Entain: Esports remains a “big opportunity” despite Unikrn B2C shuttering
CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen and CFO Rob Wood champion esports business as they confirm plans to add capabilities to existing in-house brands
Entain’s top management have lifted the lid on its decision to shutter its B2C esports betting brand Unikrn.
Speaking on an analyst call following the company’s Q3 trading update, CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen and CFO Rob Wood detailed the difficulties of maintaining and expanding a B2C esports-only brand.
Last month, Entain confirmed it would reposition Unikrn less than a year after soft launching in Brazil and Canada, excluding Ontario.
Entain purchased the operator for an undisclosed sum in August 2021, and had earmarked a further £50m of investment for the division.
However, as Nygaard-Andersen and Wood confirmed, the costs associated with supporting Unikrn ultimately did not add up.
Nygaard-Andersen said: “We’re really excited about esports. But rolling out a direct-to-consumer brand globally, we knew that would be really capital-intensive and it will take a long time before that business would become profitable.
“So, there we’ve pivoted. The products that Unikrn has built are brilliant and built for gamers, [but] we’ll take that product capability and we’ll use it for our existing brands,” she added.
Wood also took the opportunity to talk up the esports side of the business, noting the vertical had added to product mixes at other major operators.
However, he said the future would lie in redeploying the tech and capabilities into Entain’s existing brands.
Wood said: “When you step back and look at the percentage that esports represents today as a mix of our total revenue, and you compare that to other operators such as Pinnacle, bet365 and Betway, there’s a big opportunity out there, and it should be a segment that grows over the next period of time.
“If you’re the operator that has the most extensive markets, the best features, more events to wager on than anywhere else, then that should attract a new audience.
“But doing it for Ladbrokes or bwin or STS saves you the marketing dollars that we were otherwise putting behind Unikrn. So that is where we’ve pulled back, but we still have the esports wagering product and tech teams supplying in-house brands,” he concluded.