Kindred – one of Malta’s longest-standing online gaming companies – consolidated its various offices under one roof this week, with 400 people now based at Tigné Point’s business centre. CEO Henrik Tjärnström told Vanessa Macdonald this was a sign of the company’s ongoing commitment to Malta.

Sweden and possibly also the Netherlands will be changing their gaming regulation next year. How will Kindred handle this?

We have been preparing for this for the past 10 years. We got our first local licence in Italy in 2007 and in France in 2010. Since then, more have been added and we now have 12 local licences.

Sweden’s Parliament voted for the changes last week and the new licences will come into effect on January 1, 2019. In the Netherlands, the Senate has yet to vote but that is expected soon… Our best guesstimate is that it will be taken in summer, which would point towards late next year or early 2020 for going ‘live’.

Getting local licences means paying local tax… Isn’t that going to affect your business model?

If we have a strong position in the market, and the system looks benign, then we try to influence the system from within. We try to be a speaking partner, bringing in our expertise and knowledge to the table. That is what we did in the Danish market, where we worked in close cooperation with the Danish regulator to make the system as good as possible. We all have a joint interest in this, in terms of the government, the sport, the customers and us as operators.

Your margin will be much lower. Is there a lot of pressure to start looking at grey markets?

Some people do. But we have actively shied away from that and forced ourselves to be more efficient and restrict ourselves to the protection of the EU umbrella, for example for our dot.com activity, going for local licences as and when we feel that they are beneficial for the long-term perspective.

There is margin pressure, no doubt, but it is part of our strategy to transform the business from dot.com to dot.country…

You have had a fairly aggressive acquisition strategy, which is par for the course in your sector.  Your latest was British company 32Red, with Brexit looming and no clear deal terms. It makes the UK your largest market…

We have a very good geographical portfolio mix. It is quite a tight race between the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Norway, Finland, Belgium and the UK. We have not given any detailed breakdown in the last couple of quarters, but last year we talked about no market being above 20 per cent.

The British market is by far the largest locally-regulated market today and we do not see that changing because of Brexit. It is an important market for our sector and as such we have to have a bigger position there.

At the end of the day, if the cost of running the business goes up, and it becomes difficult to find talent, then people will look elsewhere

We operate the British market out of Gibraltar and then the rest from Malta.

We recently heard that Bet365 was moving a sizeable chunk of its workforce from Gibraltar to Malta. Yet your strategy has been to carry on investing in Gibraltar, where you actually moved into new offices last year…

That is where we bought a few businesses: Stan James in 2015 and 32Red last year. Both had operations in Gibraltar, which is why we decided to serve the British market from there, outside Brexit, so to speak. The EU business we will continue to operate out of Malta.

A market that has defied online gaming operators is the US. Since President Donald Trump seems to be full of surprises, is there any attempt to persuade him to change the situation there?

We have been keeping a close eye on the American market for many years, especially since 2012 when New Jersey opened up for licences. We decided last year to move into New Jersey this year and we are in the late stage of a licence application process. We will start there and then monitor what other states could become available.

The US Supreme Court a few weeks ago repealed legislation which had tried to curb sports betting, which opens up the opportunity for sports betting to be decided on a state-by-state basis.  It gives us the chance to get more into the American market and we are very much keeping an eye on that.

Various sectors in Malta are complaining that the cost of rent in Malta is getting more expensive and that it is difficult to retain foreign staff. How is Kindred finding it?

We operate customer support from Malta in our customers’ native language so we have over 50 nationalities in the group. So we have a strong need for a lot of different nationalities. We are working very actively with our culture: the re-branding of the Unibet group to Kindred in December 2016 was a very important part of that, emphasising the multibrand ability we have as a group.

This office has been in the making for the past four years. This is another important step to put the Kindred flag on the island and to offer a superior employee experience. We offer a good reward structure and pensions, as well as facilities like food and health space. This is what helps to differentiate us from our competitors as well.

It is a war for talent.

Is Malta becoming less competitive to the extent that this could become a deterrent?

At the end of the day, if the cost of running the business goes up, and it becomes difficult to find talent, then people will look elsewhere. We don’t have all our operations here in Malta – a lot of tech development and marketing is done overseas – but this is the largest office we have: 5,200 square metres and 500 desks for 400 staff, so we clearly have room to grow here. It is a big investment by the company into its employees: the most important asset we sit on.

Apart from the fact that you chose a pink carpet for your opening, rather than a red one, there is another aspect which intrigued me: no politicians cutting ribbons…

We wanted this to be an event for our staff, suppliers and the companies we work with. We have frequent visits from politicians, political market analysts and others… but in other circumstances.

What are the things you would ask for if I had a magic wand?

A fair and transparent licensing process. There has been high pressure on the licensing system in Malta, as there are so many applications. Sometimes we have been a bit frustrated that in spite of being one of the longest-operating companies on the island, we are put into the same queue as a start-up just coming to Malta. Having a homogenous and rational framework for licences is definitely good.

And the infrastructure and housing situation is important: being able to find good accommodation for our staff at an affordable level.