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How important are partnerships in iGaming?

Published

1 month ago

May 19, 2022

Many industries have been driven by rivalries as every company is striving for the best – but it’s not always the best long term solution. Partnerships are incredibly important and provide businesses with a way to evolve and expand their customer base.

It’s becoming increasingly common for companies within the iGaming industry to partner up for mutually beneficial agreements. Only recently, Push Gaming and Scientific Games signed a major deal to form a partnership. While on the one hand, these two companies are competitors fighting for the players’ attention but they saw the potential long-term success of the collaboration.

A good partnership can completely elevate a business to the next level which is why it’s so important within the iGaming industry. Despite being an industry that’s fiercely competitive, partnerships can be advantageous for all parties involved – if it’s done well.

Partnerships can improve the player’s experience

Within the past few years, there has been a multitude of partnerships among slot developers. Many independent game studios have gained much-needed exposure from partnerships with big names such as Yggdrasil, Relax Gaming and Microgaming due to their specialist platforms.

On the surface, these platforms seem to mainly boost the smaller studios, when in reality it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. Giving independent developers access to better tools and authoritative expertise improves the reputation of the bigger studio that is providing them with the support.

The established developers host smaller ones on their platforms often under the bigger name. Therefore, casinos that host the larger developers potentially get the smaller studio as well which vastly improves the player’s experience and overall opinion of the developer.

A key example would be Yggdrasil’s YGS Masters programme which is an invite-only platform that features studios such as Peter & Sons, Reflex Gaming and True Lab Games. The casinos that have previously partnered with Yggdrasil have the potential to host the games created through the YGS Masters programme, which improves the selection of games at the player’s disposal.

Ultimately, the most important factor is the player’s experience and enjoyment which is easily improved by partnerships like these.

Affiliates partnering with developers is mutually beneficial

Partnerships come in all shapes and sizes but they can be extremely valuable to all parties involved. It’s not just developers within the iGaming world collaborating together but also affiliates working alongside the developers as well.

One of the leading sources of independent online slot reviews, Slot Gods, have partnered with over ten different developers within the last six months. These partnerships have included the previously mentioned Push Gaming and Scientific Games along with other big names such as Relax Gaming and Playtech.

Fundamentally, partnerships like these allow developers to build excitement for upcoming slot releases or to give an insight into the ethos of their studio through interviews. Affiliate sites like Slot Gods are given exclusives through content, whilst the studios gain exposure for their products. It’s essentially a form of free marketing that is beneficial to everyone involved with no real cost.

Takeovers can be advantageous to the iGaming industry

Whilst good partnerships are useful and instrumental to success, takeovers can also be worthwhile within the iGaming industry. One of the biggest takeovers includes Evolution Gaming’s acquisition of NetEnt for 2 billion dollars in 2020.

This collaboration led to the creation of the popular Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt. Essentially, this combined the fan-favourite Gonzo’s Quest with the popular live casino game format from Evolution to make a product that’s unique and fresh for players.

Acquisitions like this have the potential to improve the general industry with innovations like Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt that combine online slots with the interactive live casino experience. Future innovations like this lead to positive repercussions for the rest of the iGaming industry.

Networking is always key

Both partnerships and takeovers can boost the industry but exchanging information through networking is important as well. At its core, networking is the process of sharing knowledge with people or organisations that are in the same field.

Of course, exclusive secrets or non-disclosure agreements (NDA) should not be shared but insights into important changes (such as laws) or software are worthwhile in improving the general industry. For example, distributing private information under an NDA is disrespectful and potentially damaging to all involved, but enlightening another affiliate with an upcoming law change is helpful for all in the long run.

Networking events like IGB Affiliate can even lead to partnerships or at least guide people within the iGaming industry in the right direction. Naturally, some may want to keep all the information to themselves, but it works out better in the industry long-term if people network to constantly share and improve upon ideas.

Closing thoughts

It’s clear to see that partnerships are a valuable asset in iGaming that should not be taken lightly. They are incredibly important in promoting products, exchanging knowledge and improving the player’s overall experience.

Even traditional media sites such as The Telegraph see the value in partnering within the iGaming world as they gain all their in-depth reviews, guides and tips about iGaming from affiliate BettingExpert.

The biggest question that remains is this: Will affiliates within iGaming ever work together to see the merit in partnerships? Experts within bingo could work with specialists in the live casino game sector to exchange valuable knowledge. No single person can become an expert on everything, so it’s helpful to get an adept person within this field to fill in the gaps.

Whether affiliates will work together in the future remains to be seen, but it could revolutionise the entirety of the iGaming industry.

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Rightlander partners with Awin to accelerate growth into new markets

Published

2 days ago

June 28, 2022

George Miller

Affiliate and advertising compliance experts, Rightlander.com have announced an overall product enhancement to support their growth into new markets including affiliate Networks and Platforms, Digital Agencies, Forex, Telecommunications and Utilities.

The move follows Rightlander’s experience and success in the iGaming vertical, where a number of parallels can be drawn between customer challenges, marketing regulations and partner guidelines. These include the need for honest marketing as well as customer acquisition channels that marketing partners derive traffic from, such as websites, social media, search engines and email.

The new portal has been developed with input from leading brands in their sector such as Awin to help clients effectively review and rectify marketing infractions detected by Rightlander.

Alex Parmar-Yee, UK Strategy Lead at Awin, said “ We chose to work with Rightlander to enhance our ability to carry out publisher audits based on the requirements of individual advertisers. It was important to have a partner who was able to accommodate the wide variety of needs from our clients relating to areas such as content accuracy, offer intelligence and exposure monitoring. The tools provided have allowed our client teams to carry out important housekeeping more efficiently, so that even more focus can be dedicated to strategy and account management.”

