Betsson group

BWC Sustainability score: At this point, I am not assigning a sustainability score yet as I am working on analysing more companies.  I first want to have a better understanding of the performance of more stakeholders to be able to make a fair comparison in terms of who complies, who competes and who leads when it comes to social, environmental and governance performance. 

I have an affiliate partnership with Betsson. If you sign up with their online casino and play for real money, I earn a commission.

I hope to get an opportunity to talk to them regarding their ESG performance and ambitions in order to determine how sustainable they are and how they contribute to society.

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The initial review of the Betsson Group is based on their 2020 Annual and Sustainability report which you can find in full here. The next report for 2021 is expected soon and we will update and report on progress made as soon as possible.

Name: Betsson Group
Type: Publicly owned: traded at Nasdaq Stockholm
Origin: Sweden
Offices: Head office in Malta, other offices in 15  other locations
Climate neutral with offsetting: Yes
Products Casino, Sportsbook, Poker
Brands: 23

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The company

Betsson Group is a Swedish publicly traded company with approximately 1800 employees that operates globally and holds licences in 17 countries. The latest countries which they have added to their list and obtained licences in are Kenya and Croatia. The group has major offices in Malta, Hungary, Lithuania, Georgia, Estonia, Brazil and Colombia of which Malta is the operational head office.

The portfolio consists of 20 brands which offer (live) casino games and sports betting. The total number of games offered is around 5000, of which the majority are slots and over 80% can be played from mobile devices.

Betsson’s five business principles are:

  • Responsible business putting the player first
  • Operational excellence driving efficiency and effectiveness
  • Live the Betsson culture: “One Betsson” “Passion” “Fair Play”
  • Preferred employer and business partner
  • Global scope with local focus

Their sustainability framework is based on three pillars and are compliant with GRI reporting standards for their ESG reporting. The sustainability pillars are:

  • business compliance
  • responsible gaming
  • employee, social & climate impacts

Environmental

Betsson operates as a 100% climate neutral company….

Betsson’s operations have been carbon neutral for several years, which means that Betsson offsets its carbon dioxide emissions. Betsson carbon-offsets the estimated greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 by purchasing emission reduction units equivalent to 9,195 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in a ‘Gold Standard-certified’ climate project.

Learn more about environmental challenges and solutions

Social

When it comes to the social aspect of their sustainability report, we made a distinction between internal matters which involve the employees, supplier and partners, and external matters which regard the players and the local communities where Betsson brands operate.

Internal

A total of approximately 1800 employees from 60 different nationalities work for the company. The major goal of Betsson when it comes to their employees is that they aim to be the “Employer or Choice” which they measure by the number of employees that would recommend Betsson as a place to work to their family and friends, and the employee turnover. The goals they’ve set for these are resp. 90% and less than 30%, the first goal they have just missed with a score of 89%, the second one they did reach with a score of 28%.

When it comes to matters such as inclusiveness, gender distribution and personal development, 84% of all employees agree that equal chances are offered to all colleagues and they are close to reaching their goal of 40% female managers, although in higher/executive management only 29% are women. Finally all employees have access to a training portal for personal development.

External

The highest priority when it comes to the other side of social matters is Responsible Gaming, or the way (potential) problem gambling is addressed. Betsson wants to be an inspiration for a healthy relationship to gaming in the industry and in 2020 has participated in around 7 conferences, seminars and/or panel discussions on this topic.

Also they obtained accreditation from the Global Gambling Guidance Group (4G), an organisation whose mission it is to minimise the impact of problem gambling on communities and individuals.

The main goal they set for 2021 was to develop a measurable target to measure their performance in the future and to sponsor at least two research projects on this topic.

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Governance

With regards to business compliance and transparency Betsson has given anti corruption, business compliance, GDPR and anti-money laundry a high priority and normal priority to tax transparency. They claim that taxes are never their primary driver when making decisions and that they continuously work with industry organisations and local lawmakers to develop tax frameworks and rules.

Over the time period discussed in this report, Betsson has not received any fines, had 0 (confirmed) corruption cases and only 1 whistleblower incident was reported and investigated – however the outcome if that investigation is not mentioned.

Approximately two thirds of the employees have signed the company’s code of conduct and received (annual) training with regards to money laundry, responsible gaming and GDPR.

Learn more about governance challenges and solutions

Find out how Betsson compares to 4 other operators

Source material

Websites:

Reports:

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