Unibet chief Nylander's B2B strategy revealed
Unibet chief executive Petter Nylander has revealed the strategy behind the Swedish bookmaker's new business-to-business (B2B) division, uncovering the types of clients the business will pursue and what it sees as its market niche and unique selling points...
UNIBET chief executive Petter Nylander has revealed the strategy behind the Swedish bookmaker’s new business-to-business (B2B) division.
As reported on EGRmagazine.com yesterday, Unibet has launched a business-to-business (B2B) arm and signed a deal to provide a sports betting platform for à lands Penningautomatförening or Paf, the gambling company of Finland’s semi-autonomous à land islands.
The unit will focus on a small number of “high-quality, high-end, larger clients rather than merely white-label deals,” Nylander (pictured) told EGRmagazine.com, which are likely to be former monopolies but could also be “larger private operators with their own licences”.
Despite being only the latest of a string of operators to move into the B2B space including 888, Betsson, Bwin, Paddy Power and PartyGaming, Nylander said that numerous opportunities for Unibet to win B2B contracts remain, with most B2C operators that have entered the B2B space so far tending to focus on casino and poker contracts over sportsbook ones.
Within the sportsbook B2B market, he continued, Unibet will offer both software and risk management, helping to distinguish Unibet from rivals such as Paddy Power’s new B2B division, which signed a deal to supply French monopoly PMU with risk management last month but remains on the Orbis platform.
“Unlike all but four or five competitors, we can offer operators everything under one contract,” he said.
Nylander said that opportunities stemmed from “re-regulation, which has left several operators a decade behind in technology”.
Former monopolies have evolved their positions “from seeing private companies as ‘the enemy’ to realising that they can be helpful after having lost a decade by being in incumbent positions”, he said, citing the recent B2B tie between PartyGaming and Danish monopoly Danske Spil as an example.
Nylander said the company is open to approaches from operators outside its core European market.
Asked whether the company had waited too long to launch its B2B arm and missed out on opportunities in France, Nylander said: “Of course we would love to provide PMU with services, but it is still early days.”
The B2B arm will be a company within Unibet rather than working as a separate division such as 888’s Dragonfish or Betsson’s Betsson Business Solutions B2B arms, but did not rule out launching a separate division later, saying that the business is “still investigating how to maximise shareholder value should the business go further than that”.
“We will be as transparent as we can and try to separate B2B and Unibet.com figures”, he said.
For more on operators entering the B2B space, see the cover feature in the forthcoming issue of eGaming Review.
eGaming Review has launched new B2B Awards – click here for details.