Swedish gambling operator Betsson saw revenue rise 19% to SEK 579.2m (US $89m) in the second quarter of 2013. Operating income rose 26% to SEK 137.8m as the number of registered customers rose a full million to 6.4m, while the amount those customers deposited rose from SEK 1.1b to SEK 1.45b. Betsson’s casino channel recorded gross profit of SEK 316m, representing 66% of the company’s total gross profit, down from 74% in Q2 2012. Poker profits slipped from SEK 25.4m last year to SEK 22m, while profits from other products nearly doubled to SEK 18.1m.
Sports betting turnover rose 26% to SEK 3.45b, of which live betting accounted for SEK 2.39b (also up 26%). Sports betting margins rose from 4.6% to 6.5%, helping boost sportsbook gross profit 83% to SEK 126.6m, good for 26% of Betsson’s overall profit. Betsson CEO Magnus Silfverberg cited his company’s successful migration of all its products to a common platform during Q2 as having strengthened Betsson’s mobile offering, which accounted for 9% of total revenue, up from 8% in Q1.
Swedish state gambling operator Svenska Spel reported more modest improvements in the first six months of the year, with revenue up a mere 0.1% to SEK 4.78b and net income up 4.2% to SEK 2.3b. Revenue at Svenska Spel’s sports and lotteries division rose 3.1%, while Casino Cosmopol earnings improved by 0.9%, and revenues at the Vegas VLT operations fell 9.5%. In what has become something of a tradition, CEO Lennart Käll used his earnings report card to badger Swedish authorities to crack down on “aggressive advertising” by “a record number” of international online operators targeting Swedish punters.
