Swedish online gambling operator Betsson AB is trimming around 160 staff as part of an efficiency push.
On Monday, Betsson announced that it had decided to “restructure and streamline the organization with the ambition to make it more efficient.” The announcement suggested this would involve reducing Betsson’s total staff headcount by approximately 160 positions.
The Times of Malta reported that 130 of the affected staff are based out of Betsson’s Malta offices, and that pink slips were being issued on Monday. Prior to the cull, Betsson’s total Malta payroll was over 1,100 staffers.
The company expects annual savings stemming from this restructuring will come in between SEK50-60m (US$6.3m-7.6m). The short-term costs of this move will be revealed when Betsson delivers its Q1 2018 earnings report.
Betsson CEO Pontus Lindwall claimed the company that emerges on the other side of this restructuring “will be more streamlined with clearer responsibilities, which I believe will improve its efficiency over time.”
Betsson reported a double-digit earnings decline in its Q3 financial report card, despite revenue rising 11% year-on-year. The company blamed the decline on currency fluctuations in its Turkish-facing operations, a slower than expected turnaround of its UK-facing NetPlay brand, and increased taxes at its Spanish-licensed operations.
Betsson underwent a senior management shakeup late last year when CEO Ulrik Bengtsson abruptly left the company, reportedly over disagreements over the company’s long-term priorities. Bengtsson reportedly differed with Betsson’s board regarding the company’s operations in Turkey and its acquisition strategy.
Bengtsson was followed out the door in December by chief technology officer Stefan Nordin and chief product officer Jörg Malang. That same month, the company’s Malta-based subsidiary named Jesper Svensson its permanent CEO.
SWEDISH OPERATORS WANT ANSWERS RE SVENSKA SPEL’S FUTURE
In other Swedish online gambling news, the Branschföreningen för Onlinespel (BOS) association of Swedish-facing online operators want the Swedish government to clarify its plans for the state-owned Svenska Spel gaming monopoly following the market’s planned liberalization on January 1, 2019.
The government has previously hinted that Svenska Spel would be split up, with one part retaining its monopoly over land-based gaming, while another branch would handle online gambling operations. This latter branch could ultimately be sold off to private interests. However, the current draft of the Swedish online gambling legislation is sparse on the details of this split.
This vagueness has the BOS wondering if the two halves of Svenska Spel would be free to share data, including customer databases. BOS general secretary Gustaf Hoffstedt suggests this would grant Svenska Spel’s online division an unfair advantage over international gambling operators who are only now being considered for Swedish licenses.
Should the government fail to satisfy these concerns to the BOS’ members satisfaction, Hoffstedt warned that the issue was likely to end up in court, which could potentially delay the liberalized market’s scheduled opening.
Svenska Spel’s counterargument is that private operators already built up significant player databases of their own during their many years of serving Swedish punters without local authorization, and thus everything’s fair in love, war and gambling.
