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After eight years at the company, arriving in 2003 as head of sales and marketing and taking over in November 2006 as CEO, the business learned of his immediate departure on Friday 29 July at 1pm with Carlund appointing current Maltese CEO Björn Krantz as his temporary successor the following Monday.
The official grounds for his sudden resignation were later announced in a press release as “family reasons”, however it seems that despite guiding the company through a flotation in 2007, maintaining a profitable business since 2003, growing the number, and crucially raising the quality standards of casino games and launching them to larger licensees in a number of new markets, it was time for a fresh approach.
As he commented during the company’s end of year 2010 results, “our industry is going through significant change as many countries around the world are in the process of regulating online gaming, which affects both operators and suppliers.” Perhaps as egaming continues to mature, the board felt it needed someone who could guide them into increasingly complex waters but with an even more successful outcome.
“It’s been an interesting ride to say the least,” he told me on a warm day in Sweden in late June looking worn out but still passionate about a business he’d cared for and nurtured for more than half a decade.
“The business was a lot smaller when I arrived. It was healthy and growing but I wanted to build on what was founded a long time before me. That was to focus on casino, continue to increase the capacity and quality of the games and work with innovation and also reliability and availability of the systems and solutions,” he says looking back.
Five and a half years ago Net Ent, as it is more commonly known, operated on the same casino operation and management platform; what has changed in 2011, the broad-shouldered Swede explains, is that it has spent millions of Krona developing a new platform ready to roll out in the coming months as well as around 100 games. These games, however, are developed very differently to others on the market.
Walking round its downtown Stockholm offices and observing the design and creative departments is more like taking a tour of Disney’s graphic department than a casino empire with a market cap of around £220m and that saw revenues rise from SEK300m (£29m) in 2009 to SEK368.3m a year later.
Hundreds of developers take months to hand-draw each character with minute precision, working on thousands of variations until they get it just right. Characters such as Gonzo from its Gonzo’s Quest slot game, for example, are now household names; each score is individual to each game with its Frankenstein music especially commissioned and worked on alongside Universal guidelines; while graphics are worked on for millions of man hours until they are clear, precise and uniquely recognisable as Net Ent products.
The entire process is not dissimilar to working for a movie studio, its head of creative, hired from legendary US animation house Dreamworks, tells me as he demos Frankenstein, the first of many brands it has chosen to license from Universal film studios in Hollywood. “Just look at the flames darting out of the screen when you hit a bonus,” he exclaims, “you don’t get that kind of detail, sound, graphics, storyline and entertainment with any other game or games developer.”
Öhman tells me he has no fear when it comes to the competition, the mass games producing Microgaming, which develops new products virtually every day, and the increasingly dominant and market-grabbing Playtech that recently ventured into mobile by acquiring highly regarded Swedish outfit Mobenga in July.
“Every game looks different, and with the amount of money being turned over in an online casino today you need to ensure the games you select are really tried and tested and don’t have bugs. I’m sure operators are aware of that but they should still recognise what it takes.
“From completion of development of one of our games until its release to the market takes three months of solid testing. I don’t know how their suppliers [Playtech and Microgaming] work but we’ve taken it on ourselves to make sure no bugs are left in the games when they’re released.
“We take that very seriously because the damage that can be done to an operator and to ourselves in huge. Serious things. We have well over €1bn being wagered in our systems every month, so if you get something wrong it can hurt you quite badly.”
The now former CEO of Net Ent was also unafraid of taking big decisions to benefit the business’s long-term ambitions and, at the beginning of this year, terminated around 15% of its 60-strong customer base to focus on larger potential clients. “We want to focus on the larger operators that are generating large revenues,” he says.
“Many of the operators we have terminated agreements with have been ported to white label partners such as Entraction and we continue to provide them with our games.
“Italy and the UK are key target markets at the moment. The ones we have are Victor Chandler, Stan James and Sportingbet and the list we want is well known: Betfair, Ladbrokes and Bet365. Some of these are looking for our kinds of products, some aren’t but as the business matures, the sales cycles get longer and it’s a question of being there and talking. Once they decide to change, you have to ensure you have an established relationship and that you’re ready.”
