SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Figures released by Sifo Advertising Measurements showed that Unibet was the top gambling operator for TV advertising spend in Sweden during the first 11 months of 2016.
Produced in conjunction with Dagens Media, the figures show that online gambling companies, including state-owned monopoly Svenska Spel, spent big on Swedish advertising platforms.
However, Unibet topped the lot with an outlay of SEK 270m (US $30m), ranking fourth overall across all industries and accounting for 1.5% of all TV marketing. Svenska Spel ranked fifth on the TV chart, with a total spend of just under SEK 243m.
The data is in line with figures covering the first half of 2016, which showed that gambling companies accounted for 10% of all Swedish TV advertising spending, a figure up from 3% in 2013.
The ‘Streaming TV’ category was also dominated by gambling operators, led by UK operator Bet365 with just under SEK 11m (3.8% of total streaming ad spending). Mobile specialists LeoVegas ranked third with SEK 9m, followed by Unibet in fourth with SEK 7.5m and Svenska Spel in eighth place with SEK 5.4m.
In terms of radio advertising, Svenska Spel comfortably outspent its international rivals, ranking second overall with an outlay of SEK 30m. Unibet was the only other gambling operator to make the radio’s top-10, spending SEK 17.3m.
Finally, LeoVegas was the only operator to make the top ten on the ‘mobile’ advertising chart, ranking 10th with a total spend of SEK 17.6m. No gambling operators appeared in the categories of cinema, unaddressed direct mail, rural press, ‘internet’ and outdoor advertising.
Sweden is expected to update the industry in March regarding a plan to liberalise its gambling market. These changes are expected to include curbs on the ability of operators not holding a new Swedish license to advertise via Swedish media outlets.
