Centres of excellence: Egaming’s lesser-known European tech hubs

The remote gambling industry has long been drawn to its favourite jurisdictions on the basis of how regulatory-friendly they are. But in recent years tech hubs and data centres have sprung up in a handful of notably unique locations outside of Europe’s most established tech centres.

Sky Betting & Gaming for example, houses its entire tech operations between the Yorkshire powerhouses of Leeds and Sheffield. Elsewhere, Swedish-operator Betsson is in the process of setting up a new tech office in Budapest, and rapidly growing B2B and B2C operator Colossus Bets is considering expanding its geographical reach outside of London. In August, the Stars Group announced it was relocating a sizeable chunk of its casino and sportsbook operations from London to Sofia in Bulgaria.

Joakim Eriksson, development centre manager Budapest at Betsson Group

The movement of companies is perpetual as they keep an eye on the European market and its most thriving tech-forward cities. When you drill down to the core of these decisions, cost plays a formative role, as does company culture, connectivity to the rest of Europe and the quality of tech staff available in each location.

Ingrained culture

SB&G chief technology officer Andy Burton tells EGR Technology the company’s steadfast confidence in Leeds and Sheffield stems from its ingrained culture. Having been situated in the North for seven years, Burton says: “We’re very much a lean organisation and into agile software engineering. For us that means lots of face-to-face collaborating and small autonomous teams working together, living and breathing it all day long. Our view is that you lose some of that if you move your software engineers elsewhere.”

He himself is a product of Sheffield, having attended university in the city and subsequently going on to work for a myriad of Yorkshire-based companies including infrastructure development firm Freeserve. “[This is] the model we like, and not just for tech but in product and commercial as well. As long as we can keep hiring and growing our own in Leeds and Sheffield that’s what we’ll do. I’ll never say we won’t branch out beyond that but our preference is to carry on what we’re currently doing as it works well for us,” Burton adds.

Similarly, Betsson takes pride in its innate culture, which is built in part on diversity. With that comes a keen interest in recruiting varied staff with unique cultural backgrounds and experience. The firm’s latest move to Budapest is the result of recent strength and a desire to branch out into a fresh location with a history of talented developers and engineers.

“People here have a great engineering background, I think that’s very important for a tech office. Also the location, being in the centre of Europe and having two-hour direct flights to Stockholm and Malta, makes this the perfect place to be,” development centre manager Joakim Eriksson reveals.

Budapest, Hungary. Credit: iStock

The operator houses its front-end development centres in Malta, Stockholm and Talinn and aims to shift its entire back-end operation to Budapest. Eriksson says, however, the firm is now extending its recruitment drive to front-end developers in an effort to simplify the process and equalise the teams across each development centre. “Communication is hard when you can’t have face-to-face meetings,” Eriksson adds.

“When you have cross-departmental dependencies it’s good to have people based in the same place. That’s why we’re looking at having multiple departments here with both back- and front-end, because when we face these kinds of issues we have people with a foot in multiple departments and that will make it much easier to come up with quick solutions.”

However, Eriksson is quick to assure that dividing the tech stack up offers more opportunity for cross-departmental collaboration that wouldn’t exist otherwise. “If you put everything in one place it is developed in isolation, and therefore it’s hard for the rest of the organisation to be part of that development.” He says Betsson is one of the few industry players to have set its sights on Hungary as a pivotal tech centre. The operator turned to Budapest after having worked with local consulting partners.

Eriksson adds: “There are a few great universities pushing out graduates all the time. In general I think the tech people here are very open and eager to share what they know. Also within Budapest they host so many events and so many things are happening. That aligns with our company culture to do things outside of work and keep people together.”

Talent scouting

Meanwhile, slots supplier Yggdrasil inaugurated its latest product development centre in central Krakow in June, a move that was prompted by CEO Fredrik Elmqvist’s interest in the Polish tech scene and the hiring of Polish CPO Krzyszof Opałka.

