Sweden-facing AB Trav och Galopp (ATG) has announced the departure of CEO Hasse Lord Skarplöth following a decline in both revenue and net profit during its 2025 financial year.
ATG confirmed the news in its FY25 results, while it also confirmed Chair Peter Norman has taken over as interim CEO. Chief Financial Officer Lotta Nilsson will also take on the role of deputy CEO as part of the reshuffle.
The company did not go into detail as to the reasons behind the change in leadership. It said Skarplöth’s departure was through a mutual agreement between himself and the board on Thursday.
The move follows a year of financial decline at ATG. Net gaming revenue was down 2.2% in 2025 to SEK5.25 billion ($586.7 million), while total revenue fell by 3.6% to SEK5.97 billion. This also led to lower operating and net profit.
Declines across the board for ATG
Breaking down its FY25 performance, ATG said revenue had fallen across all three of its core businesses.
Horse race betting, the operator’s biggest segment, was down 1% year-on-year to SEK3.84 billion. Sports betting revenue also dropped 2% to SEK764 million, while online casino was down 7% to SEK639 million.
ATG noted that SEK4.80 billion of revenue was generated via digital channels and SEK448 million via retail stores.
ATG will soon expand outside of these core markets and into Finland. In April 2025, it set out details of a 50/50 joint venture with local Finnish racing association Suomen Hippos, with the new Hippos ATG to be powered by ATG’s in-house gaming platform. It will utilise the ATG brand when it enters the Finland gambling market in 2027.
Net profit drops to SEK1.58 billion
Looking at the bottom line, group operating profit was 14.8% lower than the previous year at SEK1.54 billion. This was partly due to higher gambling tax and increased personnel costs.
Pre-tax profit dropped 16% to SEK1.57 billion while after tax, net profit was SEK1.24 billion, down 16.4% year-on-year.
‘Tougher’ market for ATG
Reflecting on the year, Norman and Nilsson said ATG had to contend with a “tougher market situation” in 2025. They also noted increased pressure from new competitors in Sweden.
Among the key challenges for ATG in 2025 were higher taxes in Sweden. Gambling tax increased from 18% to 22% of GGR in July 2024. This, inevitably, had a negative impact on bottom-line figures.
“Combined with the fact in 2025 there was no international men’s football championships, this had a negative impact on development,” Norman and Nilsson said. “Horse racing, which is the core of our mission, showed stability during the year but did not fully reach the previous year’s level.”
However, both Norman and Nilsson were optimistic about the outlook for ATG. They said ATG continued to operate “in line with its mission” as a long-term and responsible player in the market
“We ended 2025 on a stable financial footing, a renewed offering and a clear direction forward,” they said. “And the ambition remains unchanged: to strengthen our long-term competitiveness and continue to take responsibility for being a strong and stable engine for Swedish trotting and galloping sport.”
What will become of Skarplöth’s tax proposal?
In 2025, former CEO Skarplöth advocated for a change to the current tax system, advising that Sweden should take a similar approach to the UK, which excluded betting on horse racing from its gambling tax increase last November.
The UK’s government also froze betting tax via self-service betting terminals, spread betting and pool bets.
Skarplöth’s proposal was met with scepticism from elsewhere in Sweden’s industry. Gustaf Hoffstedt, secretary general of the Sweden Trade Association for Online Gambling (BOS), branded the proposal as “self-harm” to the country’s market.
Hoffstedt said if there were an increase in tax, it should be specifically on horse race betting rather than online casino. He said that this would be more “rational” from a channelisation and consumer protection point of view, to reduce the amount online operators have to pay.
He also flagged concerns over channelisation and the impact higher taxes would have on this dropping rate. ATG’s most recent estimate placed online gambling channelisation in Sweden between 74% and 85% in Q3 of 2025 while regulator Spelinspektionen estimated it had dropped to 85% in 2024, 1% lower than in 2023. Both fall short of the government’s long-term channelisation target of 90%.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/people/people-moves/atg-ceo-steps-down/
