iGaming Daily

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Operators and affiliates have enjoyed a long and convenient marriage, but as times change is the marriage on the rocks. In today's data driven and performance led landscape there are concerns about transparency, rev share fairness and tracking capabilities. As technology improves and data takes over, is divorce on the way or can these issues be ironed out? Does the future of affiliation require incremental change or total overhaul? Welcome back to iGaming Daily's Road to Lisbon series where we talk to key speakers and thought leaders that are set to shape the conference at SBC Summit from the 16th to 18th of September. iGaming Daily is brought to you by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. I'm Charlie Horner and today I'm joined by Matty Pakenen, Managing Director and Founder of Winlandia. Matti, how are you doing today? Thanks for taking the time to join us. Thank you, Charlie. Yeah, I'm doing great. And how are you, Charlie? Yeah, I'm really good, thanks. Looking forward to the SBC Summit. How much are you looking forward to it? A lot, a lot. I really had a fun time last time. Excellent. Well, let's dig straight into things because the operator-affiliate relationship is something that is... feels like it's becoming a little bit more tense. how do you assess the trust dynamics between operators and affiliates at the moment? Do you think the relationship has improved over time or become a bit more bitter? Yes. First of all, I have seen the both sides of this business because I started as an affiliate like in 2007 and today I'm the operator side with Winlandia. So I think today what has changed the business is more regulated. So we all operating them regulate field. any operator who would do shady things would be out quite soon. But I think the affiliates have a lot of, or personally what I felt when I was an affiliate and I still see those issues and they are the lack of stability. You know, like when you make a deal as an affiliate and you, is an affiliate manager and make a deal with the one person and the person might be working with a different company after a month or something. And when that happens, then all the deals are re-nicojated and there are predatory terms and everything. And because of that, affiliates are now they are just asking for high CPA or high hybrid deals because they know how things work. yeah, I think that is pretty much where we are now with the bigger scale of the business. But with Winlandia, we want to do things differently. Our accrued manager is also a shareholder in the company. We know that he commits to Winlandia. The affiliates who make a deal with us, know that Christopher, is our head of affiliates, he is still there tomorrow. That's really interesting. Sometimes you don't think about just the dynamics of people change, people leave jobs and that can impact deals. I guess you kind of answered my next question really, which is about how we can start to trust each other a bit more. But do you think it is just about trying to promote a little bit more stability across the board? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because overall when you look companies and if you see that it's a lot of revolving door for update managers, probably it's not a good place for work. the affiliate manager itself to work there. So why would you do a deal with such company as an affiliate? certainly. And I can understand why in that case, they seek those high CPA deals upfront or those hybrid deals with the CPA upfront as well, rather than those rev share deals, are more fruitful over the long term if the partnership is trustworthy and long term. But as we become ever more data driven in the affiliate space, is it inevitable that the relationship between operators and affiliates becomes more transparent? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does it cut the ability for some operators or affiliates to cut corners? Yeah, think data is good for transparency, but it doesn't solve the core issue, which is the lack of stability. And like I mentioned earlier, like, after for these high CPA deals. And the issue with the CPA deals is that they are like one sided. It's either the appellate will benefit or the operator will benefit. Because, yeah, and the only fair way to do business, what I think is rev share. But if you do rev share, it needs to be long term business. And yeah, and that is like what we, what I want to do with Winland. I want to do like long term business with appellates. Yeah, I'd love to hear a bit more about Winlandia's approach to what you do with affiliates. Do you work things on a case-by-case basis with each affiliate or do you try and promote those long-term rev share deals with all of your partners? Yeah, most of our deals are like rev share deals and we have like long-term partners that we are aiming to build a long-term business because Winlandia was found by affiliates. our growth has also become from affiliates because they have seen that we are not a company who is chasing those stock market numbers in a way that we don't need to change things. If we make a deal, it remains. The people know that it's the same people all the time. We want to build a long-term business. guess that ultimately benefits everyone if we're focused more on performance-based deals, if the operator has good intentions and the affiliate has good intentions, then those kind of relationships benefit everyone ultimately. Yes, and I also think in the ideal world, with affiliate and operator, they have a perfect symbiosis. Let's think about this way, that affiliate can also act as a retention channel, not just an FDD machine. Like if you are adding a rev-serial and you know that it lasts for a lifetime. So why not to keep the operator on the top list all the time and also boost the promotions because you are also getting paid from the current players, not just the FTDs. Yeah, sure. So what's your approach to fostering those relationships to ensure that the affiliates are incentivised to be a retention partner rather than just an acquisition partner? Well, what we are doing like when we have ongoing promotion or we let our affiliates know, our key affiliate partners. I know because I have been an affiliate, so affiliates are always