BET24 SOLD TO UNIBET
| Year | 2012 |
| Price | €13,500,0001 |
| Asset | Bet24 |
| Buyer |  |
| Status | Closed. Migrated with Unibet |
| Software | No |
| Success |  |
Bet24 was in April 2012 sold to Unibet at a price that sent shock waves through the online betting community in Denmark and the neighboring countries. MTG had for a while been looking for a buyer but the price seemed very low.
Nordic Betting Ltd which is the name of company operating Bet24 had proved very successful in the years leading up to the sale. Bet24 was the only major brand considered to be Danish besides Danske Spil. Bet24 was founded by a Danish entrepreneur Holger Kristiansen in 2001.
Holger Kristiansen and other investors eventually sold the majority ownership to MTG which is a well-known media company in Scandinavia. MTG owns the TV channel TV3, amongst other companies, which has been running Bet24 TV adds in Denmark for many years.
Bet24 was at the time of the purchase on the Ongame network and Unibet was part of the Microgaming network.
We assume the reason why MTG was so desperate to sell was the fact that the Danish government had granted a license system Denmark, forcing all licensed operators to pay 20% gaming taxes. The taxes which now had to be paid in Denmark made online gambling less profitable and less interesting for MTG to be involved in. Rumors were that Sweden had a similar license system in the pipeline making Bet24 potentially losing even more profits in future gaming taxes in Sweden as well.
We have been told by a source that the purchase price was not more than 3 x the profits of 2011 which seems like a low estimation for such an organized company. The total revenue of 2011 was €10,5 million.1
We can only speculate that Unibet have guaranteed to buy media from TV3 but it seems Unibet made a scoop and that MTG just had enough of the gambling industry and wanted Bet24 removed from its portfolio.
With Bet24 being one of the biggest brands in Denmark, in the mind of the Danes, it is peculiar that Unibet decided to close down Bet24 and not take advantage of its popularity in Denmark.
It will be exiting to see what will happen in Denmark now that the Danish government opened up the market January 1, 2012. Read the article about the Danish Gambling License and see a full list of the Danish Poker Rooms.
The staff at Bet24 was all offered jobs at Unibet but most of the experienced staff from Bet24 decided to leave after many years of dedication to the company. Unibet's senior staff and management are primarily located in London unlike Bet24 who had senior staff in Malta, London & Copenhagen. The positions Unibet offered in Malta were mainly in customer support, accounting, fraud department & CRM.
1.timesofmalta.com April 12, 2012