Global Gaming to start cost-cutting after missing Q4 targets

Global Gaming has promised to adopt “cost-saving and streamlining measures” after the operator failed to hit its internal Q4 revenue targets.

The Swedish firm reported a Q4 revenue increase of 35% to SEK 236m (£19m), marking a significant drop-off from the 93% year-on-year increase experienced in Q3.

Operating profit reached SEK 18m (£1.5m), down from SEK 42m in the same period last year, and Global Gaming CEO Joacim Möller told EGR Intel that a combination of factors, including Swedish re-regulation and a Q4 platform migration, saw the operator fall short of target levels.

The operator oversaw a series of technical projects in the fourth quarter, including the migration of Ninja Casino Sweden and Finland from Curaçao to Estonia which led to the change in platform.

“That meant down-time but that is not the biggest issue,” said Möller. “Players [in Sweden] needed to get new KYC measures and that took some time and people don’t seem to have the patience to endure that.

“Also in the beginning we didn’t have all the games available on the new platform, so it took a while before everything was up and running in the same way as it was before the migration.

“People don’t want to sit and wait so then it also takes a little while for them to come back again,” he added.

Swedish regulators insist that players should be able to set their own deposit limits, but a technical issue for Global Gaming in January 2019 meant this was not the case.

In order to be compliant, the operator had to manually introduce set deposit limits for all players until the issue was fixed, which in turn led to five days of reduced activity.

“For some reason that didn’t kick in as it should have done, so to be compliant we had to put a limit on every player, then they could change that by contacting customer service,” said Möller.

“It didn’t go as smoothly as we wanted it to, especially with players who play a lot because they reached the limit fairly quickly and that hurt us a bit in January.”

Möller has pledged to implement cost-saving and streamlining measures but denied that meant having to let members of staff go.

“The plans we make for each month we have to stick to,” he said. “We did not overspend but we now have to readjust in a different direction.

“We have reached a level where we have approximately the right amount of people we need so we need to adopt a more cost-effective approach now.

“We can’t just keep spending money everywhere as if nothing had happened,” he added.

Full-year revenues increased by 100% to SEK 916m (£75m), while operating profit rose by 22% to SEK 148.6m (£12m).

Möller also confirmed that Global Gaming’s SpelLandet brand will be placed on the back-burner after struggling to make an impact in the Swedish online casino market.