like, they are in the need of press content and there's no better press content than good promotion or something and exclusive games and so forth. it's about giving good access to the affiliates and in turn they can provide better content which drives more engagement from the end player ultimately. Brilliant. Well, Matty, let's take a quick break. We'll just have a quick ad break and then we'll come back and we'll continue the conversation. Join us in the next part of iGaming Daily. Welcome back to iGaming Daily, the Roll To Lisbon series. joined by Matty Peckinan, the Managing Director and Founder of Winlandia. We are talking all about the trust dynamics, the affiliate and operator relationships. So Matty, just to jump back into the conversation. What are the most important aspects of that operator affiliate relationship for Winlandia specifically? And maybe where do you expect to see some bigger improvements come in in the future? In the future, we think that I would like to see more in the industry-wide what we are doing with Winlandia because we want to foster the long-term partnerships. I want to bring back when I started, affiliate meant like a partner. Today, like, affiliates are more seen as media agencies or themselves, they are like more acting like media agencies. And the partnership is gone. And what we are trying to do, we want to bring back that beauty of partnership. you feel like the sector's become a bit transactional in a way, just... Yes, yeah. ...very, yeah, business-based rather than, you know, the people-based partnership that it once was. Yes. And that's interesting because, you know, The affiliate space has been upended or changed or being forced to evolve really because of the increase of AI. It's changing the way that consumers search. I guess that might in some quarters lead some operators to reduce their reliance on affiliates and look for different channels of acquisition. How would you assess that? And is that something that when Landia is doing, know, it strikes me from the conversation and your background that maybe that's not the case, but What do you think about the impact of AI? Evolution is something that always happens. Technology changes, players change, and regulation changes. If we think about AI and those things, let's go back about 15 years. We had meetings on social media and everything, and things always changed. I think appellates will also evolve. we think about in the back in the days, it was SEO and maybe in future it's more like CEO, but it's evolving. I think applet will still be important in the future. No, I'm sure they will. And there's a lot of people who are thinking very heavily on how to be more optimized for the AI age. Yeah, you're right that it might not be SEO anymore. might be search. So it's generation, optimization, and those things will change. But it feels like we're in the midst of that evolution at the moment and people are still trying to kind of find their feet. what's the impact on Winlandia's reliance on affiliates? Have you noticed that maybe your sort of conversion rates from affiliate channels has reduced in this period or has it maybe stayed at a flat level? Of course, with Vinlandia a lot of things have changed because if we think about our former core markets was Finland and we are not able to operate there. And in the future, think for the regulator, think the affiliates are not even possible in that sense. But now we are lucky because the UK market has really loved Vinlandia as a brand. And in there, see that we can operate. like as an old school affiliate, build the relationship like we did 15 years ago, 18 years ago. So I guess then it's taking things on a market by market basis. So I just wanted to go back to that trust aspect that we mentioned earlier. And you you do hear from time to time, you know, there's maybe operators who aren't paying the correct rates or affiliates, you know, conflating figures, that kind of thing that just damages the trust aspect between the two parties. Do you envisage an increased importance on third parties who can help maybe attribute and track conversions and kind of be like an ombudsman for the sector? Yeah, I understand what you mean, but I can get that. I would want to say that no, we don't need that because if you would need third party media, it's like something was broken on the beginning. already. But I think the business is like, I think the only way to operate is by honesty and fairness, because the truth is something that will always come out in a way or another. Yeah. You would like to think that people are always doing business honestly and with transparency. You've seen people that have tried bad tactics and they are not in the business anymore. they will naturally be gone. Yeah. So you think almost natural selection will take hold and those people will be driven out the market anyway. Great. So all in all then, do you think that we need to throw away the entire rule book for the operator affiliate relationship or do you think, as we mentioned earlier, it's more about evolution than revolution? Yeah, I think in a way we have already thrown away the rule book and because there are so many ways to do business. together and the industry is nothing like it was like when I started 18 or 17 years ago. But I believe that the long term business is still possible and the partnerships are still possible. And what operators and appellates need to think is we need to think of a way together how to grow together, not split apart because using some areas that is happening. How are you going to try and promote that as this evolution? Yeah, it's the only way to do that is, I think, just by honesty and by fairness. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Matty, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. Plenty of really interesting insights and something for everybody to take away. And we look forward to seeing you at SBC Summit in Lisbon and particularly for this panel. So listeners, if you do want to go and check out that panel, will details will be on the website for SBC Summit. We'll put a link into the description of the show. In the meantime, we'll be back with more Roll to Lisbon interviews between now and the Summit in September. So please do come again and listen to another episode of iGaming Daily.