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Carlesund eyes land-based market as Evolution CEO C O LU M N Robin Harrison EVOLUTION GAMING IS a company that is not afraid to follow its own path. It takes an economically cautious approach to licensing in newly-regulated markets, it maintains a lasersharp focus on its core live dealer offering, and it has never acquired another company. True to its name, it looks to continuously evolve its business rather than revolutionising what it does, and this strategy has proven resoundingly successful. Evolution is also the name of the game when it comes to management changes, with founder and chief executive Jens von Bahr moving up to serve as executive chairman, clearing the way for Evolution Malta chief executive Martin Carlesund to assume the group CEO seat. Taking over from von Bahr to head the industry’s leading live dealer specialist looks like a mammoth task, but for Carlesund it is simply an evolution of his previous role. “After being chief executive of the Malta business it wasn’t that big a change of role, when it came to me shifting over to group CEO,” he says. “As Malta CEO I already had Latvian operations in my remit, so to the wider industry it may have seemed a bigger change, but ultimately it wasn’t that major a shift.” The evolution mantra can also be seen in his approach to the new role, where his focus is on continuing to do what Evolution does, only better. “We are continually looking to distance ourselves from the competition,” Carlesund explains. “We want to ensure that we continue GIQ Q4 REVIEW
Having taken over from Jens von Bahr as Evolution Gaming’s group CEO in October last year, Martin Carlesund is looking to the land-based sector as he bids to sustain the supplier’s rapid growth to do everything we do better than anyone else. We need to keep that urge.” So what comes next for Evolution? When Golden Nugget announced Ezugi as its live dealer partner in New Jersey, it seemed as though Evolution’s smaller rival had stolen a march on the industry leader. Not so, according to Carlesund, who sees the rush into the US market as being somewhat premature. “The market is a little bit small,” he suggests. “We are too business-savvy just to blunder into the US without the right market conditions. It’s more likely than not that we will go into the US in 2017, but we don’t want to rush it. We’ve got a slightly different approach to other companies. “It’s so easy to see New Jersey as a path into the US, but it’s a very small market,” he states. M&A is also treated warily. For years Evolution has been named as a potential acquisition target for Playtech, and it has dismissed those rumours for just as long. It has never been involved in any M&A activity because it has never needed to, says Carlesund. Rival NetEnt, which has been slowly but steadily building its own live dealer offering, has also long been mooted as a potential partner. Carlesund admits that he can see why people suggest the tie-up, but insists there are no discussion taking place between the two. However, the company is not oblivious to the
industry consolidation taking place around it, and there have been internal discussions about potential targets. But Carlesund insists that the supplier will only consider the right deal. In the meantime its focus is fixed on the land-based sector. London’s Hippodrome and The Ritz Club casinos have launched Evolution’s Dual Play Roulette product, which von Bahr has described as a “breakthrough” for the company. “Such partnerships with such prominent venues are key for us, as their offering meshes perfectly with Evolution’s products. We feel that casinos will become increasingly digitised, with more moving online, and the natural product to bridge the gap between online and land-based is Dual Play Roulette,” he asserts. This is Evolution’s long-term play. “It’s not going to be this year, or maybe even next year, but strategically it’s very important,” he says. Talk of taking bricks-and-mortar casinos online has been focused on the US in recent years, but Evolution, and Carlesund, believe that it can and should be a global phenomenon. After all, who else is better equipped to rival the online-only market-leaders? You can expect Evolution to continue to live up to its name under Carlesund’s leadership, and if 2017 is its year for moving into the US and entering the M&A fray, possibly a dab of revolution as well. n 9