Nordic Leisure chief pleased with casino growth despite flat revenues
Operator's chief executive Claes Hallén says growth of vertical at expense of poker is "the way we want to go"
Nordic Leisure chief executive Claes Hallén has expressed his satisfaction with the operator’s shift away from poker and towards its growing casino and sports betting business, describing the direction as “the way we want to go”
The Malta-licensed operator recorded flat year-on-year revenues of 24.4m for the three months ended 31 March, a figure which represented a 15.5% quarter-on-quarter decline, however casino contributed 53.2% of the total compared to 39.1% in Q1 2012.
Sports accounted for 35% of revenues compared to 31.9% in the corresponding period last year, while poker’s contribution was more than halved from 29.1% to 11.9%.
The Nordic-facing company, previously known as Redbet, recorded its first full-year profit since 2010 last year, and this continued in the first quarter with profit after tax of 3.3m compared to 300,000 in Q1 2012.
Hallén, who arrived as chairman in January 2012 before replacing Jörgen Andersson as CEO in May last year, said “Our goal is to drive growth primarily in the casino and betting”.
Before leaving his role as CEO last year, Andersson had spoken keenly of the decreased dependence on poker despite the acquisition of the Heypoker brand in July 2011, and the trend towards casino and sports has continued into this year.
Hallén, meanwhile, revealed that supplier agreements had “continually changed” during his tenure “to adapt the company to our target”, saying he is confident of “ensur[ing] continued growth in our geographic markets”.
However the company, whose main areas of focus are Northern and Eastern Europe, last month saw its Redbet.com domain added to the Belgian blacklist of unlicensed sites.