Leadership in iGaming with Richard Dennys of Game Lounge

if you think about the the new generation including you guys the new generation of of intelligence products of softwares that we seen through I'm working with people will looking with working with on this they've all they've all they've all got machine learning embedded as table Stak is no longer differentiate it's just expected now and even in your phone everything in here is just enough ml to be cruel but not enough to be scary and I I just think that's the way that we go e you

can be as fast I just think there's such a massive opportunity to be a lot smarter in i g re affiliation and everybody is right now I think that's massive opportunity and change I believe in I love change I'm a change freak and wherever you get changed there's always I think it's very exciting I'm John R and you're listening to affiliate bi the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by St welcome to the Philip bi podcast today we're chatting with Richard Dennis who

is the CEO of game lounge and he was previously CEO at web gains he's got 20 years of digital and affiliate marketing experience covering commercial roles to SEO I think we're gonna be talking a lot about affiliate marketing Richard welcome to the show thanks very much great to be here so from the the time I've had a chance to get to know you I think you're a great leader and I want to know like just for myself personally is this a natural skill something that you've

had to work on over time and something that you are always working on to add to your leadership that's that's very kindly you to say it doesn't feel like that sometimes from my point of view but I I appreciate I think I've you said 20 years that I've actually been working probably B than that L double that I've done a lot of things I've worked in a l of more places I've studied a lot of stuff I've I've worked with so many different people I've had

very high highs and very low lows there's very few things know in the world that frighten me from a business point of view I've been through some pretty STI situations and I've also had a lot of different Ro so I can empathize very well with the people around me I know how annoying it is to have to report to somebody like me and I'm pretty driven but I at the same time I do work very hard on my empathy and empathy [ __ ] and I do switch

between the kind of hero leader and a servant leader I have to iate it now but there was a time where I was just like look I've could to be the front of the business I've got to be driving everything I've got to take every decision and you just can't do that that's just impossible when you're running a company with 100 or 200 or 300 people you just have to hire the most the best people you can trust them try and align them with your what

Your overall kind of Christians are and TI it to to humans TI it to the fact that we're all equ other we've all watch challenges We R other people at home around us and we're trying to fight the same fight and then guess it short shoulder rather than lean with a big stick and big not mic phone and leg of phone I'm not that kind of person some people when they start working with me what do I do next and I'm know what do you next

I don't really hire people to tell them what to do I hire them to show me what I can do and and actually one of the things I tend to do is I create vacuums so I'll create a load of things that need to be sided in a vacuum and then we'll see who jumps into that vacuum and that's usually a very good indicator of something that's be got leadership Tendencies because if on the manager of 200 other managers it's just impossible and I think if

if I had to Ste it down that's probably what it is yeah who knows about knows about knows about CR what does that even mean but people tend to like it like work at C follow me from place to place and vice versa so that's pretty much it in the yeah I hav't really work on it but I just just to come maturity and part and and making some terrible decisions and trying to make them less and less expensive as time goes all yeah I think

that's something we can all aspire to and uh I'm sure like the the other concept on the opposite side of micromanaging is things that people dread and it's just interesting to talk to people in Goku what is your experience working at different companies and hearing the extreme ranges of of work situations from you know I can't wait to leave this company to this company is company is company is amazing yeah and people leave people that they want to join with to join people it's always about

h beings I've worked for some fantastic bosses I've also worked for some terrible people I mean just terrible hum and you just need still what you like and what you don't like and the things that works and works if I'm just Ro you now in my brain some of the situations I've seen as me I never ever want to be like that with you yeah I think that's you just naturally fall it isn't it's nurturing nature it's just a foration in and then the other thing

is that I grow a very thick skin so I don't really care too much about what people think about me but what I do care about is results I want to make sure that we always going in the right direction I'm the great believe in growth not at all costs but really I want to go and goow mindset wherever I work because it's relatively easy and even in this industry to sit still and just watch the money cor you but the resp boreum this also doesn't

