INTERVIEW MAGNUS SILFVERBERG
PROFILE
Magnus Silfverberg
> CEO
Betsson
With two MBAs to his name, CEO of Swedish operator Betsson Magnus Silfverberg should know a thing or two about business strategy. He talks to Tom Washington about Betsson’s plans for expansion and why its company culture sets it apart from the rest
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etsson is a tough company to keep up with. In recent years its business activity has been as dynamic as it has been astute, making it a force to be reckoned with among Europe’s big names. The past 12 months has seen the Swedish operator make two signi?cant acquisitions, enter several new markets including Italy, and leap seven places up eGaming Review’s Power 50 list, from 12th to 5th. Calling the shots and currently enjoying Betsson’s impressive ?nancial and business credentials is Magnus Silfverberg who, despite being new to egaming, would ?nd himself promoted to group CEO within just two years of joining the company. The 38-year-old was initially hired to lead the ?rm’s Malta business in 2009, and wasted no time implementing a new business strategy. He oversaw a streamlining process designed principally to focus the business on core markets such as Denmark, and remove inefficiencies from non-core markets. Individual country managers were removed, along with marketing budgets in smaller jurisdictions. “That strategy has paid off,” he says. “Every euro we spend in the Nordics has given much better pay-off than a euro invested in Greece or Germany.” After proving himself to be a shrewd strategist in his ?rst role, Silfverberg was a natural successor to outgoing group CEO and highly respected operator Pontus Lindwall, who became chairman in 2011. “Betsson has grown extremely fast, and continuing to grow while delivering high pro?t levels has been a big challenge,” he explains. “Since I managed to do that from the Malta perspective and at the same time [Lindwall]
decided to take a step back, there was a natural succession, so to speak.” Strategist Silfverberg describes himself as “resultsdriven and strategic”, and his professional background prepared him well for his rise through the ranks. Before being headhunted by Betsson from Hewlett Packard (HP) in November 2009, Silfverberg had a varied and studious career. With two MBAs, two years as a strategy consultant at Accenture and experience of founding and running his own successful software as a service (SaaS) business, Frontville AB, behind him, he joined HP in 2005, and later became the IT firm’s sales director for Sweden. In many ways his background – strategy, IT, sales and entrepreneurship – is the perfect blend of experience for the egaming industry. “I think that’s what Betsson looked for when they hired me. A combination of big corporate knowledge and entrepreneurial skills,” Silfverberg says. In his ?rst year he also launched Betsson Business Solutions, a dedicated company within the group acting as an independent B2B consultant for Betsson’s partner brands. “We had been very good at B2B and had a lot of white labels, even though we were not very good at selling new partnerships or very structured about how we managed the existing ones,” he explains. “What I did was form this business unit, appoint speci?c managers to it and hire some account managers to manage the daily relations with partners. That has helped that side of the business to prosper.” The Swedish operator’s foremost business, however, is to offer poker, casino, sports betting
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