Last week’s EY Attractiveness survey made headlines for the significant dip in Malta’s attractiveness to foreign companies, but a bit of digging beneath the surface revealed that respondents from the iGaming industry were still positive about their presence on the islands.

Even better, they were the most likely to register a positive or neutral change to the COVID-19 pandemic.

WhosWho.mt reached out to Betsson Group CEO Jesper Svensson for comment.

The EY Attractiveness survey published this week noted that iGaming companies are weathering the crisis well. Do you find this true for your company too?

We have just presented our results for the third quarter of 2020 where we reported an increase of 31% in Group revenue and an EBIT (operating income) increase of 55%. Despite the extraordinary challenges that we’re facing, we have both expanded into new markets and developed new products and features.

During the pandemic we’ve seen the increase in the digitalisation of all industries, and also a surge for digital entertainment, including gaming.

During this time, the industry has demonstrated that it is resilient to market fluctuations, more so than other sectors.

As a company, Betsson has a unique position in being more resilient than the sector average due to our diversified product and brand portfolio, global footprint and strong finances.

Could you explain your recently-posted Q3 2020 results in more detail?

In the latest results we have actually seen a double-digit increase in all regions. Revenue from the Nordics increased by 17%, in Western Europe it increased by 23%, in CEECA it increased by 40%, and we also registered an increase of 124% from the rest for the world (RoW).

Back in April you announced that you will be hosting medical professionals in 7 apartments to avoid contamination with their families. How did that go, and what inspired you to help out?

This was something we did immediately when we heard that frontliners working with COVID-19 patients were searching for alternative accommodation to protect their families. We got in touch with the Health Department who allocated our company apartments to those frontline healthcare workers who required it.

Being a large organisation employing hundreds of talented Maltese people, we knew that some of the partners of our Betssonites also work in healthcare and we therefore offered other apartments for them to use, if required.

I believe the frontliners who were staying in the company apartments have moved out during summer, when new positive cases in Malta were really low, sometimes even zero.

Do you still find it difficult to find skilled human resources locally?

Depends on for what role it is. For technology roles it is becoming increasingly difficult, and this has led to us expanding more in other countries instead of Malta for product development and tech roles.

But on a positive note, there are many skilled gaming people in Malta, which is good for other areas of the business, such as operations and commercial roles.

However, in those areas we struggle at times as well, mainly with languages skills. Having such a wide geographical spread as we have, we require people who speak certain languages as their mother tongue.

That said, we are also fortunate to have an increasing amount of applications of people who want to join Betsson Group, on average we get approx. 4,000 applications per month.