Estonia-headquartered land-based and online gambling operator Olympic Entertainment Group (OEG) announced that it has established the Olybet Malta Ltd. subsidiary in a bid to expand its online operations into new regulated jurisdictions.
The company operates multiple brick-and-mortar gambling venues across the Baltics as well as in Slovakia, Italy, and Malta. In total, its land-based operations include 123 casinos and 32 betting shops. As for OEG’s online operations, these involve the operation of the OlyBet gambling website in its domestic Estonian market.
As mentioned above, the company has decided that the time has come to expand its iGaming reach into other European regulated markets. The choice of Malta as a jurisdiction to provide its online services from is not arbitrary or surprising, given the island country’s established reputation of a host of some major iGaming operators. Malta’s online gambling regulations and tax regime have created a favorable environment for the provision of this type of products.
Along with the announcement about the creation of its Maltese subsidiary, OEG has also posted its financial results for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2016. Overall gaming revenue for the fourth quarter of 2016 amounted to €43 million, reflecting a 3.2% increase from the prior-year period.
Latvia was the group’s best performing market during the reported period. Gaming revenue from OEG’s 57 Latvian casinos totaled €16.4 million, up 16.7% year-on-year. The gambling operator left two jurisdictions during the third quarter of 2016. It first announced that it had quit the Belarusian gambling market due to the economic situation in the country and the unfavorable profitability prospects.
It has recently become clear that OEG’s Polish subsidiary had filed for bankruptcy. The company had missed the deadline announced by the local government to apply for an operational license and had thus been forced to close its Polish casino.
Despite leaving two markets last year, OEG reported a 12.6% increase in full-year gaming revenue. The company generated a total of €174.5 million during the twelve months ended December 31, 2016. Latvia was again the company’s top performer with gaming revenue of €60.6 million. Its Maltese operation also performed quite well during the period in review, reporting a revenue increase of 3,752% to €11 million.
