It’s easy to get a licence, it’s easy to open a shop, it’s easy to get the best marketing deals. All these factors indicate that in 3-5 years’ time, this country will reach a level where you can start making decent money. The African market is emerging, the economy continues to improve, and infrastructure is evolving. To get a serious market share, or let’s say a modicum, you need to spend a lot of money.Ĭonversely, in Tanzania it’s pretty much an empty field – you have some retail networks, but the quality of their market presence is often low, and we feel comfortable ‘beating’ them. And thirdly, we look at the barriers for entry – for instance if you go to Europe, these are extremely high, not in terms of licensing but in terms of product and marketing spend.

The second reason we look at is population – in this case 40 million. In places like Tanzania, if you go on your own it means it’s just you and the government – overcoming any challenges can then become very slow and bureaucratic. This has made it easier to both keep the communication going about Tanzanian business and tap into an administrative resource to help our own market entry. We have a good business partner, who also happens to be Ukrainian, speaks the local language and frequently travels to Ukraine. We would never do it because the first way into a country is through someone who has established local connections to clear the path. First of all, whether there is a local partner, because we would never randomly pick a country from the globe and pursue that market. We ended up in Africa not by coincidence, but by examining a number of factors. SBC: You recently steered clear of the well-trodden path into the likes of Kenya and Nigeria by making a move into Tanzania why did you make this decision?

Just over a month on, Portnov gave SBC News readers some further insight into why he chose to enter a country that is not yet ready to fully embrace the phenomenon of online betting, why lifetime commission-based affiliate deals are not an option for Parimatch, and how regulation might change once the market matures and margins inevitably become squeezed. Speaking at this year’s Betting on Football conference, Parimatch CEO Sergey Portnov spoke about his company’s “wild” decision to move into the Tanzanian sports betting market.

Sergey portnov parimatch