give anyone a kind of racing Finishing Line anything to run towards uh we are in these kind of infinite businesses which don't really have a f our day and you need to make the wish driven other people well well care and that's the secret and I guess without me actually going through Linkedin and going okay what is Game launch have for talent if you don't have a head of growth I'm assuming that you take on some of that responsibility and it just sounds like maybe some

companies don't have some of these roles where it's not top of mine from a management perspective we don't have a head of growth but what we have is a gross mindset so that means that everyone STS what we're doing where we're going the annual bonuses a TI to a particular level of crops or growth we don't talk about it all the time it's also at not all costs Horizon long business which is the VIS we have to B that does have uh you know percentage okrs

a lot of those okr are castigated down from our core which is around delight and and profitability and then we've got another part of our business which just got things like B looker and and so Ben properties and there's a number of things that have happened to he to our Cas F business Sayo and and we got teams and people work in there and there much more around delivery check boxes Milestones we're not too bothered about making money right now is much more of an incubator

and that's a different way and those people are very independent we give them everything they want and then we just say bring us some money at some point when he gets critical mass but we all that but I've run lots of businesses like that before too so I know what to look look look for and I want to ask what are the skills and experiences you've taken from web games and bringing that into an iig gaming company like gameel yes so it's interesting it's interesting it's

interesting to move from a network to an affiliate because again it's we were very careful when I was web beings to make sure that we put the affiliate first in the end the networks in ecommer and each other have got much more powerful position they are brokering the deal they are working hard for account managers to to optimize Commings and and overrides and tendencies they call them rather than fix fees and so there's there's a lot of mechanics that are involved it's actually very hard business

to run it's very hard business to make money from you can easily lose lose money is an or Ro stay still you've always got this you all know this with statch phone you're always about business B around you're about affiliate management and you're about profit optimization because you're building software effect you're a platform business the baling of those three p areas is pretty difficult and sometimes you go hard in the marketing sometimes you go hard on the affiliate um relationships and sometimes you get hard on

the steps of the software develop and that's hard but moving into the affiliation space as an affiliate notely course and moving into IG ging where there are a lot more direct relationships with operators the networks don't seem to platforms when in fact is re Network there the platforms just seem to be pretty denying and really had a few conversation with people where they saying that we just regard platforms is tracking I just think they're missing a trick I think everyone's missing a trick anyway so what

I bring is is how it can work I know the best practice I know when these things work in hary with a very good client or operator a very efficient and smart platform and then a really aggressive motivated affiliate you know that I know what that looks like and I know how that can work and I haven't seen it at all in this industry one one in in any area so I think there's probably a couple of director we got here with some of the big

operators but it's still that trust which you just don't have in eCommerce you just don't have that because the transparency that you can see if someone's trying to trick you or shave you or anything else whereas in industry it's just the opacity has just been shocking I don't know what we're going to do to change it but we can only start talking about it we this start change yeah do you think it has more to do with the fact that my take is I actually see

less affiliate networks in I gaming and more an affiliate marketing space like F marketing they're just they seem to be everywhere like the biggest companies you can think of a win sharer sales CJ ClickBank impact.com like these are massive they're just they're massive companies right because they work on the basis that they're going to have one and then up to some of our programs we have 9,000 Affiliates attached them and you can't do that any you need a network strip platform to manage that for you

and and also to optimize it for you and you do need the C manager in there not just to Tim ulize campaigns but just make sure people get played on time and make sure the relationship with your all St policy stakeholders the smooth whereas whereas whereas here we have to collect data from I mean a lot of places whether there the na in house operator platforms or where the commercial ones you will know who they are and just to do that I've got a team of

people building software that's basically either scraping or API and whatting into these systems there's no common standard it's a real kind of it's almost come just to thr one and we got people knocking on our door saying to us please can we use your tool because otherwise I got six s people literally up and uploading and downloading XO briet every month which in an industry just billions and billions you just saying what whatever he's going on here you know it's a bit of wake up corn

