Bwin has reportedly pulled out of the Russian market after lack of investment and changes to the market

World renowned bookmaker Bwin has reportedly halted all its operations in the Russian market, as of 13th February. When contacted to comment by vseprosport, Bwin neither confirmed or denied the information, stating that a press release will be published within the coming hours.

In 2016, Bwin had received a licence to begin operations in the Russian market with the website launching in June 2017.

Fast forward to 2020 and the development of the brand, Bwin, was taken over by the structures of Parimatch, however, by the end of December all advertising and promotions had stopped due to several changes in the market. These changes will come into effect in October 2021.

This seems like it was a long time coming as former Bwin.ru CEO, Dmitry Sergeyev, had stated last year that Bwin’s Russian licensed sports betting site was a failure waiting to happen. The former CEO, on his telegram channel, stated how the sports betting site was left to operate with no marketing investments and that it failed to generate enough revenue to pay of its staff.

Konstantin Ulanov, Founder at vseprosport.ru and Uffiliates.ru, concurred Sergeyev’s thoughts saying that:

This didn’t come as a surprise to us. Bwin was struggling with customer acquisition in Russia for years and only managed to start decent marketing campaign last autumn. After they stopped all marketing from January this year we were hoping they will give it another try.

With a lack of western sportsbook investments and Ukraine’s sudden rise in the gaming industry, Russia may start to lag behind in the CIS region with their neighbouring country reaping in all the benefits.

This is a developing story…

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