Bonnier chief: we will be as big as Expekt, Unibet
Bonnier Gaming will become as big as Expekt or Unibet via an aggressive growth campaign to begin early next year, the Swedish operator's chief executive Andreas Ternström has pledged.
BONNIER GAMING WILL BECOME as big as Expekt or Unibet via an major growth campaign to begin early next year, the Swedish operator’s chief executive has pledged.
Speaking in an interview with eGaming Review, Andreas Ternström said Bonnier, one of three major media players to enter the Power 50 leading operators this year, will launch its own casino and bingo brands in Sweden and other markets, while building liquidity and signing up white-label partners.
The chief executive also vowed an aggressive marketing campaign in Spain, in the newly-regulated Italian market and in the group’s home territory of Sweden.
Ternström said: “As a media house, we are very audience-focused, so for example we know about 55-year-old women and how to target them. Our major competitors have never worked with that demographic and are never going to. We will develop player groups that the current major egaming operators have never targeted and will do this by building local brands for specific audiences, not trying to just direct them to a big portal brand where they can join the rest of the pack.”
Cashball, the Isle of Man-based company that is Bonnier Gaming’s operating arm and white-label service provider, will launch at least two new Bonnier brands and between three and five new licensed customers by the first half of 2010, he said.
While Bonnier has used bingo as its gaming springboard, Ternström said the company is a “gaming incubator” that will launch casino, poker and what he sees as the most natural product for the group’s target audience, sportsbook.
“The natural gaming product for Bonnier should be sports betting: we run a lot of sports content, buy a lot of sports rights, run TV channels with massive sports audiences and have all the famous commentators in print and TV. It will be natural for us to set up a sports-betting platform and when we have done this, we will cross-sell and convert those players to other gaming products such as poker.”
Ternström added that the Swedish market still has major potential for growth. “Our Swedish bingo operation currently has a turnover of around SEK45m (4.3m, £3.9m). That is just 20% of the market, Sweden has come far but is still a very small market,” he says.
“The UK launched the first bingo site around 2002, but for Sweden it was probably in 2006. As a country, Sweden is very keen on new technology and the like, but ultimately Bonnier has not done half what a company like Cashcade has done. Many people look at a country like Sweden and think it is really saturated, but that is not the case.”