I can feel myself everying into kind of believing that the state s but I keep waking myself up and saying No this there's the better way and I'm having I've had a few conversations with my peer group CEOs and obviously more than one operator uh Lisbon we were talking at one of the dinners and there was a bunch of theit was saying why where is the trust why do we mistrust each other so much and and they just said it's just been like that always and

it's because in the old days Affiliates used to make F cash at the expense of the upgrades and now the bit moreti was more regul and I'm just saying that guys we if we show you us you show we that exchange exchange exchange data number one we can make our money together and another two we can be much CH on player safety and always rocy regulation is important of course it is but at the same time we can be better self-governing if we have more information

about problem areas that people we see that coming back time on time we see much more than an operator will see we see much more than any regulator can see BU an operator we see the H H point of G like ours where we see every Market we see every searched person coming through and not clicking and now we have a huge amount of data that nobody's asking us about they just assume that you would never hear it and I actually I've talked to a few

bigger Affiliates and I was actually surprised to hear any affiliate say something like this like they' actually consider sharing it and going it's about time we we're sitting on valuable data but they're like what do we do with it and I think people are just scared like why share it when someone's just going to hypothetically use that of game stuff but I think that's the oldest arue in comp arue in the world which just we want up p on all of the Little P not precisely

P even to the point where I shared some very high level conversion data of a peer group with somebody and they were completely shocked they they thought they were riding high in the best in the industry and they really were and it work them up to realize that they had a lot of work to do and like as a result of that I hear there's all sorts of things around and they're changing changing this side the other but that was just from one piece of information

I sent them so I'm not saying that I have to over everything but or we do or anybody else in our big bu could that data is available to see whether not anyone is actually register and then they they're spending money for you and then it's the average deposit value and everything else it would make sense to have something who would say that for the industry benchmarking point of view these this is what good looks like this is what great could be as opposed to Reg

on just running around Ming numbers which I don't know if they do or not but proteans do it yeah I think actually in a personal chat CH with you you mentioned this idea about how do we bring the Affiliates and operators together to do more sharing and the podcast we're about to publish this week is from uh Julia drit from cpv one cpv lab and she said the same thing and we actually have this weird parallels in the SAS industry everyone's sharing everything it's building and

public and affiliate marketing it just gets super closed people just get uptight about sharing and yeah I came from before we I worked at textit which has then came technation and it was incubation for the UK government they're investing in accelerating incubation Services UK start outs mainly in London anyway National and it was so liberating to work with people like the open data industry people like what three words people like people whose business model was to open their data and transport from London was a project

of the time where they were just saying look we can see everybody moving around London we're going to endpoint that so everyone anyone can get it you have to pay for it we make our money anyway and then of course you spor this whole sort of ecosystem of Weare businesses including people like Cy mappa and everything else that are building them their business model on on that data but it just meant everything became faster and London became much more of a an agile city as a

result of that my point is you're right in SAS that's like buing public is normal and then in Lisbon we have Tim V Lee just coming on the stage of reminding or art in the room open data was the way for it that was always the way the internet was supposed to be set up it was to be to share common human knowledge and yeah what happened is real came and made money and shut put the shutters out and and it is all zero some so

this is the problem is at the end of the day we're all against go we are an SEO affiliate and we have to go stand up and say my name is Richard Al I'm an fre B because everyone's talking all the time about getting away from it Google I don't know if you can I think there is obviously some secondary or tertiary where doing it but we're just in that game we're in that game and we just have to bed that's a game that we can

all share in a win and whatever but it isn't zero s so again my point would be being better and more open on what we're doing and the reasons why Affiliates are here they're not just here to steal traffic from an operator and beat the the Google game we're here to offer a hall of Market choice on the best ways for our players to play and as safe as way for our players to play because you will not get they say their their um independent and

