Part 2: The current online market
Fortune Lounge in January 2015;
Gaming Innovation Group bought
up Magenti Media in March 2016;
and Raketech bought up Swedish-
facing Astro Media in April 2017 and
most recently the Scandinavian-
focused Shogun Media.
Petter Moldenius, chief executive
at Optimizer Invest, an investor in
both Catena Media and GIG, says
that understandably his company
is a “very strong believer in the
affiliate space in general”.
“Affiliates can provide strong
content, high usability and
functions for the consumers. It is
here to stay and will continue. In a
way, there are some similarities to
the operator market. But we are
only scratching the surface on the
potential role the affiliates will play
in the online consumer journey.”
All of these factors – operator
side, supply side and affiliates
– have combined to make the
Swedish grey market one of the
most buoyant within Europe. While
there might yet be a mini-influx
of names into the market post-
regulation, we can be certain that
the new market will be launching
We are only scratching
the surface on the
potential role the
affiliates will play
in the online
consumer journey
Petter Moldenius,
Optimizer Invest
from a point of consistent growth in
the years leading up to D-Day.
The current market
Below is our breakdown of
estimates for market size and share,
starting with the current regulated
market – i.e. Svenska Spel and
ATG – and official estimates for the
Table 1: Svenska Spel’s total market estimates 2017
% of total Est. NGR (SEKbn)
Svenska Spel 39.7 8.98
ATG 18.3 4.12
Other lotteries and VLTs 17.5 3.96
Offshore online 24.5 5.55
Sector
Total
Source:
10
22.6
offshore market before moving on
to the estimates for some of the
biggest names currently targeting
Swedish players.
Calculating Svenska Spel’s
online advantage
First, we start with Svenska Spel.
What was clear from Svenska Spel’s
2016 report (but unfortunately
wasn’t broken out in the 2017
version) was that it was the sports
betting segment (including its pool-
betting brands) where it was seeing
online growth. In total, just less than
50% of sports betting revenues
in 2016, which totalled SEK1.69bn
(€162.87m) came from online, or
circa SEK850m. If we assume a
growth in the online share to 55%
of the total for 2017, which does
not seem unreasonable, this would
give a 2017 total of circa SEK985m.
Sweden: The transition to regulation in one of Europe’s most advanced digital markets