator. The clampdown on advertising in the Netherlands from 1 July across TV, radio and in public spaces had an impact, although management said it expects a “slight recovery” in its online performance given it had prematurely curtailed its marketing ahead of the regulatory shift. Holland Casino was one of the first operators to gain a licence following the regulation of the Dutch market, and nowadays faces off against returning giants including Kindred Group and its Unibet brand. Elsewhere, the Dutch operator sanctioned a new collective labour agreement with its staff via the FNV and De Unie trade unions which will see wages increase by 10.1% over the next 18 months (until March 2025), with an additional monthly €60 stipend handed to employees.

48. Française des Jeux 

French lottery operator Française des Jeux (FDJ) had yet another busy 12 months in terms of M&A. In November, the firm completed the €350m acquisition of Premier Lotteries Ireland from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. It holds the exclusive rights to run the Irish National Lottery until 2034 and marks FDJ’s first foray into operating a lottery outside of France. FDJ also finalised its €175m acquisition of horseracing betting site ZEturf in September, following approval from the French Competition Authority. Then, in October, it was announced turnover for the first nine months of the year amounted to €1.88bn, an increase of 4% when compared to the same period in 2022. Excluding lottery games Amigo and EuroMillions, turnover rose 5% YoY. However, lottery turnover slid 1.2% to €1.4bn. FDJ also furthered its commitment to diversity and inclusion in 2023 by partnering with the LGBT+ group L’Autre Cercle to help strengthen its equal opportunities policy.

47. Gaming1

Ardent Group-owned Gaming1 maintains its place among the EGR Power 50, this year moving two spots higher. As the leading operator in Belgium thanks to flagship brand Circus, the Liège-founded gaming and sports betting firm is on an upward trajectory from a business point of view, with significant increases in NGR and operating profit for the trailing 12 months to 30 June, according to confidential details shared with BDO. This is despite Belgium imposing a weekly deposit limit of €200 on players, a threshold that was slashed from €500 towards the end of 2022. On top of this, there is the gambling ad ban across TV, radio, print media and public spaces, which came into force from 1 July this year. In an interview with EGR just prior to the ban, Gaming1 CEO Emmanuel Mewissen blasted it as “a very bad political decision” and added: “We agree with the desire to limit excessive advertising, but we must ensure that the decision does not push players into the illegal industry.” Sticking with marketing, Circus scooped the accolade for best use of brand ambassador at the EGR M&I Awards earlier in June for its partnership with retired Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho.

46. Betfred 

One of only a handful of operators led by a woman – CEO Joanne Whittaker – Betfred jumps four places to the 46th spot. Perhaps the most significant announcement this year from the Warrington-based bookmaker was the appointment of Kresimir Spajic in July, a former Hard Rock International SVP with vast igaming experience in America under his belt, as US CEO. Elsewhere, Betfred launched a new insights hub to replace its legacy digital blog. The portal includes analysis and previews of sporting events, educational guides on safer gambling, and content produced exclusively for Betfred TV. Meanwhile, Betfred also penned a three-year extension to its current sponsorship deal with the Rugby League, representing a 25% increase on the previous agreement. On a less positive note, the operator found itself in hot water after a GC investigation identified failings in its anti-money laundering and social responsibility policies between 2021 and 2022. A £3.25m settlement was agreed with Britain’s gambling regulator in July. And, at the beginning of November, it was revealed the operator had been reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority over a series of tweets involving former world champion boxer Anthony Joshua.

45. Novibet 

Greek operator Novibet smashes into the Power 50 for the first time, landing in 45th place, following 12 months full of senior hires and market launches. The firm added to 2022’s additions of Christoforos Bozatzidis as CMO and Lambros Sialmas as COO with two new C-suite hires in 2023. Former HSBC director Al Alevizakos was drafted in as CFO, while ex-Ernst & Young head Alexandros Pappas was named chief experience officer in July as Novibet moved to provide support to long-term CEO George Athanasopoulos. Alongside beefing up its top team, Novibet also expanded into five new markets across the Americas during 2023. Launches across Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Canada were complemented with localised marketing plans which included front-of-shirt sponsorship deals with leading football clubs in the region, including Brazilian Série A outfit Fortaleza. Elsewhere on the marketing front, the group named former Juventus and Barcelona star Arturo Vidal as a global brand ambassador in April. Improvements across the business’ sports betting and casino offering has also seemingly resonated well with customers, including the addition of new live tables and a revamped UX.