objective but of course any operator is not going to be independent and objective they have their their their own but we have a view of allers who talk the all all sign so therefore the affiliate is a price comparison or experience comparison or a ranking list in directory whatever we say that's what we are and therefore people sees that we're more useful and that's why they'll promote you cars in their humanistics and do you think the sub affiliation or filing networks is going to play a

more prominent role in I gaming as well as be one of the many mechanisms that will bring Affiliates and operators together in a data sharing way yes I do however I think I know that everybody else in my sector in in this space is looking at that now including ourselves we're very lucky that we have internal systems that allow us to pretty much switch on from tomorrow but the thing to remember is that we're still going to be dealing with traffic generators and most of those

shff generator doing three the the hour PPC so they're doing it through pay free search and 10 it's an accelerator but it's not a replacement foral ests it's just pretty much the same place things may move on obviously we've got streamers and videos and we've men before about the value of op video and AV for the new generation of players but no s affiliation will be good but you know it's another traffic channel it's just it's a it's a s affiliation Network which we've seen in

e-commerce for a long time you've got skinks and got all the others people like that but well established and they've got their own Guardians and they've got their own kycs did been us for a long long time so yeah it's the way it goes it's like anything just B like the sweeps at the moment in the industry it's oh yeah there's a FAL sexy thing over there that's all running that direction and like you learn in comic Theory we got some super profits in the early

stage and then so it balances out as all the entrance move in and start take a bit of that lied Advantage yeah it's not going be the future for all of us it can be a nice secondary channel for for for most off do you think there's a potential new business model in the sub affiliation space in regards to this concept like when you think about what an affiliate network is it's almost like the network has virtual equity in the affiliate it's like the more money

they make the more money the network would make so you envision a future where networks could say wait a minute we're actually incentivized to help you or coach you with SEO or coach you with aspects of your business do you think this is going to be a new type of Philly Network or ones that say Hey this is actually a smart division that we want to build inside of it that I've never seen seen seen before maybe if I think about to work it wasn't necessarily

how you describe it it was more own campaign management it's about optimizations it's about proel class it was also about the affiliate type so within affiliate marketing the C you've you've you've got IND types of Affiliates you've got content like most of us but then you've got technical Affiliates so there drop downs and then the B now PES in the baskets and then there's the cross selling and up selling there's an endless number of different types of Affiliates in e-commerce you've got PPC some social media

Affairs there's just so many types and that just doesn't exist here that just doesn't seem to be a thing because we're not selling products there's nothing you can go and buy in a store and wait for delivery from this is instant virtual services so it's quite it's quite it's quite difficult um it's quite to to come and play you might get you move you up to twed see know you might have dropped out saying wait here's an extra bonness um but that's pretty much it and

so there's no fighting to the bottom of the F which is what you get in the other industry so I'm not sure if there is in ey gaming unless thing is really cheaped there possibly might be if the model shifted to be Blended between the two first calls so for example you've got people are playing and they might buy kit you've got headphones on there's a microphone here those kind of things that you could start to resell or crossing up sell and vice versa you could

try and do NBCS in in R media which you do see now again especially in content sites I kind know if the answer is yes to that and the and then the margins obviously your margins are up to 50% profitability in on pure content affiliate marketing as an affiliate that's very nice as opposed to if you're in the network you're if you're doing 6% you're doing well it's hard yards for the same money and you always have to think about that soof where is very expensive

you can put in so much I keep saying it here i' say management Financial de technical de energy debt there's loads of debts you can put in for sister this is what you spend your life on and any role or feature you buil or you build it the Vol way or build it doesn't work computer why there's so many risks you can put in there as opposed to just have to another site in another Market but the Char gets now on Google it's I wouldn't say

it's particularly obviously there's lots of people trying to do it but it's not as different SC B software yeah I I'm personally happy actually leaving that you go and attack Google and get those rankings I'm like very happy to leave that behind and go yeah B Tob less competition yes that's true yeah exactly less barass to entry for exactly the reasons I was described it's software development is really hard really hard and then you got to make money out of it based on a needless small

