EGR Power 50 2022 in numbers
Digital editor Julian Rogers highlights some of the key figures from this year’s rankings of the world’s largest online operators
With EGR having published its comprehensive rundown of the 50 most powerful and influential online gambling companies for 2022, we have picked out some of the key takeaways.
11
This year’s highest climber – soaring 11 places to 19th spot – is Kaizen Gaming. The 10-year-old Greek firm behind brands Betano and Stoiximan has been on a tear these past few years, culminating in it being crowned operator of the year at the EGR Operator Awards 2022 in London in October. Kaizen also scooped sports betting operator of the year, with judges praising the company’s ability to secure a podium position in a number of key markets. Becoming the first sports betting operator to partner with FIFA for a World Cup – Qatar 2022 – was a coup for the business and CEO George Daskalakis.
4
888 is catapulted up to fourth position (seventh last year) due to the “transformational” acquisition of William Hill International (all Hills’ non-US assets and Mr Green) from Caesars Entertainment for £1.95bn. (Spoiler alert: William Hill is no longer in the Power 50 as a standalone company.) Now comes the massive tech integration, as 888 CEO Itai Pazner discussed with EGR following the firm’s recent Capital Markets Day, as the expanded group looks to build on William Hill’s heritage brand and its strong position in Spain and Italy, as well as its 1,350 shops dotted around the UK. 888’s foray into four African markets via a joint venture known as 888Africa was highlight of the year.
20
Every year, EGR calls on the services of accountancy and business advisory firm BDO to assist with the assessing of the financial performance of privately owned operators. BDO also supplies its own graphs and tables to provide a visual representation of how firms have performed over the past 12 months. One of the charts showed that net gaming revenue (NGR) rose 20% in 2022 to just shy of £30bn. This increase compared with a 19% and 9% rise in 2021 and 2020, respectively. This all resulted in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2017 of 17%.
6
Making its debut in the top 10 – at sixth spot – is Super Group, the parent company of Betway and multi-brand online casino Spin. The New York-listed operator, which was 15th last year, is our second-highest climber after scoring particularly well with BDO when it came to financial performance. Now that Super Group is a listed company, we can see that NGR for first nine months of the year amounted to €967m, while operational EBITDA was €167m. Ploughing small fortunes (€177m in H1) into marketing and sports sponsorship around the world – including esports – continues to pay dividends for Super Group when it comes to brand awareness of Betway.
7
That was how many new entries we had this year. They are Hong Kong Jockey Club (19th), ComeOn Group (24th), Stake (31st), Kingmakers (45th), LiveScore Group (46th) and Gaming1 (49th). For anyone unfamiliar with these companies, Stake is thought to be the largest crypto gambling site in the world; Kingmakers is the parent company of leading Nigerian bookmaker BetKing; and LiveScore combines its sports media service with LiveScore Bet and Virgin Bet. Meanwhile, ComeOn Group is behind more than a dozen online gaming sites, while Gaming1 is a leading online operator in Belgium. Finally, Hong Kong Jockey Club offers online sports betting to Hong Kongers, which is what it has been judged on for these rankings rather than its mammoth on-track horserace betting.