44. LiveScore Group

LiveScore Group, which encompasses its media arm LiveScore and B2C brands Livescore Bet and Virgin Bet, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2023. Speaking to CEO Sam Sadi on celebrations and plans for the year ahead, EGR was told the firm is plotting an expansion into South Africa in 2024 or early 2025. In November, LiveScore announced the acquisition of South Africa-based software development firm Wonderlabz for an undisclosed fee, boosting its in-house tech capabilities. The transaction meant the group took its holding in the supplier from 25% to 100%, with more than 100 staff added to its total headcount. LiveScore Group also made several hires this year, including former William Hill head Jan Lafferty to become head of marketing and business insights, as well as ex-Catena Media exec Thomas Rooney as head of convergence. The company also promoted four heads of department as it looked to build on its success in 2022. Alex Cottee became head of PR, Joe Nelson was named head of social content, Joe Clegg was appointed head of legal, and Jim Munro became head of editorial content.

43. KingMakers 

Two hires, one in May and one in September, meant KingMakers – the parent company of BetKing – bolstered its ranks this year. Ronnie Whelan joined the Africa-facing firm as its new COO, leaving Flutter after 16 months as its chief experience officer. Four months later, Steven Monaghan arrived as KingMakers’ head of marketing having left Sky Betting & Gaming in August 2022. A further addition, in November, saw Carlos Jimenez join as vice-president of product. Meanwhile, the operator entered a partnership with broadcasting firm MultiChoice to boost its reach in South Africa, and made a deal with EveryMatrix to power its new online casino for BetKing. KingMakers has just soft-launched SuperSportBet in South Africa to challenge local firms like Hollywoodbets and Betway. Finally, two brand-new offices were opened recently, one in Dubai and one in Lagos, Nigeria.

42. 12Bet 

Another of the EGR Power 50 that tends to fly under the radar, 12Bet celebrated its 15-year anniversary in March 2023 and used the occasion to announce its selection of Betradar, Sportradar’s data division, to power its new online sportsbook. A spokesperson for the operator said: “With the experience of Betradar, we have improved our offerings and are looking forward to providing an unrivalled experience to end-users. We are excited to celebrate our 15th anniversary and have many offerings in the pipeline.” 12Bet followed this deal up by adding Leicester City to its partnership ranks in August, becoming the Championship club’s official betting partner for the 2023-24 season. October saw the firm sign up as Leeds United’s official betting partner in Asia, where it will be provided with geo-targeted assets and other promotional material. Financially, key metrics shared privately with BDO show a fall in NGR but a rise in EBITDA and operating profit.

41. ZEAL Network

ZEAL Network, which runs the LOTTO24 and Tipp24 brands, has had a reasonably successful year.Its most recent results, for the first nine months of 2023, found that revenue increased nearly 16% YoY to €86m and EBITDA rose 5.3% YoY to €23.2m. These buoyant results were attributed to astute strategic decisions by the firm. ZEAL started the year by investing in free-to-play startup Circl, a real-time sweepstakes app, via its investment arm ZEAL Ventures.

The undisclosed investment will see Circl bolstered with financial backing by ZEAL, as well as the German lottery firm giving continuous support to the startup. ZEAL has also undergone a number of board and C-level changes this year. Firstly, the operator appointed Sebastian Bielski asits new CFO in October, who was also added to the board, replacing CFO Jonas Mattsson who took on the role of special adviser to ZEAL until early 2024. The company now employs more than 180 staff across 24 countries.

40. Bet9ja 

Widely considered to be the largest bookmaker in Nigeria, Bet9ja has become a household name in Africa’s most populous country over the past decade since it was founded in 2013 by Ayo Ojuroye (CEO) and Kunle Soname (chairman). Indeed, the numbers speak for themselves: according to web traffic tracking tool Similarweb, Bet9ja.com attracted almost 64 million visits in the past 28 days, or 2.3 million on average per day, at the time of writing. Around 89% of this traffic was via mobile devices. Bet9ja, which is headquartered in Lagos and licensed by the Lagos State Lotteries Board, inked a deal earlier this year to become a sponsor of the Amapro Football Championship, an annual football tournament in Nigeria that aims to spot new talent across the country. Meanwhile, the operator also recently launched the Bet9ja Foundation, a charitable organisation with a core mission to tackle critical challenges facing Nigeria. This includes healthcare, education, sports development, community projects as well as youth development.