term and and then you've got to trade it and and if you break through that rally of death which so many people don't uh you're in to big money but otherwise it's just where that never makesense to the world but I I definitely don't include St in there because St R continuing on the sub affiliation discussion do you think that this must be an obvious thing that there's cohorts of data like you talked about the types of Affiliates there's like the streamers there's the SEO ones

there's people that have forums I think this cohort of data would be very rich and I get the feeling that networks they technically have it but I I just haven't heard of a network going going going hey do you want the latest Cort of our thousand Affiliates and going this is the industry that you don't know I just think that this might be an opportunity for networks to be that sort of gatekeeper that can share it on both sides because every time I talk to affiliate

managers and owners of casinos I never really hear this discussion about cohorts analysis and understanding their true player values and how they actually change not just across Affiliates but across the traffic within affiliates yeah it's the key to the kingdom it really is that we we are trying to move away from not move away but we're trying to build on real communia business we publishing company and we build websites with colonized content and and they rank well on Google but it's running around the Affinity we

try to transform into a real time Data Business that's really where we want and we're far away from that but not as far as I think some others we have a plan for that and it's just being intelligent about the kind of things that our partners looking for needing you mentioned about you've never seen it in operators I have seen it in operators and some of the operators are really good at that they really have a very good understanding of what data shap look right on

the other hand this industry the common currency Northstar seems to be on more accur and first time depositors and uh but they're not the first time depositors play it's not the first time they deposit any moneyy playing they're just moving from place to place and they can't obviously The Operators can't see that and this is my point about opening up the data we as an affiliate we could work in PR partnership and have a much better understanding of that kind of data obviously within guard rails

and making sure that there was Chinese ws and nobody could really see each other's stes but that's the kind of thing we're hoping to build into the game offer is just having a much much better I'm might you say cohorts because one operat cohall from month one to three could be another operat cohall from year two to five and they're still doing the same thing and they're still arguably playing more or less the same games in the same same Market it start CH from country to

Country time do not very of so this is just what I'm saying is that the opportunity is really there trying I don't know if we do on don't know I don't know if we do on industry basis but certainly having a lot more of an idea of really what's going on and that's now that's with the players that we have now in the age demographics and the the defy and int and then coming on behind as a whole new C and new types of player which

don't use Google ever they're just working as a kind of almost like a cerebral Community where they're you see their physical present but we see them in the streets everybody else but actually their minds are somewhere completely different they're all linked to each other in this kind of mass ocean so peerto peer social networking Snapchat or in in all the other Instagrams or truck and everything like that they're just all connected they my kids they're in their 20 early 20s and do you know s s

I know what they're doing and but they didn't met them and probably if they were met them in the street they' walk past each other but they know their kind of digital personality and that's totally different to the to the kind of poorts and and people that we're speaking to right now now I'm not trying to say that we have to drag B everybody under 25 into into gambling that's just not what I'm trying to say through but in order to to attract the people who

are there already I'm not really big fan of demand generation in that age group but if there's intent already then we want to direct them to the safest places and and really that's all priority now that can be streamers that can be videos it can be short from videos it can be all sorts of things but it's very short and very um digestible and not 600w articles or the L reviews and things like that words are bad for anyone under 30 now that is true and

I think a lot of Affiliates need to hear but I leave that to Google and search console and if if they can figure that out great but everyone's saying you can see it you can see that overall people search and int traffic is slowly eroding and that's literally a dying Market people are red long with foot chain and and not being replaced so they're somewhere else I want to talk about the concept of product and the roles of products I wrote an article on it recently

and I've become a fan of product just from my own experience of going hey wait a minute we're actually hiring a product company not a design agency so I believe Game launch is actually one of the the companies that has a a very forward thinking when it comes to that what is your take on that role and do you think it's maybe underserved in other affiliate companies or other Industries as as as well yeah this is a conversation we've had I years and years what is

