Unibet names Andrew West as interim poker head

Unibet has promoted poker business development manager Andrew West as head of poker on an interim basis while it searches for a permanent replacement for the recently departed Martin Stalros, eGaming Review understands.

The role was vacated earlier this month after Stalros joined Estonia-based poker software supplier Relax Gaming as its new chief operating officer (COO) after announcing his decision to leave in Q4 2014.

A permanent appointment, for which West is thought to be under consideration, will be made by the operator’s head of gaming Daniel Eskola in the coming months.

West has worked as Unibet’s poker business development manager for nearly 18 months after joining the firm in September 2013 from Ladbrokes where he worked as head of poker customer development.

Prior to Ladbrokes he also worked at PokerStars for eight years in a number of roles including EMEA poker operations manager and Nordic & Baltic CRM manager.

During his time at Unibet, Stalros oversaw the launch of the operator’s new standalone poker product after leaving Microgaming’s MPN Network in favour of a casual player-focused client in partnership with Relax Gaming.

Unibet recently revealed poker revenues had fallen 31% year-on-year in Q3 2014 to £2m, down from £2.9m in the same period last year.

However, CEO Henrik Tjärnström said he was confident the company’s propriety poker product was showing significant signs of improvement.

“We’re very happy with the product and the feedback it’s been getting,” Tjärnström told eGR at the time. “We knew it would lead to a drop of numbers but we’ve stopped the drain out of the system and we can now actually acquire players and cross-sell them into other products which wasn’t possible over the last few years,” he added.