hi everyone this is tim paul editor of gaming insider and welcome to gaming insider's regulated market focus sponsored by pronet gaming the online sports betting supplier that specializes in regulated markets hi pontus thanks very much for joining us hi thank you um it's great to speak to you today and um given kind of the events the last few weeks uh we have some interesting topics i think to talk about and the very first one uh you've no doubt been on uh a roller coaster of sorts recently um how did it feel firstly to hear that your time as bets and ceo had come to an end it didn't feel very well uh i thought it uh i didn't think it was a good decision at the time and uh which i explained and you know i'm quite a big shareholder myself in that song so if i would have thought it was a good idea i would have probably arranged it by myself so uh yeah that is what i said basically and how did it in turn feel to be back in business yeah actually i never left the business as such because i was on a termination period so uh so but but uh now the decision is revoked and and i'm really happy about that does it uh maybe give you a an even stronger tie to the company a sense of kind of um weirdly job satisfaction that you you you know you left but you're still here maybe not like in in that way but when the decision was communicated there was a lot of uh of course feelings in in the organization so i i definitely got a strong support from from all mets nights and and i'm i was really encouraged by that and that kind of strengthened me that it's good that i'm still around the ceo i didn't yeah no i can imagine that's a good feeling and that's good to hear um recently obviously betson uh reported it's q3 results um what was your kind of overall take on these results and and you know what are your kind of thoughts and feelings going into q4 and next year as well yeah obviously i think uh we concluded already before we reported that the q3 report was going to be pretty much more about the future than the actual third quarter the quarter as such was quite strong we came in over expectations sportsbook was doing really really well but the focus of the report turned out to be on the fact that we would have to close down uh the the business for dutch people which we did together with most other large operators and what kind of impact that was going to have that was one big topic and then there was the trading update in the first part of the fourth quarter which was a little bit weak due to high high winnings from players in the sportsbooks not terrific sportsbook margin from our point of view and that's a topic which i like to discuss because sometimes people believe that when we are on a lower sportsbook margin something is wrong did we lose our ability to put the right odds out there but that's not the case it's the case that within gambling it swings backs and forth and you know people have to be able to win and sometimes they win several days and even weeks in a row and that's good that's the way it has to be so so that's not a big deal to me but of course when you reveal figures for the first part of the quarter and it's it's it's a weaker sportsbook margin than normal then then it has an impact of course and people can get a little bit scared about that yeah absolutely um i'd like to go back to the kind of one of the points you made earlier because my next question was going to be about the dutch market and you gave an update there on kind of betsy's stance um what's your take on on how the kind of online gaming market has um i want to say launched but i almost almost don't want to say launched because you say it's uh some companies have stopped uh stopped their operations in that market yeah obviously i don't personally have too much insight of how the market has launched now since the regulation came into force obviously us not being part of that market and that's from all markets that has gone into regulation this is the first one where we stand on the outside for a period of time and i think that's very unfortunate i don't think it's the way to do it it's like in a 100 meters running competition if somebody gets to start five seconds before we get to start then it's very hard to catch up so so i think it's not a fair way of opening up a market but the situation is what it is and we have adopted to it and we look forward to once we will be able to open as well i mean i imagine it came it came as a surprise because there was a lot of talk about kind of this last minute ruling in holland that was a big surprise nobody expected that and it it came i think the decision was made like on the 21st of september we got the information on the 22nd we had like eight days to fix everything shut down accounts payout money you know that was uh first of all understand the decision because we were so surprised uh about that decision so it took us some time to kind of grind through everything and and conclude that we really had to shut down and when it comes to regulated markets elsewhere in europe i mean which ones at the moment are you know really promising for bets and and are there others that kind of uh maybe presenting more challenges perhaps not as much as the dutch market but you know maybe less promising at the moment uh yeah now there are plenty of markets in europe that are regulated we are not present in all those markets um but but in a few and i think if you look at europe as a whole i think you can say that at least our view is that it's a little bit over regulated in total and we hope that that will swing back because it's uh it's not it's not good for the generalization of players to the regulated markets and we believe that in some markets there are two tight regulations and and other things which kind of makes it too hard for operators to run a proper business and if