New solutions have also been introduced to help save clients time, reduce risk and grow their partnership programs with confidence. These include Screen, which allows clients to evaluate the online content of new affiliate applicants as part of their suitability checks, and Verify that helps clients to ensure that their promotions are live on authorised sites and linking to the correct landing pages.

This is in addition to Rightlander’s core solutions that help clients to Discover undisclosed content and continuously Monitor partners for accurate and compliant marketing worldwide.

Rightlander’s new modular portal allows clients to segment and prioritise results by business objective and marketing channel (websites, social media, PPC ads, video streaming, Telegram and email) and offers a comprehensive list of API integrations to deliver data to a client’s systems.

The solution offers targeted scanning by frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) and compliance issue (e.g. required T&Cs or prohibited text) per URL along with cutting edge technology to reduce false positives, minimise time spent checking infractions and streamline the remediation process.

Ian Sims, founder of Rightlander.com, said “Having the opportunity to fine-tune our product with such a high profile partner has been fantastic. The evolving nature of affiliate marketing and the emergence of influencers, coupled with an ever-increasing array of regulations and advertising marketing guidelines in different consumer verticals has heaped a huge compliance workload on marketing teams.

“Awin put Rightlander through a 6 month trial period before selecting us as their marketing compliance partner and we’re delighted that our monitoring software has saved them so much time and helped them to resolve so many more compliance issues.”

News

SCOTT THOMAS TEAMS UP WITH CASINO GURU TO RAISE AWARENESS OF PROBLEM GAMBLING

Published

2 days ago

June 28, 2022

George Miller

SCOTT THOMAS TEAMS UP WITH CASINO GURU TO RAISE AWARENESS OF PROBLEM GAMBLING

Scott Thomas TV personality, podcaster, the managing director of The Social PR, and co-founder of Food4Thoughts, has recently joined forces with Casino Guru to promote responsible gambling and raise awareness around safer gambling initiatives.

The successful British entrepreneur, social media influencer, and TV personality, Thomas opened up on his podcast, Mancs on the Mic, with brothers Adam and Ryan Thomas, about his personal struggles with gambling addiction at the age of 21, a period which he described as a really dark time. “I was gambling away student loans. I was borrowing money off friends, I would even wait outside the casino in the morning for it to reopen … I was constantly trying to chase whatever I lost,” confessed Thomas during a series of videos created for the campaign.

Overwhelmed with the amount of feedback he’s received after discussing the issue for the first time, Thomas and Casino Guru, the world’s largest online casino database and an established gambling authority, have collaborated on a problem gambling awareness campaign.

Casino Guru has been working towards better and safer gambling for years. Pushing online operators to become fairer and more responsible, solving thousands of complaints of players who feel deceived by an online casino, and providing honest reviews of over 4,400 online casinos are just some of the examples of that.

This mission is also reflected in many responsible gambling projects and initiatives they launched to date, including the Global Self-Exclusion Initiative and the Casino Guru Academy. However, Casino Guru has recognized that it’s getting increasingly harder to spread awareness of problem and responsible gambling and reach the desired target group: despite providing a plethora of high-quality content related to responsible gambling, the younger population simply doesn’t read it.

According to Statista, 39% of Britons aged 25 to 34 gambled in 2020. What’s more, around 25% of Britons in the same age category have reported to engage in some form of online gambling within the four weeks prior to being surveyed. In other words, one in four Britons in this age bracket are playing in online casinos. And since this is the generation that can most effectively be targeted through social media, Casino Guru‘s collaboration with Scott Thomas was a natural next step.

The campaign ran on Instagram, which gave it a big potential to reach large audiences, since Thomas’s Instagram account currently has close to 1 million followers. Both parties ultimately hope to help not only current and future people at risk of problem gambling, but also friends and family members of someone exhibiting problem gambling behaviour.

“I was in a mess at the time, and it massively affected me and my family,” Thomas confessed in one of the videos. “I’ve teamed up with Casino Guru to try and raise some awareness around this subject because clearly there’s a lot of people out there who are still struggling,” he added. “Even if it helped just one person, this Casino Guru awareness campaign has done its job. Because I wish I had a video like this when I was going through my struggles.”

Apart from Thomas’s personal story of gambling addiction, the series of videos tackles topics such as how to know if someone has a gambling problem, how to gamble responsibly, or how to approach someone who has a gambling problem.

As Daniela Kianicová, Public & External Relations Lead at Casino Guru, explains, “This awareness campaign is the first of its kind – it marks the first time that a company operating in the gambling industry uses the power of a mainstream influencer to communicate the risks of problem gambling to young adults – and we’re very proud to have the honours.”

With gambling becoming more and more accessible and widespread, it is vital that the risks of problem gambling as well as responsible gambling principles are communicated to as many players as possible. And because different generations consume content in different ways, finding new and creative alternatives to reach audiences of all ages is paramount to success of such campaigns.

News

The 5th AskGamblers Awards Winners Are Here!

Published

1 week ago

June 20, 2022

George Miller

The 5th AskGamblers Awards Winners Are Here!

After several months of anticipation, on a magical night on 16 June we finally revealed the names of winners in the 5th AskGamblers Awards.

Drum Roll, Please!

After more than three months of anticipation and wholehearted support from our players, we finally know the names of the winners of the 5th AskGamblers Awards! The race was tight throughout the process, but the names you helped us choose genuinely deserve to be the next laureates of one of iGaming’s most prestigious accolades.

Without further ado, here are the winners in the fifth edition of AskGamblers Awards: