Live betting sees Betsson revenues rise 22%
Sports book boosts Swedish operator's Q3 revenue figures.
Betsson saw its revenue increase 22% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, despite marketing costs rising by 19%.
In its third quarter results released earlier today, Betsson said group revenue had gone up 22% compared to the same period in 2009, rising to SEK 385.1m (£36.4m) from SEK 316.7m (£30m), while gross profit increased 19% year-on-year from SEK 253m to SEK 301.6m.
Betsson’s sports book had an extremely successful third quarter, rising 91% year-on-year from SEK 634.9m to SEK 1,215.7m. Much of this was due to live betting, which leapt 278% to SEK 733.7m from SEK 194.2m. Casino profit remained stagnant from last year, the company said, but still encompassed 57.7% of the profit for the third quarter.
Marketing costs rose 19% to SEK 124m compared to SEK 104.4m in Q3 2009, although CEO Pontus Lindwall did not elaborate on why this had happened other than to say that a change in marketing strategy for each vertical would depend on each territory and market penetration.
In terms of territories, gross profit in the Nordic region decreased 7%, largely due to a 25% decline in poker. Gross profit in the EU outside its home territories fell 6%, which Lindwall attributed to Betsson having shut down its small French operation and decreased activity in Germany “due to uncertainty” surrounding legislation there. “It has been a slow quarter in some European markets,” Lindwall added.
Lindwall said that the company was in “late stage discussions” on B2B deals and that these were with a “broad spectrum” of companies from “smaller companies with a history of internet gaming who want to run on our platform, to big companies – sometimes state-owned companies “ who are looking to get into internet gaming”.
On new markets Betsson’s chief executive said that entering the Italian market was a “possibility”, while on Denmark he said that he did not think currently proposed Danish regulation was viable.
eGaming Review reported in September that Betsson had delayed its decision on whether to apply for a Danish licence, until uncertainty had been removed over a proposed ‘black period’ requiring operators to cease activity in the market until approved .
Lindwall admitted, however that the company had “some potential partners in the US” and that it had “people on the ground in Asia, talking about what we can do there”.
Recent legislation in Finland has outlawed foreign gaming companies from taking part in any marketing preventing Betsson from marketing its products there. Lindwall described Finnish gambling reform as a “very unmodern and scary way of thinking”.
At the European iGaming Congress (EiG) in Copenhagen last week, Lindwall affirmed that expansion into newly regulated markets was key for growth, but only where it was possible to make a profit.
Betsson have been shortlisted in three categories for the EGR Operator Awards 2010: socially responsible, operator and European sports betting.
Read about the potential of a Betsson merger in Dawid Myslinksi’s blog.