What does a typical day at Olybet look like?
Our parent company is called Olympic Entertainment Group. Olybet is our leading brand, covering sports bars, gaming, onlinesports betting, fantasy sports, poker and traditional casino games.
A day in the life of Olybet is very interesting and complex. For the people that work in it, it’s unique because we’re an entertainment company, not necessarily a betting company. We engage in a lot of activities across the spectrum, travelling around, creating content for our media business and the shows we produce; talking about sports and engaging with sports. We have had some significant partnerships with the NBA, NHL and the European Tour. We’ve taken more than 1,000 employees tosporting events and in different places to participate in the things our customers do, and to engage with our sports partners.
We partner with clubs in Serie A and LaLiga. We have Sky boxes, we’re in the locker rooms doing city tours and a lot of different fun activities. A day in the life of Olybet is busy, but it’s fun. We try to inject sports entertainment into everyday life. Everyone here has apps to watch sports that are paid for by the company. There are TVs all around the office, we’re constantly watching sports and engaging in live activities on our premises or online. We operate in 10 countries across Europe. We have more than 10 hotels in the Baltics alone. We have about 150 gaming premises and about 90 sports bars.
What makes Olybet stand out from other competitors?
Olybet is an entertainment compay that has sports betting as a product. We are engaged in a lot of different activities that areimportant to different groups of people. We like to be close to sports fans. We like to be close to younger people and they’re allvery different. We have traditional gaming customers that like to be in premises that are close to home or close to work.
There’s just a lot going on and the way we do business is in a responsible way. We have significant responsible gamingprogrammes that are protecting our customers and our suppliers, but we only operate in regulated markets.
In every country we operate in, we have a local licence. We have physical premises in all the markets and everything we do isintegrated that way. We have a global entertainment platform and local businesses, so we can tailor our experience to eachmarket. In every market, the interests are a little bit different. If you rank the top three sports in every country, they’re a little bitdifferent, so we get to focus a lot on what people locally find interesting. We stream a lot of sports and a lot of live events. Wetravel a lot. We take customers all over the world to Vegas, Toronto, Abu Dhabi, Japan and Kenya. We’re all over the globe,giving unique experiences to people at live events with our partners.
What does the partnership with the IBIA mean for the company going forward?
It’s a way for us to live our values more publicly and be associated with an organisation whose main purpose really is to protect sports and the integrity of sports with its anti-corruption practices. It is an opportunity for us to be more vocal and be more active externally. We have a big footprint across Europe so we’re able to share information with the association, and other operators that take this opportunity seriously.
There are TVs all around the office, we’re constantly watching sports and engaging
How do these partnerships differ? Do you take a different approach?
Yes, we do. If you look at the NHL Global Series special events this year, it’ll be in Australia playing ice hockey, our partners tendto be in a lot of places. The NBA plays in Mexico; they play in China, France, the UAE etc. What we try to do is be associatedwith partners that are interested in growing their sport.
The NBA tends to be a US-based sport, but everyone in the world watches basketball and a lot of them watch the NBA. Todayin the NBA, most of the best players – especially the younger ones – are Europeans. The feeder for global sports, whether it’sFIBA, the Olympics, the NBA or Euroleague, a lot of the talent comes from Europe and so we try to highlight that for somecountries. We participate and support local leagues. We are engaged in the academies that our club partners support. We arepartnered with the clubs and our club partners offer incredible experiences. If you go to a night game at Real Betis, it’s a prettyspectacular light show with live music on the pitch and around a billion people have viewed it on the Internet to date.
We try to take people to these types of experiences and let them live the sport uniquely where it takes place. Great cities, great clubs, great stadium environments, great arenas. We go in the locker room, we meet the players, we do a lot. It’s a fantastic opportunity for our customers. We have recently taken more than 1,000 customers to sporting events and more than 1,000 employees to the same events. So we spread the love.
Do you have any plans to enter any new markets? Are you on the lookout for new sports to create opportunities around?
We’re always looking to grow the company. We’ve added four new countries over the last couple of years and we’ve expandedthe business continuously over the last three or four years, even during Covid-19. We will continue to do that.
We’re primarily a European operator, but we do spend a lot of time in other parts of the world physically. With our mediabusiness, there’s no limitations. We will continue to advance into territories where we are not today, and just continue to growour footprint and network across Europe; then ultimately outside Europe.
Every country has different interests and we try to focus on specific countries with things that they find interesting. In somecountries, it’s cycling. In some countries, it’s volleyball. In Spain, it’s padel. If you want to engage with sports fans, you have tobe local as well as global. We have significant global partnerships that people find appealing. And we do a lot with local sportsfans around the sports they find the most interesting in their countries.
Did your partnership with the DP World Tour change in any way with the merger of the LIV Tour?
It has not changed one bit. A lot of our customers love golf and play golf. We are doing OlyBet golf tournaments in all of ourcountries to activate the partnership. People are playing in local tournaments at the best golf courses in Europe. That’s a part ofour partnership with DP World Tour. In fact, we are expanding our relationship with golf. OlyBet is the official partner of the RyderCup 2023, played in Rome.
In 2024, there will be opportunities for us to continue to expand our relationship with golf through different partnerships, butalso the Olympics. Olympic Entertainment Group has had a long history of supporting local Olympic committees and localathletes to train, prepare and represent their countries in the Olympics. The road to Paris will be a big part of what we do in 2024 and golf will be a part of that.