a product what what does product development really mean what does big a product L company entail and what actually are our products are we physical or tangible intangible what are we saying we're sending advice we're sending guidance weend all sorts of things and from that point of view yes I think we're very we're very late we have everything late we're not really going to a third party anywhere we' got all of our we've got an internal product team we've got an external kind of product team

you've got product managers but project managers but for a basic imedia business we've got a lot of people working in product and it is really good and there's a lot of work around user intent everything from looking at search intent and Google search console and all the kind things that we you can see through to the movement on on on on a page by country by color there's we've got this great team upstairs and they're a Comm sign too and they're really smart bunch of people

and they know what they're looking for and they know what works and they know what good looks like and but they also realize that nothing stays the same so they're continuously continuously iterating and I think that is very important because if you just drops a websites and even if you got good content unless you've got that kind of there was a book called m think which is just about you know give you eye if you're making people think then the agre you're making will stop and

if they stop they'll not do what you want them to do so I'm not saying we have to employ things like dark pants but at the same time they're in the middle of something else we shouldn't be stopping them so that whole kind of ethos around cor being a taking away frictions from a journey is very important from a point of view a product to sell to other people we're not like you guys we we we've said many times we we're using software to enable us

and not because of us of that makes sense we're not a software company but we've got some very talented designers contenders Engineers server people we all the way through the stack we we're very well sered con Stu that but not too much and we don't spend too much longer but you would say that product should or usually does lead to a positive result in SEO what leads to B re lo as SEO seems to be the second C because that obviously showing Google that it's engaging

content and that's really what we work very hard on so we work hard on getting in the first placeas and then we we work very hard on on making them stay read poly and then click forward not just bounce back and that if that's product then that's what we do very well is product technology should technology air product should product be a technology that's an age argue we haven't really solved but we can't take it in both senses I've worked in the past with with people

who've been very techical very clever developers when I was working at Nokia and the people the developers at Nokia were unbelievable and they were pretty much product directors each and they work very well together and they understood each other and therefore they were doing both roles but that was an extreme and then you come to smaller companies with people that have got Junior more Junior people and then there swim lanes that they're all in and then they have to match together so you got Engineers talking

to him it's less efficient but it's actually quite nice for actual uh but what you do on it do is have prob people coming up with Factory as well as Engineers coming up Factory and then the whole thing just slows down and they argue and then nothing you need to one on top to the other at some point and you mentioned like video is becoming like an important thing and how would you say that video is not just a generic strategy for affiliate sites but maybe

just throw either ideas or what do you see as the future of video in relation to affiliate marketing in the end of day you're a representation of your Brands right so we that's what fre means you're representing either the industry that they're in or them themselves we're in a world now where back in the day everyone sat around the fire reading books and obviously TV came in and the internet came in and house all the other interruptions that we now face people just don't have time

to read long for anything and my kids they just can't watch and they a 90 minute mov they just cannot get through it and I'm not saying that I can do anything about it with while R thing they just don't have the attention span there's always sing beeping or or something in their way it would just stop their mind FL and video is nice like that but you will see that there's this move towards shortfall and shortfall video just seems to be what everyone could video

to right now I see in the street just fire just calling through their phones on buses or in wherever they are restaurants and that's pre PR but that's where they are so our video is all it's all so video is the future and I think there's going to be the blend between us to before digital and the virtual and the physical personalities with people having more than one that me it's pretty common you'll have something off you never have social profile and there's some massive influence

with millions of followers it's a new Paradox so I think video is massively The Way Forward we've got a again a very good video team here and they're doing everything from reviews all the way through to how to how to play stuff how to win things what strategies might look like in different languages we've got a na Studio here we're putting out I don't know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of videos a month our side so there's one side won so why it is but there

is one side that's languished around for a while not particularly high in the rankings and then we' brought we've changed that te now they're putting video first so the first thing they're doing before they're write is video either live like this or or pre it how to is and what do is and how it all works and all of a sudden that site starting to get really nice traction and it's not a lot of content it's probably 30 to 50 short turn video short you're making

