Betsson posted an increase of 14 percent in revenues for the three months ended September as they revealed more on their Asian strategy. Revenues hot SEK529.5 million even though operating income dropped off by 21.4 percent to SEK120million. The period saw unusually low sportsbook margin of 5.5 percent (last year 7.6 percent) that is blamed on “unfavorable sports results”. A release from the company also stated that activity levels had been affected by a “technical platform migration” issue related to the integration of recently-acquired business Betsafe.com. It was comments about Far East expansion that were most interesting though
CalvinAyre.com Angelia Ong spoke to the company’s director of Asia, Magnus Grinneback, earlier this year as he spoke of the differences between how things work in Europe and how they do over in China. The patience Grinneback alluded to in that interview is still present now as chief executive Magnus Silfverberg told an analysts’ call that there are “no revenues from China” right now and they “do not expect significant revenues over the next year”. Looking into the furutre he added that “in the longer term it is a very interesting opportunity” for them. Betsson are very different to most of their publicly traded competitors in that they are actually looking at China with covetous eyes and not simply focusing everything on the regulated markets in Europe. Silfverberg also seemed to reveal that licences will be out in the next 18 months.
“We have been told that licences will be coming out in the next year or year-and-a-half, and we are positioning ourselves to get one of those, and doing what we think are the right measures in combination with our partner,” he added. Even if they see nothing now, in the long run they’ll notice this Asian-led approach will pay off significantly.
