Speaking to SBC, Better Collective CEO and Co-Founder Jesper Søgaard looks back at an eventful 2021 that transformed the Stockholm-listed firm’s global outlook by diversifying its business units beyond affiliate publishing…

Overall, I think 2021 was a great year in spite of the fact that most of the world was still affected by the impact of COVID-19. However, the pandemic didn’t stop us at Better Collective from growing our business, expanding to new markets, developing our brands and bringing value to the users of our products.

With this piece, we would like to reflect on the past 12 months and all of our important milestones.

We started the year by becoming the majority owner of Mindway AI which focuses on identifying and preventing problem gambling through its software solutions based on neuroscience and AI. This supported our continuing ambition to make betting safer.

In March, we acquired Rekatochklart, the leading online betting community site, which was an important step in our journey on the Swedish market.

One of the most important and largest acquisitions to date, the Action Network, helped us to strengthen our position in the US and gain a leading position in the sports betting media and affiliation in the United States.

Another highlight of the year was the establishment of our Dutch entity, BC Netherlands as well as the acquisitions of important assets, Soccernews.nl and Voetbalwedden.net. Strengthening our position in the growing Dutch market will remain as one of our priorities in 2022.

In September, we hosted the first multi-market BC Bookmaker Awards in Amsterdam, rewarding the best-performing bookmakers in five European markets. The awards were created to help bettors to navigate the market and make well-informed decisions based on data, and we are looking forward to expanding the awards to four new markets in 2022.

Media partnerships continued with strong performance with over 45,000 new depositing customers in Q3 of 2021 alone. We are expecting to establish more media partnerships in the upcoming year in various countries.

We maintained our focus on responsible gambling. Mindway AI’s Gamalyze was launched on all of our main sports betting media brands and offered to all of our employees; the self-test identifying harmful gambling behaviour and providing individualised advice is part of our continuous effort to drive strong user protection.

We were thrilled to receive the award for Sports Affiliate of the year at the 2021 SBC awards, as well as the award for Industry Innovation of the year for Mindway AI. Recognition of our efforts by the industry is very meaningful to us.

We are looking forward to 2022, and continuing our journey to become the world leader in digital sports betting media.