Exclusive: Betclic Everest CEO Martos explains group restructure
In his first interview since joining new Betclic Everest CEO reveals group will focus on current markets and invest heavily in IT and online acquisition - expects group to return to profit next year.
Betclic Everest group CEO Ignacio Martos has exclusively revealed his plans to revamp the business, following the announcement that Betclic Expekt CEO Thomas Winter will leave the business tomorrow.
In his first interview since being hired by the French firm in September, Martos denied that he had been brought in to cut costs. In his previous role at travel site Opodo he made 57 redundancies and restructured the UK management team upon arriving at the company. He further claimed that Betclic Everest’s losses were not as heavy as expected.
Parent company Société des Bains de Mer reported a 25m loss for its 50% stake in its 2010-2011 figures, suggesting an overall loss of 50m. Martos claimed this figure was “inaccurate,” attributing the loss to costs related to a US court case involving Everest Gaming and costs related to acquisitions, and not directly to Betclic Everest’s operations.
However, he admitted that the group’s EBITDA for 2011 is “forecast to be negative, but by small amount that allows us to be back in profit by next year without major problems”.
Martos revealed that Betclic Everest will invest heavily in technology in order to develop as strong a platform as possible: “In the internet industry, in a new sector like online gaming you need to continuously innovate to adapt as it is a very dynamic market, and we should be in a continuous cycle of restructuring to adapt to market changes,” he explained.
The company will also focus on acquiring customers through online channels, with Martos revealing that he is closely following developments in the social space and Facebook and its potential for egaming operators. “As an online business IT is in our genetic code; people who are using Google and Facebook regularly need to be our target audience. We are absolutely convinced that online is the way to acquire customers. For example, last Friday 20% more was spent online than in the shops on Black Friday in the US.”
Betclic Expekt’s operations will be divided into three European regions, with Marc Guigo managing the French, Swiss and Belgian operations, and Ricardo Domingues and Tomasz Mazur taking charge of the Southern and Northern European markets respectively. Martos stressed that this was a move to “get closer” to its customers:
“Each marketplace behaves differently, and we have to get that local flavour into our company. It is critical that our team can understand the difference between a French and Italian player, and give them the differentiated products that they need. Having closer market presence on the executive committee will allow us to learn about these markets and understand them directly.”
Martos confirmed that Betclic will not apply for a Spanish license until the market opens, and instead focus on territories where it already has a significant presence, predominantly in continental Europe.
“We are still considering going for a Spanish license, but we will not go in the first round, and it is not one of our main priorities. We are looking to consolidate in Italy, where we made a significant investment in 2010,” he said.
“Our aim is to be in a leading position in the markets where we have an existing presence, so we will be mainly focused in Europe, which is our major market, but an area with a lot of room for improvement,” Martos explained.
After the original plans to merge Betclic Expekt with Everest Gaming Group were scrapped as the group looked to focus on fully merging the Betclic and Expekt IT platforms, Martos confirmed that the businesses would remain separate “for the time being.”
“I want [Everest CEO Tim Dent] to stay in charge of [Everest’s] P&L, but where we can gain synergies I will be looking to merge the operations. For example we moved all our service operations to Malta, but some of the things we had originally decided to unify I kept separate.”
However, he revealed that when he feels the time is right, Everest will be integrated into Betclic Expekt: “Ultimately it is a matter of internal organisation and we can only do so many things at once. Eventually Everest will be merged. In the current situation we can’t guarantee that a fast-track merger would add any value, so we want to focus on developing the IT platform, because that is where the merger really happens.”