39. GGPoker

Sweeping into the EGR Power 50 as a new entrant, GGPoker, operated by NSUS Ltd, has mushroomed since its launch in 2017 into a giant of that often-neglected vertical these days: online poker. If we ignore tournament poker and focus on cash games, traffic monitoring resource PokerScout shows that, at the time of writing, GGPoker has a seven-day average of 9,800 players battling it out at the virtual tables, far outstripping the industry’s previous leader, PokerStars, with its seven-day average of 2,500 players. Part of Asia’s largest poker network, GGPoker is credited with having arguably the best software around – a critical factor in any poker site’s success. It has always been at the forefront of innovation, too, be it allowing players to peel the last card slowly, expected value cash-out during all-in situations, or its in-built staking feature allowing users to sell their action. GGPoker was also one of the first sites to introduce the now-ubiquitous ‘mystery bounty’ tournament format. In addition, its impressive roster of sponsored poker pros and close ties to the World Series of Poker have helped promote and build trust in the brand. This, in turn, has swelled liquidity, the lifeblood of any digital poker offering.

38. SkillOnNet

The company behind bingo-led gaming brand PlayOJO has been getting used to standing on stage to collect awards this year. In June, PlayOJO won campaign of the year for its ‘Outrageous Ladies’ launch at the EGR M&I Awards 2023. It also took silver in the brand of the year category. Later, in October, PlayOJO received two accolades at the EGR Operator Awards, including gold for slots operator and mobile casino product, as well as a silver in the casino operator category. In July, PlayOJO released the ‘It’s Alive’ campaign, developed by London-based creative agency Isobel, in the UK. A month later, in August, the PlayOJO Live Casino Show debuted on Channel 5 in the UK. Aired every night from 1am to 3am, it features a stream of its live roulette table. Meanwhile, in August, SkillOnNet’s PlayUZU went live in Buenos Aires after receiving a licence from the city’s gambling authority. Finally, in November, PlayOJO launched its Safer Gambling Week ad campaign entitled ‘Too much of anything can be bad’, which demonstrates amusing examples of when excess gives way to egregious experiences.

37. ATG

Swedish horseracing operator AB Trav och Galopp (ATG) saw NGR for the first nine months of the year remain flat compared with the same period in 2022 at SEK3.9bn. Operating profit of SEK1.2bn, which gave an operating margin of 28%, was also almost identical to the first nine months in 2022. In a similar fashion, active customers were stable at 1.3 million. ATG said that as of Q3, horseracing betting accounted for 79% of NGR from its operations in Sweden, with sports (11%) and casino (10%) making up the rest. In Denmark, where ATG is also licensed, casino games dominated at 51% of NGR. Horseracing betting was 33% and sports betting 16%.

There was change at the top in Q2 when Peter Norman was installed as chairman, succeeding Bo Netz, as well as the appointment of two new board members in Eva Listi and Marie Osberg. In July, ATG published details on the effectiveness of safer gambling interactions with customers as part of an initiative with Kindred Group and Svenska Spel to be more transparent around RG. The firm said it had contacted 1.9% of its customers who it believed were showing signs of problematic gambling behaviour. Of this, 57.3% reduced their activity following the interventions.

36. Paf  

The biggest move the Åland Islands-based operator made in 2023 was to snap up 888’s Latvian operation for €28.3m. Paf paid an initial fee of €24m for the business, which operates with a local licence using the William Hill and Mr Green brands. The deal also includes an extra potential earn-out of up to €4.3m and will become available in 2024 when the group’s 2023 audited financials are completed. As per the agreement, Paf received a brand licence from 888 to use the Mr Green and William Hill brands in the Baltic country for a “limited period”. 888 revealed the Latvian business generated NGR of £9.1m and £2.5m in EBITDA in 2022. In a major RG push, Paf also significantly reduced its annual loss limits for players in the summer, which included lowering its mandatory loss limit for those aged over 25 from €20,000 to €17,500. The limit for 18- to 19-year-olds plunged 82% from €10,000 to €1,800, while the €10,000 yearly cap for 20- to 24-year-olds remained the same.

