Novomatic is to take its Admiral brand into Germany with a mix of organic and acquisition as a method of becoming quickly established.
The company has created a high-profile board to lead the campaign, comprising Heiko Busse, managing director of its German machine making subsidiary Crown Technologies, Jürgen Irsigler, managing director of Admiral Sports Austria and a bookmaking specialist and Mehmet Celikoglu, one of the managing directors of Admiral Spielhalle which is the brand for the German arcades of Novomatic.
The team is already on the acquisition trail in Germany, reported Heiko Busse. “It will normally take at least up to six months to obtain a new licence from a local authority and we will go that route, but in order to gain entrance to the market quickly, we will need to buy up smaller operations.”
With over 250 Admiral sports betting shops Novomatic is already a major power in the Austrian sports betting market and under various brands in several other countries, e.g. Romania, the Czech Republic, Italy, Gibraltar and Serbia. “The three of us will use our experience in the arcades and betting industry as we already have a structure in place that can support us.”
He said that in Germany both arcades and betting shops were controlled by the local authorities, which considered the difference between them to be minimal. Germany of course is currently embroiled in controversy as the 16 states wish to heavily reduce the number of arcades in operation.
Nevertheless Novomatic sees a big opportunity in Germany. The country has around 3,000 sports betting shops in operation. It is anticipated that there will be some movement in the market in the near future as many different compete for shares in the market. The current main operators are Tipico, Bet3000, Tipwin, MyBet and Happy Bet. There are also some online operators that do not work through shops, such as Betway and Bet 365.
