The Future’s Bright…The Future’s Online, In Conversation With Gustaf Hagman, CEO, LeoVegas

It may seem obvious to some that the future growth of the gambling industry is online. However, there are still many popular product verticals, such as bingo and lottery that are still majority retail-based markets. The impact of Covid – 19 may mean that we will see this transition happening a lot quicker than first expected.

Gustav Hagman, CEO of Leo Vegas believes the opportunities online are too big to miss and he kindly shared his thoughts with us on why he believes this and what we can do as an industry to better align ourselves with this impending trend going forward.

Congratulations on your recent new venture into the bingo market. This sector has traditionally been synonymous with a particular demographic of the general customer base. Do you think the process of digitalisation of this product will enable you to reach new audiences/demographics in the future?

Today we have a broader and larger customer base than ever before, and it is growing strongly. To meet the growing demand for entertaining games we launched Bingo, a social, simple and fun game for people in all target groups.

It is also interesting to see that today only 23 % of bingo is being played online, this means that there is a huge potential when the customer moves from offline to online. 

We saw recently that your subsidiary, CasinoGrounds, released a new slot game. How closely related do you think the recent success of casino products has been with the Covid 19 lockdown and is casino likely to continue to grow in the future due to its perceived ‘lockdown proof’ nature?

Yes the game Iron Bank from CasinoGrounds is an exciting high volatility game – I think it is great!

Our industry, like many other sectors, is experiencing a structural shift from offline to online. Owing to LeoVegas’ online position, appreciated brands and proprietary technical platform, we stand strong in an increasingly digital world.

Many believe that the iGaming industry still isn’t innovative enough. How can we as an industry work together to encourage and bring more innovative ideas to market?

I think LeoVegas constantly delivers innovation in terms of improved customer experience. We have some exciting features in the pipeline that I hope we can put into production until year end – so stay tuned for more news!

Leo Vegas has been at the forefront of online and mobile gaming for so long, considering the impact of Covid on the retail market, will online gaming completely overshadow retail gaming in the near future?

Yes, the shift towards online is very strong and covid-19 speeded up that behaviour. We see this not only in online gaming but in others industries as well such as e-commerce, food online among others. It is my strong belief that this will continue. Remember that only 20% of all gambling is online in Europe today so we have a strong structural growth.

Editor’s note: From speaking with Gustav its seems clear that the shift towards online is very strong. There’s a common misconception that the iGaming market is already saturated but when you consider that only 23% of bingo is played online and only 20% of all gambling in Europe is online, it should be reassuring to know that there’s still massive potential for growth in this sector. Online opportunities are boundless for companies like Leo Vegas who put innovation at the heart of their brand on operations.

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