A look into Betsson's tech team shake-up

It’s certainly been a period of upheaval for Betsson in recent years in light of a major restructuring and reorganising of its senior management team to ensure the operator is running as efficiently as possible.

At the start of this year, Betsson announced it was hiring Peter Frey, ex-CTO of Sweden’s biggest news outlet Bonnier News, to head up its technology and product teams.

Frey takes over the CTO and CPO roles which had been left vacant by the departures of long-standing CTO Stefan Nordin and CPO Jörg Malang in December 2017.

Frey will work closely with CCO Ronni Hartvig in Malta on technology strategy and operations. Betsson operations CEO Jesper Svensson says the firm has also been strengthening the team around Frey, which includes hiring for new positions such as product directors for its gaming and sports verticals.

The new roles have now been filled with Cíara Nic Liam joining as product director of gaming from William Hill and Svenska Spel’s Joakim Thor as product director for sports.

Betsson said the hires showed its “dedication to hiring the best talent” and continued its journey towards an “even more efficient and business-driven organisation”.

EGR Technology talks to Svensson about the merged CPO and CTO roles and why speed to market is the firm’s number one priority.

Betsson CEO Jesper Svensson

EGR Technology: Can you tell me more about your decision to bring Peter Frey on board?

Jesper Svensson (JS): Peter has an understanding both of the product and technology side. In the past he has been both CPO and CTO so that means he will be able to balance both legs.

That is very important when you make the decision to merge the role for two important departments within the company, you need to make sure the person being brought in to run it has the experience from both sides.

The merger of the two roles was decided before we found Peter. He fits very well with what we were looking for. What is exciting about having this under one umbrella is that one person will be able to fully control and be accountable for the development process and the technology capacity.

In effect there will be a possibility to move around and really make sure that our priorities as a company from the product side of things will also be delivered from the technology side of things when it comes to resource allocation.

Also, to balance what is needed for product and feature development as well as cleaning up technical debt. What we are trying to achieve is higher output and to increase delivery pace.

We are a business-driven organisation so it’s also looking at how the flow of prioritisation is coming through on the product side, how the business is driving this and how we can clearly manage the output side.

EGR Technology: You’re keeping product and tech as separate entities and Peter will be overseeing both of those?

JS: Yes. There are synergies in how that will work but it’s not a merger per se. It’s about making sure there are no gaps between product and tech. We need to make sure they are fitting and working together.

EGR Technology: What will he be working on in terms of projects?

JS: One thing will be speed to market. In a highly competitive industry such as ours, there is great benefit when you are first out with something. In general, to be able to deliver important improvements to the customer experience, that’s what is really driving the company forward.

Product is absolutely key to success. You have to improve the product all the time. When it comes to what I’m really looking for with bringing Peter onboard, it is to increase our speed to market, that’s our number one priority.

New Betsson CTO and CPO Peter Frey

EGR Technology: Has there been a shift in the technology teams to help Peter in his new role?

JS: There is a new supporting structure for this. Below Peter there is a director level on both the product and technology side. Most things aren’t changing within each division because they are still very different tasks. We are forming a management team where both product and technology are part of it.

We have some new positions on the product side where we’ve hired for a product director for gaming and product director for sportsbook. So, we are strengthening up the team around Peter as well. We have technology staff across most of our locations such as Stockholm, Budapest, Malta, Tallinn and Kiev.

EGR Technology: How have you been filling the CPO and CTO roles since they were vacant from 2017?

 JS: People have been holding those roles on an acting basis so they have been internally managed in a very good manner and I must add that they both did a really good job.

EGR Technology: Last year you made a similar move bringing Ronni Hartvig in as CCO, what changes have you seen to operations as a whole since he made that move?

JS: It has been a very good move for us because in the past we were more brand-driven than geographically driven. The way our industry is going with increased regulations and so forth means you have to be very market focused.

With the restructure within our commercial and marketing division, we have seen a significant improvement in our marketing efficiency and how we invest.

That comes down to having very dedicated regional or local teams. I’m pleased with how that has been developing. One important reason why our last three quarterly results have been much better than they were a year ago is due to a combination of the improvements we have made on the product side and how we are managing our marketing efforts.

This has taken us back to higher growth.

EGR Technology: There had been some bad press about the high turnaround of staff at Betsson last year, how have things been since that kicked off?

JS: There were redundancies and unfortunately people had to leave when we reorganised the company. What we have been doing the last year is very much to be seen in our financial results which have improved significantly.

Interest for the company is increasing and applications are coming in at a much higher rate than they used to.

Indeed, during 2018 we received over 24,000 job applications. We have also seen a decrease of 10% in our churn rate, showing that tenure is increasing. We are also becoming very attractive for those who at one point in their career were already at Betsson, left and now want to come back – they are called boomerangs, and last year we had 18 of them. This year we have already had a further 20 boomerangs re-joining Betsson Group.

There’s a real feel-good vibe across Betsson and there’s an element of pride among our people – proud that they work with Betsson Group.

Talented people are of course our foundation, so our focus is to continue our work on finding and retaining the right people for the right projects.