[READ] SiGMA Magazine: Turning Gaming On
2020 has been an unprecedented year of immense challenges for everyone – we’ve seen a migration to online communications and behaviour. How has that affected gaming?
SiGMA TV visited Jesper Svensson – CEO of Betsson Group – at their stylish and recently refurbished office in Malta to look into how the company approached and thrived in the midst of the unprecedented changes of 2020!
I think gaming, and what we work with on a digital side, have got a boost out of that. It was a very challenging time for a lot of people. With the lockdowns we’ve seen in several countries, you had people sitting at home and craving entertainment – and we are an entertainment industry – and we have been able to cater for that.
We have seen that the transition from offline gaming to online gaming took place at a quicker pace than before. All in all, digital gaming has had a really good year – I think it’s a testament to the industry, it shows sustainability. It’s an outcome of digitalisation, it’s as simple as that.
This transition was already taking place before Covid – every year, digital gaming was growing at much more rapid rates than offline. Both online and offline have been growing throughout the years and they’re expected to keep growing – it’s an immense growth industry.
From a business point of view, it’s been a good year, and I’m very pleased to be part of an industry and a company that in a tough time, kept delivering good results.
Online gaming is massively regulated – more so than offline gaming. Why is this? The regulation seems to be becoming more and more stringent
The whole industry is under immense scrutiny. We are constantly being audited in regards to what we’re doing
with AML, etc. and that’s a natural part of an online business dealing with money.
The scrutiny comes with that. If you look at digital, it’s much more traceable than it is in the offline world – that can also create a secure environment.
It’s a little bit of a paradox at times, that we are so much more stringently regulated than the offline side, but, that said, offline is also a highly regulated industry.
The reality is that companies like ours have a lot of things in place in order to follow these regulations. We are a listed company on Nasdaq in Stockholm.
We have to conduct our business in a certain way – not just because we’re regulated but because it’s the right thing to do.
In some cases, we do see regulators that take it a bit too far and I think that if you over regulate and limit the customer experience too much, customers could choose to play outside the regulation and thus removing the safe environment that licensed operators offer in terms of responsible gaming
SiGMA Roadshow: Next stop Nigeria
Join us virtually for two engaging hours bursting with insightful conference content and new business opportunities. These unique, interactive, virtual mini-conferences will take place in a different country every month. The stop of next month will be Nigeria, join the conversation. We’ll be covering various topics from the future of the African market to the evolution of tech in gaming. Register now!
