Unibet to acquire Bet24
13.5m acquisition aimed at strengthening operator's position in Danish market.
Unibet has announced an agreement to acquire rival operator Bet24 from Modern Times Group (MTG) as it looks to challenge Danske Spil’s market-leading position in Denmark. Bet24’s business and acquired assets are to be acquired for a total of 13.5m (£11.25m), payable in cash.
CEO Henrik Tjarnström (pictured) told eGR that the deal would allow Unibet to further strengthen its position in the market: “We have had quite a strong position in Denmark, and over the last year we’ve been building up this position, so we were one of the top three operators by the time the market opened in January, and can become a major challenge to the Danish monopoly.
“Danske Spil would probably be up there as the number one operator in Denmark, but this deal allows us to close the gap on them. It represented the best value for money, and also gives us better scale to grow in in the territory,” he explained.
Commenting on the deal, MTG CEO and president Hans-Holger Albrecht revealed that his company was looking to concentrate on its media operations: “The sale of Bet24 is in line with our focus on our core broadcasting operations. We have developed and expanded our online betting and gaming businesses over the past seven years as the industry has become more and more competitive.
“Unibet is one of the largest and most established players in the European market and therefore provides an attractive platform for Bet24 customers and for the further development of the business,” Albrecht said.
Under the terms of the deal around half of the company’s Malta-based staff “ 45 employees “ will be transferred into Unibet’s Maltese operations, though Tjarnström admitted that some of the company’s Danish staff could be retained:
“We will have discussions with MTG to evaluate who would fit into our organisation and we could potentially take over some of those people as well, but long-term we don’t see the need for the full number of employees, as we have staff and fully functional platforms in all of the markets Bet24 are active in so in reality we won’t need that many extra resources to take over these assets.”
Unibet will ultimately rebrand the Bet24 site and migrate the customers to its own platform.
“Having one brand as opposed to two is more beneficial overall to us, and our bottom line rather than running two brands in parallel,” Tjarnström explained.
The transaction is expected to be completed, subject to regulatory clearance, before the end of Q2 this year. It follows Unibet’s strategic acquisitions in France, where it acquired EurosportBET owner Solfive in November last year, and Australian operator Betchoice for AU$20m in February.