approached by the chairman of OnGame after the fall-out from Kinnevik, to start their affiliate programme, “but to grow a database that started out with nine names on an Excel sheet.” A year and a half later, Edward’s team had grown to 20 people working solely on the affiliates programme, taking OnGame’s five first deposits per day to 500 per day in 18 months.
OnGame was sold to BetandWin (now
bwin.party and formerly bwin) for €570m in 2005, and has been bought and sold to a variety of different vendors since then, including Amaya, NYX and is currently on the market following NYX’s acquisition of Openbet. Following the BetandWin purchase, Edward was approached by PokerStars to oversee its affiliates programme, but having invested ridiculous amounts of money in its own brand, Edward could see that PokerStars didn’t want to become reliant on affiliates, and left after nine months to join Ladbrokes as Managing Director of Poker.
Ladbrokes was one of the first land-based UK bookmakers to add online as a product, but post UIEGA, market competition in legal jurisdictions
P52 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE /
247.COM
Edward left Ladbrokes and moved his family back to Sweden in 2011. Having watched all the senior positions in igaming vacate Sweden for the sunny aspect of Malta, Edward chose to stay, setting up Ihre Consulting with the aim of help gaming companies manage their affiliate management process.
intensified and the retail-first business found it difficult to compete in the online poker market. “Ladbrokes had been successfully running its business the same way for 120 years, such that shifting into the dotcom era was a little painful,” stated Edward. “In the UK, Ladbrokes was very good at poker, but after UIEGA, everyone withdrew from the US and focused on Ladbrokes’ core markets.”
As a Swede, raised in a dotcom environment, Edward also found the company structure frustrating. “Coming from Sweden, we have flat flexible corporate cultures that are so integral to success; NetEnt, Evolution, Betsson, all founded by Swedes. I was used to fast moving businesses making quick decisions,” said Edward. “You get very comfortable in flat organisations where you are mandated to make your own decisions. At Ladbrokes, with its strict hierarchy and management structure, decision making was convoluted, much less flexible and so much slower than in Swedish companies.”
Edward left Ladbrokes and moved his family back to Sweden in 2011. Having watched all the senior positions in iGaming vacate Sweden for the sunny aspect of Malta, Edward chose to stay, setting up Ihre Consulting with the aim of helping gaming companies manage their affiliate management process. “I capitalised on my network of contacts,” described Edward. “I set-up the business around myself, rather than having a vision of creating a big company. However, things grew quickly and I started recruiting. We have worked with 140 companies in the last six years, helping find new affiliates
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