“This is the first year of our new approach, and the list of achievements are impressive, but we have a lot more to do,” highlights Richard Brown, CEO of Gaming Innovation Group, upon dissection of the company’s performance through the past year.
The comments come in the group’s annual breakdown of 2021, which saw the Malta headquartered firm enter its first full year as a sole B2B enterprise following October 2020’s €33m B2C divestment to Betsson Group.
“We have closed off 2021 with strong financial performance seeing growth in all KPIs, and importantly we have laid a truly exciting and expansive structure in place to further accelerate our global long term ambitions via the acquisition of Sportnco,” he reflected.
“While pleased with results for 2021, I still very much feel that we are only beginning our journey towards creating full value potential in the group’s business.”
For the year, GiG reported a 28 per cent revenue uptick to €66.8m (2020: €52.2m), with media services continuing “to go from strength to strength” with €45m (2020: €34.3m) and platform services said to be building towards its expansion strategy after coming in at €21.4m (2020: €18.9m).
Headwinds encountered, as expanded upon in the past by the group, came from the familiar German and Dutch jurisdictions, much like many other industry entities.
Meanwhile, revenue growth from GiG’s underlying SaaS business followed a strategic shutdown of its white-label enterprise, while entry into six regulated jurisdictions is hailed as a “key driver for the long term growth”.
Following praise being heaped on the aforementioned Sportnco acquisition, which has been praised as marking a “step forward into the next chapter” for the group, Brown switched tack slightly by examining ongoing ESG efforts.
“After a remarkable year growing stronger together, 2021 allowed us to refocus our sustainability efforts and address the broad spectrum of initiatives needed to improve our ESG ratings, whilst adapting to our B2B business strategy,” he commented.
“Our four sustainability pillars have two clearly defined business and people goals, allowing for a truly holistic approach.”
Continuing: “What makes me proud is that we are taking ownership of every aspect of sustainability, including our impact on the global environment, and through our upcoming assessment of our scope one, two and three emissions, our supplier chain ethics and improving our global reporting, we not only aim to achieve net zero by 2030, but we will continue to improve our ratings and the overall sustainability of GiG, our people, partners and their end users.”
To conclude his CEO address, Brown again refers to the productive year that is being left behind, but reaffirms that more is expected moving forward.
“2021 was an exciting and rewarding year, and our first full year as B2B only focus, and we have made real ground in positioning the business and have continued to focus on improving our client offering and operational structures to enable us to continue to pursue the success and growth opportunities that are in front of the business to ultimately deliver value for our shareholders,” it is concluded.