yourselves your on might think videos is quite a lot but when we've got a team of people doing that they're doing 500 to 700 a month it's relatively straightforward to and is that embedding those videos with YouTube I'm asking for a friend called yeah it's all so is this the Google world is pretty pretty extensive so you'll look in all parts of C system to work out with they to think they do that stuff okay so next I've got a couple rapid fire questions more of

the short form stuff what does affiliate marketing need more of transparency nice one given your knowledge and experience if you had to start a business today with only 50k as a budget what would that be yeah that was a really good question I'd say I'd say just set up some affiliate size in the real Niche that hasn't really blown up yet but I probably wouldn't need 50 P that yeah probably not I personally would probably just do an SEO agency at think I'll take people's money

and then get going and then build affiliate sites if Affiliates if Affiliates would be more successful if they did this I think yeah I I I think it's have a bit more of a long-term view because this stuff takes time and if you think it's just one of those kind of go in burn and leave you can the four and gener to some of my P groups some of do brly well and some of them are doing terribly and properly terribly and it's because they're working

qu to quarter and they're thinking about things in quite a few might be group are listed or you always about your last quarter and you got shareholders and all that stuff to really deal with it's really hard I'm not saying it's not the right to do it's just difficult and everybody's only ever you're only as strong as your last quarter or last year on year period I came from that we gra is that world it wasn't too bad because it wasn't directly listed I know people

like a they were they found it very difficult when they were attached to the Abel Springer and now you'll see they come away from that and they're flourishing and see what Adam's gting with now that he's got a bit of space out and time to be free been quite a well so I'd say it's Thinking Beyond for Horizon I talking three Rizal here it's H1 H2 H3 we've got most of our business if not 60 78% of business in H1 but we've also got a fair

proportion in age2 which is what's happening next where we're going and then the the vision startu towards a much more intelligent SL future on Horizon 3 with AI all convergence there any devices and the different in humanity and consumption is the arrival that we set to for and that is I spend I don't spend any my time on H1 I have a very good coo and a very good management team that looks at today's business I've got an excellent finance department look at yesterday's business and

then I've got some very smallart people who are in in being the Su Horizon so I spend all of my time in that I spend I'm pretty much we something called GLX internally which is game LS X and that's really what we buil next and I spend a lot of my time in that and we've got a luxury doing that because we not on the M it's yes we're P back and yes they have their demands and yes they want to make sure that we're making

money and feing as sent of it at the same time the fairy hands off and are aligned and and they hide me so you know they're giving me a bit of time to work this stuff out and I've C some cost in some areas we' let some people go in some other areas left which reorganized some of those Horizon two parts and then we're ready that would include solation that includes the stot track includes some of the ma properties where we can we got a little

profit that we can reinvest and start to build for where it becomes next yeah that's an interesting answer for long-term Vision I had the chance to chat with one of the more successful private uh igaming Affiliates and I said what's behind your success is it SEO is it PPC and the the reply was instantly it's no one in the industry has a long-term vision and I think that's very true and I think the companies that actually do have a long-term Vision you see it in their

detail like their attention of detail going okay this might not be removing the needle for tomorrow but it could be in X month's time because it's yeah the thought process is actually very deep yeah I've looked at this and I've looked at this not just in looked in this previously whenever you've got the F still involved in the company it's either good or bad news sometimes it's very bad news because they're just stuck in the past in our case we've still brought the two Founders the

buiz are still I wouldn't say they're both mely one one is BU and the other one is is on on advisory Capac here with me and he's just unbelievably helpful and POS here and I think that helps you think about what's next because one of them comes to me all the time with what about this what about that next and it's just so refreshing it's really nice this would a nice position to be at where these guys have seen everything for the last I don't know