ENTIRE ERG INTERVIEW HERE
The official grounds for his sudden resignation were later announced in a press release as “family reasons”, however it seems that despite guiding the company through a flotation in 2007, maintaining a profitable business since 2003, growing the number, and crucially raising the quality standards of casino games and launching them to larger licensees in a number of new markets, it was time for a fresh approach.
As he commented during the company’s end of year 2010 results, “our industry is going through significant change as many countries around the world are in the process of regulating online gaming, which affects both operators and suppliers.” Perhaps as egaming continues to mature, the board felt it needed someone who could guide them into increasingly complex waters but with an even more successful outcome.
“It’s been an interesting ride to say the least,” he told me on a warm day in Sweden in late June looking worn out but still passionate about a business he’d cared for and nurtured for more than half a decade.
“The business was a lot smaller when I arrived. It was healthy and growing but I wanted to build on what was founded a long time before me. That was to focus on casino, continue to increase the capacity and quality of the games and work with innovation and also reliability and availability of the systems and solutions,” he says looking back.
Five and a half years ago Net Ent, as it is more commonly known, operated on the same casino operation and management platform; what has changed in 2011, the broad-shouldered Swede explains, is that it has spent millions of Krona developing a new platform ready to roll out in the coming months as well as around 100 games. These games, however, are developed very differently to others on the market.
Walking round its downtown Stockholm offices and observing the design and creative departments is more like taking a tour of Disney’s graphic department than a casino empire with a market cap of around £220m and that saw revenues rise from SEK300m (£29m) in 2009 to SEK368.3m a year later.
Hundreds of developers take months to hand-draw each character with minute precision, working on thousands of variations until they get it just right. Characters such as Gonzo from its Gonzo’s Quest slot game, for example, are now household names; each score is individual to each game with its Frankenstein music especially commissioned and worked on alongside Universal guidelines; while graphics are worked on for millions of man hours until they are clear, precise and uniquely recognisable as Net Ent products.
The entire process is not dissimilar to working for a movie studio, its head of creative, hired from legendary US animation house Dreamworks, tells me as he demos Frankenstein, the first of many brands it has chosen to license from Universal film studios in Hollywood. “Just look at the flames darting out of the screen when you hit a bonus,” he exclaims, “you don’t get that kind of detail, sound, graphics, storyline and entertainment with any other game or games developer.”
Öhman tells me he has no fear when it comes to the competition, the mass games producing Microgaming, which develops new products virtually every day, and the increasingly dominant and market-grabbing Playtech that recently ventured into mobile by acquiring highly regarded Swedish outfit Mobenga in July.
“Every game looks different, and with the amount of money being turned over in an online casino today you need to ensure the games you select are really tried and tested and don’t have bugs. I’m sure operators are aware of that but they should still recognise what it takes.
“From completion of development of one of our games until its release to the market takes three months of solid testing. I don’t know how their suppliers [Playtech and Microgaming] work but we’ve taken it on ourselves to make sure no bugs are left in the games when they’re released.
“We take that very seriously because the damage that can be done to an operator and to ourselves in huge. Serious things. We have well over €1bn being wagered in our systems every month, so if you get something wrong it can hurt you quite badly.”
The now former CEO of Net Ent was also unafraid of taking big decisions to benefit the business’s long-term ambitions and, at the beginning of this year, terminated around 15% of its 60-strong customer base to focus on larger potential clients. “We want to focus on the larger operators that are generating large revenues,” he says.
“Many of the operators we have terminated agreements with have been ported to white label partners such as Entraction and we continue to provide them with our games.
“Italy and the UK are key target markets at the moment. The ones we have are Victor Chandler, Stan James and Sportingbet and the list we want is well known: Betfair, Ladbrokes and Bet365. Some of these are looking for our kinds of products, some aren’t but as the business matures, the sales cycles get longer and it’s a question of being there and talking. Once they decide to change, you have to ensure you have an established relationship and that you’re ready.”
ENTIRE ERG INTERVIEW HERE