Betsson aims to take the “Amazon approach” when expanding more throughout Ontario after the firm went live in the province in February. 

Speaking to SBC Americas and Canadian Gaming Business Editor Jessica Welman at the Canadian Gaming Summit, Lance Agostino, Director of B2B Sportsbook at Betsson Group, expressed that the “economics are better” in Ontario when compared to the US. 

He stated: “The province can expect a sportsbook that we’ve been building for 15 years. Betsson took what I like to call the Amazon approach. We took this solution that we’ve been building for 15 years, this beautiful sportsbook… we want to take this solution and offer it to potential partners here in Ontario. 

“We’ve seen in Ontario, it has 46 operators. The economics are better, certainly in Ontario compared to states in the US where it’s sportsbooks only because you’re able to offer igaming and Live Casino, so when we look at potential partners here in Ontario they don’t essentially need all the things we look for in US because there’s a path to profitability faster because of the full catalogue.”

Towards the backend of February this year, the online gambling firm inked a partnership with Neccton to provide the latter’s Anti-Money Laundering and Responsible Gambling tools to its Betsafe brand in Ontario. 

That alliance witnessed Betsafe now being supported with Neccton’s ‘mentor’ software, which monitors player behaviour in real time and communicates with both player and operator should negative play patterns emerge. 

This announcement followed closely after Betsafe entered the Canadian province earlier this month after obtaining the necessary licences to operate with both a B2C and B2B offering. 

Expanding more on Betsafe, which is powered by Betsson’s sportsbook, Agostino expressed that, while being live in several markets inside and out of the US, Betsson aimed to create a brand that could “windowshop” in North America. 

“We went out and got access to Colorado and we’re operating our own brand,” expressed Betsson’s Director of Sportsbook. “But within the brand, the Betsson sportsbook, we deliver and offer to other partners as a licensed and regulated sportsbook provider in Colorado and in Ontario since February. 

“We migrated from the unregulated space, like a lot of operators did here in Ontario whereby we were operating on our own platform and our full techstack. We’ve since partitioned Ontario like the regulations require and the Betsson sportsbook has been powering Betsafe here in Ontario since February.”

Delving more into how Betsson’s operations have performed since going live in the Canadian province, Agostino stressed that the firm had already been live for a couple of years but just in the unregulated space so it was more on transitioning players to the regulated vertical. 

He explained: “We already had a built in player database here so it’s about reengaging those players. There were some KYC and administrative things players had to do when they came over to the regulated brand. 

“Sure, we saw a little bit of a dip from what we expected moving the players over from the unregulated to the regulated brand but since then it’s been great.”