if we do not have a product which is attractive to the player then the player will go elsewhere and they will find the products that they want and the environment that they want and and we will be without revenues the states will be without taxes and we will be without any ability to monitor those players uh and protect those players uh naturally uh when we talk about kind of the over regulation in in europe and certainly in some mature markets in europe as well um the us is absolutely the reverse of the moment a lot of excitement a lot of new markets opening up and uh in a lot of states you know some some considered some healthy fare regulation um of the kind of states that uh obviously we had new york uh recently had license approved of uh the kind of the new sports betting markets and casino markets which in general uh not specifically to better which states kind of excite you the most at the moment for the time being actually it's colorado which is a small state with only sports betting allowed in no casino games the reason for that being that we are going to launch our b2c operation in colorado next year and we will do that in order to kind of promote our sports sportsbook to the to other operators in the u.s markets so we have the ambition to sell that as a b2b offering in the u.s market but but as you say overall there's full speed ahead in in many places in the u.s there is not a single state that has a set of regulations which is identical to another one so so it's it's a it's uh sometimes you refer to the us markets but but it's it's more like it's a bunch of markets with with different uh different taxes different products different regulations but but all in all and all together it's a very exciting area that we will uh look into next year yeah and when it comes to betson's operations kind of uh in the sort of coming months in a couple of years do you have any kind of set goals and any aspirations in the us at the moment we just mentioned we have not any goals in figures that we have uh communicated externally but we have the ambitions to to have a couple of uh good business to business clients in the u.s in the future so that's quite important that uh the u.s for us is a b2b market for the time being um but and we opened the btc operation in colorado to kind of try out our sports book and to showcase it and see and prove that it's uh competitive in the u.s market sure were there any kind of specific uh reasons why it is for now kind of the priority remains b2b for you guys in the us yeah the the u.s market is uh such a large market uh we to put it simple we don't believe that we can go to the us which is not really our home turf take up the competition and be and beat you know healthy and big competitors on their home turf it's not just we don't believe we would manage to do that sure so it's more of a kind of a a measured approach um and kind of acknowledging kind of the state of the market as it stands yeah and i i think we are experts in sports betting we have a very competitive product the market is going to be enormous and if if we manage to support a part of that market with our sports betting product our services our knowledge within the area then we will be really good off anyway not too far from the us in latin america how do you assess kind of betson's progress and and obviously there was the the inca acquisition as well yeah uh we have been servicing that part of the world with our services for quite some time and we have been very successful and we have built up knowledge over time and uh it it's a large uh region and now when we see they are obviously a little bit behind europe on on the time scale so to say so it's it's a emerging market there's a lot to to that that will happen in that market in the next five to ten years so so we see a great potential in that market we are well positioned our product is proven to be very successful in the market so this is an area where we put a lot of hope for for the future and and we have good ambitions to do uh some proper investments and and uh move ahead in that region sure so we've discussed a few different geographical areas and a few kind of areas of the business um as well as the the stories with your own position uh recently uh my final question for you is bearing in mind everything we've discussed what are your kind of overall goals for 2022 and that's both on a personal note but also for the organization yeah on a personal level uh to keep on heading bets on in the direction where we are heading right now and i think we are on a really good move and uh for the company of course we have put a lot of uh efforts and and [Music] resources into the u.s project i'm looking forward to see some kind of output from that project be it a good start of colorado operations with some uh contracts on the sports betting side that's something that that we look forward to then uh as i mentioned we put a lot of trust into latin america uh i really hope that we will see betson become an even bigger player in that part of the world in [Music] 2022 and if i may wish something from the year i i wish less decisions like the dutch one on from regulators or unexpected decisions which are very hard to we had the german one a year ago which was also very hard to to handle it came with this short notice had had a huge impact and moved a lot of gaming activity out from the well-established players to some kind of cowboy operators which is not good for the consumer or this industry i'm sure a lot of operators will will share your sentiment there but at the same time we're probably gonna have to accept that there might be the odd the odd unexpected decisions still to come but but hopefully not um thanks thanks very much for your time and i really appreciate you speaking to us okay thank you see you bye bye thank you you