Green Jade Games Chairman Jasper Kärrbrink says that the igaming industry has proven itself to be resilient in the face COVID-19 and should be attractive to investors going forward.
Speaking alongside Genesis’ Ariel Reem, SKS365’s Alexander Martin and Betsson’s Pontus Lindvall on the CasinoBeats Malta Digital leaders panel this morning (2 July 2020), Kärrbrink was so confident in the sector’s strength that he insisted: “You can’t blame corona if your business hasn’t been flying as a game provider”.
The former Mr Green CEO went on: “As a product, we are not as hit as other industries, like hotels, flights, and restaurants”. He said investors were likely to show interest in gaming stocks going forward, but predicted that the greatest M&A appeal will come from land-based businesses looking to shore up their revenue after taking losses due to brick–and–mortar closures.
“The large land-based operators have been very, very dependent on their brick–and–mortar business. In those boardrooms now, there have to be discussions about merger and acquisitions to mitigate that risk going forward, perhaps not now, but for the next time that we have a pandemic like this”.
He postulated that live–casino giant Evolution’s recent merger with Net Ent might have had its roots in this need to diversify and mitigate any risk attached to the casino model by adding RNG to the mix.
“[There is] a higher interest from investors, because we have proven to be very resilient”, he concluded.
Reem said that at the start of the crisis, what he expected to happen has happened: Traffic moved to the casino products as sportsbooks were shut down and there was an uptick in online traffic.
However, as the lockdown continued, he saw some surprising trends emerge. “Over the last three months, we were trying to understand, did we actually see any change in customer behaviour in this time? I was extremely surprised. Common sense was that you expect people to stay at home and consume more. Actually, it was not the case at all. What we actually saw was a drop of between five and ten percent – it depends on the regions – that players actually deposit less”.
On top of this, Genesis realised that punters were making greater use of responsible gambling tools, a trend that Reem described as “very encouraging to see”.
As the leader of an Italy-facing operator, Martin had to confront great challenges as Italy became the hub of the pandemic in Europe in March. However, he maintains faith in both the operator’s retail and online arms. “I’m a strong believer in an omnichannel presence, so both retail and online have a foundation and both will be growing”, he said.
He did acknowledge that online was a focus during the pandemic and SKS365 made a number of enhancements to the online offer, by increasing the range of games available and improving the user journey from registration to first deposit.
He added that the operator has also made a number of changes to shop operations to futureproof the retail business from ongoing social–distancing measures. These included adding self-service terminals and other shop technology.
