The 10 most influential online gambling people this decade: 9 & 10
Alun Bowden is back with two more entrants on his look back at the last ten years of the online gambling sector
10. Joachim Baca
Company: bwin/Tipico
Reason: Germany
This feels very harsh on Jan Bolz, Tipico’s CEO for half the decade, and the man who led the company from an underperforming asset to the German market leader in both retail and online. In truth he should probably share this place on the list. But nobody said this was fair and balanced, and in many ways the progress Tipico has made since Baca took over in 2016 following the CVC majority acquisition is what has really made the industry sit up and take notice.
Baca has a long history in the sector, and the German market in particular, as the COO of bwin through the good times, pre bwin.party merger and some of the bad, post bwin.party merger. He as much as anyone has been a part of making the German market the perceived last remaining online gambling goldmine in Europe today. And his time at the top of Tipico has been one where the firm has grown at a terrifying rate and become one of the true power players in the sector.
Is he responsible for Germany becoming the hottest market in online gambling? No. But he’s done as much as anyone to help build the hype, and build-up a business everyone is talking about. You could argue the Tipico model, strong local market dominance across retail and online, with expanding reach into near at-hand international markets, is the one the UK giants “invented” in the early 2000s or that Fortuna or Superbet are better examples and you might be right. But you’re probably not, and the fact Tipico is the business most people look at enviously at the end of the decade says a lot about their success in the previous one.
9. Per Eriksson
NetEnt
Reason: Games, games, games
In the beginning of the decade there was Microgaming. And then there was Playtech. And it was….well it was fine really. But that over reliance on core suppliers quickly became a pain point for operators. There was a need for more. Not just more content, but more suppliers and more competition. And sure enough, as in all good capitalist fairy tales, where there is a demand there soon comes a supply.
From the start of the decade to now, there has been a huge shift in the way game content is supplied to operators. And the move from a dependence on a couple of major suppliers to the sprawling game content supply network we have now is not entirely unconnected to the rise of NetEnt in the early part of the decade. As the firm itself noted in 2012: “Operators are no longer as interested in signing exclusive agreements with one game supplier.”
Per Eriksson, former NetEnt CEO
Far from the all-in-one model of Playtech and their ilk, NetEnt was all about the games. Slick, modern slots games that appealed initially to a Nordic audience but then rapidly spread across the continent. The classic model was high RTP and low variance games like Starburst, but really it was more about the use of graphics and sound and a willingness to innovate that helped push others to follow and take it even further, ultimately leaving NetEnt looking a bit like yesterday’s man.
But there is no doubt they impact they had on the online casino sector and that they helped pave the way for the RGS-led supply model of today. And through it all Per Eriksson was the man at the top, only stepping down in 2018 when perhaps the market had begun to once more take a big shift in direction. But you can’t deny his or NetEnt’s impact, and what came next is maybe one for next decade’s list.