35. Svenska Spel  

Svenska Spel will be under new leadership by the next time the Power 50 rolls around after CEO and president Patrik Hofbauer confirmed he will leave the business on 31 January 2024. Hofbauer will head to telecoms firm Telia after originally joining Svenska Spel in December 2018. The state-owned lottery, casino and sports betting operator is on the hunt for a replacement at the time of writing. As calls continue for the group to be divested, with the Moderate Party-led government having committed to the process in July, the firm continues to hold its own in the Swedish market. NGR for the first nine months of 2023 landed at SEK5.9bn, while operating profit increased 2% YoY to SEK1.8bn. Elsewhere, a long-term sportsbook deal with Kambi was agreed in October. Kambi will supply Svenska Spel with its full sports betting solution across online and retail, with Kambi subsidiary Shape Games providing Svenska Spel’s new sportsbook front-end.

34. Rank Interactive

Despite the macroeconomic environment in the UK somewhat hurting Maidenhead-headquartered Rank Group, the operator continues to find itself a home in the EGR Power 50. It’s a business that spans retail and digital, with operations in the UK and Spain, and potentially soon in Portugal. On the digital side, the completion of its tech migration last year is what the company hopes will give it a leading edge in the coming years. To that point, revenue from the firm’s digital operations increased 7% YoY to £51.8m during fiscal Q1, or the three months to 30 September. UK digital revenue rose 6% YoY while Spanish operations returned a 15% YoY growth. Rank Group CEO John O’Reilly recently told EGR that continued improvements would be made to the firm’s digital offering to capitalise on the growth opportunity. There was a slew of new appointments at the operator during the year, with former Rank Interactive MD Jon Martin named the company’s first-ever COO in May. Rank then moved for William Hill head Andrew Peat to replace Martin while former Entain exec Sam Allanson was drafted in as CFO for the digital arm in July, replacing Janice Duncan who joined online casino business Casumo.

33. Caesars Digital 

Caesars Digital’s 2023 has been one of growth and renewal, with the operator expanding its online sportsbook offering to Maryland, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Kentucky and, most recently, Maine. In addition, Caesars has added a new racebook offering to support its digital business, which has since expanded to 16 US states following its launch in 2022. Building on positive results in digital, Caesars has steadily grown its online operations while at the same time flipping its adjusted EBITDA losses from a negative $38m in Q3 2022 to a positive $2m in Q3 2023. In August, Caesars concluded the migration of the William Hill US sportsbook app onto the firm’s Liberty tech stack, unifying its own Caesars sportsbook with the Nevada native app on a single platform. Caesars also doubled down on igaming with the launch of an in-house-developed Caesars Palace online casino app in four US states and Ontario, running in parallel with its existing igaming offerings. At a financial level, Caesars’ prior trajectory of growth in digital continued into Q3, albeit much more modestly with a 1.4% YoY NGR increase, although NGR for the first nine months of 2023 surged 115% to $669m.

32. Rush Street Interactive 

Amid a sea of operator contraction and M&A over the past year, Rush Street Interactive (RSI) has held steady, expanding its online sports betting presence into Ohio while continuing to build out its prized igaming vertical. The latter included the April 2023 rollout of a high-profile slot tournament in Michigan featuring a guarantee of $1m in bonus money. During that period, RSI also traded one state lottery partnership for another, announcing a wind down of its deal with the Connecticut Lottery Corporation (CLC) in late March, which has since been awarded to Fanatics Betting & Gaming, before being selected by the Delaware Lottery in August as the vendor for the state’s online gaming business. That preceded the unveiling of a major product upgrade on the sports betting side ahead of the 2023 NFL season. Named ‘Prop Central’, the player prop hub reimagined the traditional OSB interface, creating a more streamlined user experience across RSI’s BetRivers and PlaySugarHouse brands.

31. SKS365  

The battle to acquire SKS365, the firm behind Planetwin365, was finally won by fellow Italian operator Lottomatica in November, following earlier interest from rivals Playtech and Flutter Entertainment. Through the acquisition, SKS365 brings with it a market share of 9.6% in online sports and 6.4% in igaming. The omnichannel operator, which boasts 600,000 registered online users and a retail network of around 1,000 betting shops, is expected to generate €74m in EBITDA in FY 2023, comprising 70% online and 30% retail sports betting. The transaction, which is expected to complete in H1 2024, will allow SKS365 to access new opportunities, develop synergies, expand its product and service offerings, and benefit from new skills and resources. Elsewhere, SKS365 was recognised as a Top Employer 2023 in Italy for its HR and people policies at the start of the year. As part of its ESG strategy, the operator launched its PlanetGreen365 corporate sustainability programme in November and also champions its WORK.LIVE.PLAY philosophy for staff wellbeing.