Unibet to hand in French licences after EurosportBet acquisition
Swedish business will operate from EurosportBet's three licences before beginning a gradual rebranding process in the New Year.
Unibet will return its French licences to regulatory authority ARJEL following its purchase yesterday of EurosportBet parent Solfive SAS, chief executive Henrik Tjärnström has told eGaming Review.
EurosportBet already holds accreditation for poker, sports betting and horse betting, so the licence reapplication necessitated by the £4.8m takeover will see Unibet seek clearance to continue operating under the existing licences held by the French operator.
“We need to do the licence application for the change of ownership to be fully cleared by ARJEL, and we are expecting approval from them by mid-December,” explained Tjärnström (pictured), adding that “EurosportBet are fully operational on their licences so we can hand back our own.”
Despite Unibet never using the French licences which it obtained in 2010, its CEO believes that the company’s previous experience in the market, dating back more than five years, will be to its benefit. “We still get a lot of contact from our historical database and we expect this will increase now that we’re back. We had a strong brand in all products before, so we’re not dependent on the strength of EurosportBet’s brand,” Tjärnström revealed.
The operator was deterred from re-entering the market last year due to high tax rates with Tjärnström forced to defend zero revenues from the market last August before further delaying the company’s re-entry in March this year.
However with the regulatory status quo in France described by the Unibet CEO as “restrictive”, he does not anticipate an extensive marketing outlay until the situation improves. “We are expecting to break even in the French market until terms and conditions there improve, but there is no certainty with regards to when that’s going to happen,” he said, adding “France is a really important market and we have a strong position with a strong database, and we are investing to get back into the market in the most efficient way.
“We are convinced that France will eventually follow a pattern similar to Italy, where it became clear that the market was not working, or was not going to work with penalising tax rates leading to the risk of a potentially large black market,” Tjärnström suggested.
Part of the takeover agreement “ which Tjärnström expects to be ratified by ARJEL by mid-December “ is that the Swedish operator hands back the Eurosport brand name to its owner by mid-February. Consequently, while the company will continue to serve customers from the EurosportBet brand for the time being, in order to “hit the ground running” in his words, there will follow “a gradual six to eight week process” to re-introduce the Unibet brand to the market.
The poker product will remain on the Ongame network “ bwin.party promising shareholders it will be sold before the end of the year “ with the EurosportPoker players boosted by the introduction of Unibet’s existing database. The Swedish operator will retain the SPS sports betting platform, while also bringing in expertise from its B2B arm Kambi.
Tjärnström said: “The process for us will be that EurosportBet operation as it is will continue to operate and that we will be rebranding… and then we will try to bring our old customers over. What we can convert from our own database will be quite incremental, but then waiting for rebranding exercise before doing that.”
He added that, aside from the total £8.1m expenditure associated with the acquisition itself, the cost of Unibet becoming operational in France would be minimal.
“We can limit our own expenditure on things like IT development as EurosportBet are fully operational, and we can also limit costs by reducing the group’s number of licences from 6 to 3,” he said.
While France remains the focus for the immediate future, and a licence application in Denmark is imminent, Unibet will not apply for a Spanish licence in the coming days, however it may apply for one in the future.
Unibet was not among the 16 operators preparing to go in for the first wave of licences in the EU country, but Tjärnström added “It is not something we are ruling out.”