Who are we? And why are we donating $1.2 million to #TeamSeas?

Let’s start by answering the first question
We are Great.com, an unconventional charity project aiming to move money from the online casino industry towards stopping the climate crisis.

“What does that mean?” and “How does anyone come up with that idea?” might be questions popping up in your head.

Well, short background. Great.com is founded by me, Erik Bergman. I’ve been in the gambling industry since I was 16 and fell head of heels in love with online poker. From age 18 I was a professional poker player. Four years later a switched from playing poker, to marketing online gambling and I was one of two founders of Catena Media, a casino marketing company.

Catena Media was founded in 2012 and mainly had one mission. Make as much money as possible, as fast as possible. We did that well. In about 3,5 years we went from $0 to a $200 million IPO on the Stockholm Nasdaq stock exchange. At age 28, I had made more money than I will ever need in my life. But result was that I, my co-founder Emil Thidell, and my fiancé (also working in the company) got burnt out – outside of business, many aspects of my life was crap, and I couldn’t wait to leave the company.

After Catena Media, I wanted to do something with meaning. I asked myself “What am I uniquely good at? What can I do that no one else can?” and the answer I found was that I’m uniquely good at casino marketing. I could use that skill to create a marketing company that gives away 100% of its profit to do good. The casino industry is a greedy business, and I don’t believe anyone else will create a business trying to funnel the money out of the industry towards doing good. If someone should make something good of the greedy casino industry, it probably must be me.

Why are we donating $1.2 million to #TeamSeas?

The obvious answer is “because we don’t want plastic in the ocean”, but let’s look at the less obvious reasons.

The first one is that I love how MrBeast engages the world in philanthropy. With his videos, he inspires millions of people to give and support others. He is promoting the idea of charity and shows the feelings created by giving. Making children wanting to give away their weekly allowance to do good. Just imagine what ripple effects that will create! Think about how rare this is, how often does anyone manage to turn charity and giving into entertainment that inspires others to give?

Basically, I’m just a huge fan of MrBeast as a person!

The second reason is publicity. The way Great.com moves money from the casino industry to doing good, is by ranking high up in the Google search results on keywords like “New Jersey online casinos”. An important part of ranking high is to get links and articles written about us. The more publicity we get, the higher we will rise, and the more money we will be able to donate to save the climate. There would obviously be a lot of more efficient ways to get publicity for $1.2 million than to give it away, but at least this way we hit two birds with one stone.

Contact
If you want to know more about me or about Great.com, please send me an email on [email protected]