Q&A: Henrik Tj?rnstr?m, Unibet CEO
Tj?rnstr?m talks to EGR about preparations for Euro 2016 and the operator's new sportsbook and Maria products
Unibet announced yet another round of strong financial results yesterday, reporting a 13% year-on-year rise in gross winnings revenues (GWR) for the 12 months ended 31 December 2015. And with the absence of a major sporting event during the year its top-line numbers look even more impressive.
The operator is preparing a host of major product launches – including a new sportsbook – to be rolled-out over the coming months ahead of Euro 2016, and Unibet will undoubtedly be confident it can maintain its current momentum. eGaming Review spoke to the firm’s CEO Henrik Tj?rnstr?m to find out more about his plans for 2016.
eGaming Review (EGR): How important will the UEFA Euro Championship be this year for Unibet?
Henrik Tj?rnstr?m (HT): We don’t really anticipate any major change to the guidance we’ve given out for the full year and it should be in line with previous years. However, there will be a good opportunity to work in acquiring more customers around the Euro Championship. So we will definitely take that opportunity but we are not anticipating any sudden burst on top of anything else.
EGR: Do you plan to ramp-up your marketing spend for the tournament?
HT: Unibet’s working on a few things for Euro 2016. A lot of the developments we do now is about going live for that event, which is what we’ve done in the last couple of major football championships. We’re going to refine even further what we did during the World Cup in Brazil when we had a lot more real-time offers, for example, and saw a very good response and uptake from the customers as a result. We’ll hope to take that to a new level this summer.
EGR: Will Unibet’s new sportsbook be launched in time for Euro 2016?
HT: That is already available for customers to use and it will definitely be rolled-out in full in time for the football championship in the summer. So that’s all going according to plan.
EGR: What are some of the main changes to the product?
HT: On the web channel we previously had a Flash client and now we’re having it in HTML5 which makes it far more modularised and is the next big step for us to really improve the offering in terms of personalisation. As we’ve been waiting to launch this HTML5 client, we’ve been holding back on some of the features which would have been wasted on Flash.
There’s a lot of positive things all round with that launch and we will now be able to use our big data platform to its full potential as well. It is more modularised so it will allow us to work more dynamically and differentiate a bit more than previously.
EGR: What was the thinking behind the changes to the Maria brand?
HT: Over the years we’ve been attracting a lot of male customers into the Maria brand as well. So we’re not too concerned about that but we’re trying to find a good balance there. We have seen that there is room for growing the business more towards the casino segment and we have been moving Maria in that direction since we acquired it.
So this is a good step in that direction and we aim to put it up there with the industry leaders for a pure casino experience. We already have a similar offering in the Unibet business now; so that’s very positive in that we can draw benefits of having a market leading offering for both those brands.
EGR: How exactly will it sit with the Unibet platform?
HT: We’re making the site on Maria fully responsive and on the same technical platform underneath as Unibet. And long-term, the ambition is to pursue the same strategy for the brands we’ve just acquired; especially with the iGame business. It is still on the same platform but on the front-end it’s been on two different ones for mobile and web, but now it’s the same CMS on both channels.
So the offering and the consumer handling tools are not really changing, but we are enhancing the user experience and the responsive design so that the cross-channel experience will be vastly improved.
EGR: How big a part can the Maria brand become to the overall Unibet business?
HT: As we highlighted, Maria, similar to Unibet, was up 26% last year and it’s a sizeable business these days. We’re very pleased with that development. It’s already significantly contributing to the group, especially when we have higher margins within Maria. But it is still a complimentary brand using pretty much the same technology, so what is needed is a relatively small team in the whole scheme of things to operate that separate brand and revenue.