“I worked with Polish IT companies and always found them and Polish people extremely reliable in terms of technology. They have good work ethics and have worked well with us and a few other Swedes from the gaming industry in terms of collaboration. It was between Warsaw and Krakow, but Krakow was easier to get people to move to. Everyone is in the south in Warsaw, it’s a full on war of talent. Krakow is pretty competitive now as well since NetEnt moved in there after us and there are some other gaming companies starting there,” Elmqvist previously told EGR Technology. Undoubtedly, the spreading of firms into previously unchartered territories could suggest a possible lack of tech talent in the saturated egaming hubs of London, Gibraltar and Malta.

Colossus Bets CTO Myles Milston says the firm is eager to recruit staff outside of London as he believes the UK may not have enough “high quality, motivated tech talent”. The operator recently relocated to more expansive office space at the core of the City of London. “We need developers that are highly motivated to work and accelerate their career, take their learning into their own hands, and genuinely care about the tech and their contribution to the company,” Milston adds, touching on the uncertainty a hard Brexit may have on recruiting foreign tech talent.

Leeds, UK. Credit: iStock

SB&G’s Burton agrees that sourcing talent in localised areas of the UK is becoming more challenging, which is why the operator has invested significantly in graduate schemes partnering with the leading Sheffield and Leeds universities. He comments: “We look for talented people who share our values. The level of experience is unimportant because the pace of change means we’re constantly developing new skills, but the cultural fit is very important. We need all levels of software engineers, from entry-level people to very experienced people as well. I think there is enough talent in the UK. We’ve been hiring at scale for a long time now. Over the last three years we’ve hired over 500 tech people and again now we’re in the process of hiring quite a few people.”

Burton claims both Leeds and Sheffield churn out high quality computer science graduates. As part of the company’s graduate scheme, new staff members are taken through a thorough 12-week boot camp before moving to work within one of Sky Betting & Gaming’s internal tribes where they are assigned a mentor to assist them in product development.

Start-up culture

Crucially for a tech city, Burton believes Leeds offers a rich start-up scene and a lengthy history in tech innovation, drawing more talent to the North and offering SB&G the ability to involve itself in the local culture, often hosting lectures and sponsoring tech-powered events. “At the turn of the millennium these really innovative companies appeared. Teamtalk with its sports websites and Football365 both grew up here in Leeds. Leeds is a big internet centre. There’s a real history of digital innovation. There are also some well-established large businesses here like Sky, which also has its digital hub here after moving from West London a few years ago, and there is also NHS Digital. It’s a very broad spectrum from start-ups to well-established companies in the private and public sectors,” Burton comments.

Both SB&G’s Burton and Colossus’s Milton are of the view that the UK remains one of the leading jurisdictions for technology. In particular, Burton hails the quality of innovation coming out of the local egaming industry. “There is definitely more focus on start-ups increasingly year on year, which I see as a really good sign. I’ve worked in technology all my life but when I graduated, nobody talked about creating start-ups and entrepreneurship,” he comments.

When asked which cities appeared particularly up and coming, Burton interestingly cited Spain’s Malaga, an overlooked gem, he claims, that is increasingly seeing software departments set up shop on the Andalucían coast line. “I think software companies in this industry tend to lean quite a bit towards Eastern Europe,” Burton adds, attributing this to lower costs and higher value for money. “On the face of it your costs might be lower but we feel that you slow down product delivery and can reduce the focus on customers,” Burton comments. PokerStars previously told EGR its reasoning for shifting operations to Sofia was part of a wider company strategy, with Bulgaria proving more cost effective than London.

The industry’s geographical takeover continues with UK-facing Rank having completed its latest move into new headquarters in Maidenhead, and William Hill securing a central Tottenham Court Road base for its consolidated tech and marketing operations. The company confirmed it was shifting staff from its Tel Aviv office to London in an effort to “work smarter and more efficiently”, a William Hill spokesperson said. With the UK its core market, the firm believes that having a bigger base in London will allow for better customer focus.

Elsewhere, Stockholm continues to flourish as a metropolis for game development with leading suppliers NetEnt and Yggdrasil basing development centres in the heart of the city that invented Skype, social games giant King and Spotify. Betsson says it will continue to base part of its operations in the Swedish capital and is looking to “beef up these development centres [it] already has in both Stockholm and Malta”.

Although many careful considerations go into choosing the right city, the primary focus appears to be on upholding company culture. And with the success of Sky Bet so prevalent, there are plenty of cities with equal potential.