12 15 years they've made plenty of money that they either of them can stop tomorrow and live and never work ever again and yet they choose to because they're still engaged in the business they believe in the people they believe in them or what they believe in me and that's just I just it's just such a privilege to have the ABS out where they're behind me I'm behind them be working hard for that Horizon 2 Horizon 3 strategy if only tell in fact when I was

looking for jobs or when I was talking to different people the fact that this was not listed and and I do have some Co people who are listed the money is much higher ined businesses but that really wasn't the TR the hustle is also mbly higher investor calls and all those kinds of things it's not really me and you pretty worked out and so far I'm not too corporate so it would be pretty tricky if you to up yeah I've got a question that's not scripted

so if we don't like the this answer we won't include it people will know if if we take it out people wouldn't know I've had this conversation about sub affiliation and affiliate networks where the concept in I gaming would look something like this you have a bigger company that already has really good deals and that's one of the reasons while you join a network what happens if more networks become more prominent where the smaller to size Affiliates they get to become part of those deals now

they get a better deal than what they do on their own the affiliate network is basically going okay we're getting the max deal and operators are now left with hypothetically Less business that involves higher margins what would you say to this is this like a a problem a dilemma or a reality or is there a way where this can still actually benefit operators without being like Doomsday your best margins are gone it depends you take a micro macroeconomic view I'm very I I studied eics a

long time ago and I do understand the market dyamics you we're living in free free economies you can do whatever you want it's not as if we can say oh that can't happen all this can't happen or whatever operates Zone AR I struggle you only have to read some of the the news around the US market or some the other Mar that the S of super profits that there there's a lot of people in the industry lots of people couldn't for for players and and and

people's incomes and deposits and everything So It's Tricky and also operators don't have to work with particular fre it's it's their gift to choose who they work with and I just think natural selection world will mean that the law of the market will prevail yes I think there probably will be people like trying like that and if they're not think already they will but at the same time you've got WhatsApp communities gambling communities are operating right now and being paid in crypto everyone's arguing about what

business model was big 20 years ago and and yet the new UN regulated gray black ways that players find games to make lose money that will never go away as one one of the things I think we do badly is is that we underestimate the intelligence of a lot of our players we just think they're playing games and they do this and they do that but actually they're there's some pretty smart people out there and they will find their way to new ways of doing things

all the time just because they're new and so what do I think what can I do about not much we can try and guess it but probably not I think we'll just do hours the other thing I believ very strongly is not being a Pioneer I think I've been a Pioneer in the past but it's very expensive and very risky so I tend to like to be second Mo you or Mor the K first mov is not always an advantage yeah and as you go further

into digitally deep you can see that happening time and time again yeah we definitely not the first mover in in what we do exactly so you can see what's bad and then just do better it's the least [ __ ] version model isn't it yeah that's actually part of our story we used to use an app called staffs remot and I said there's a feedback loop that is really missing here programs that are going out of business programs that say you got to change your tracking links cu

the old ones are invalid because we got a new software programs that aren't paying this is revenue Le that's exactly why I wanted to start stat Dr yeah the less friction the better obviously there there's friction is necessary because there's kyc friction that's important there's affability friction which is also important uh but at the same time if you're I say if you're if you're taking three months to put in tracking C into operate operate SM City SM City death all right so last question is what

do you see of the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence I think it's amazing exciting I think it will look completely different but I'm not one of these people saying everything be in h cars in five years but I just think that the if you think about the the new generation in you guys the new generation of of intelligence products and softwares that we seen through working with people will be with working with on this they're all raw machine learning embeded as

T Stak is no longer differentiate it's just expected now and even in your phone everything in here is just enough ml to be cruel but not enough to be scary and I I just think that's the way that we go you can go as fast as most I just think there's such a massive opportunity to be a lot smarter in I gain me affiliation and everybody is right now I think that's massive that's massive opportunity and change I believe in I love change I'm a change

freak and wherever you get Chang there always I think it's very exciting yeah I think the change that we probably will see in I gaming is more sharing of data and more people creating data sets um we can talk about AI all day long but I think one thing that AI needs more of is data defeated yeah exactly and just the right people to to understand how to use it because you can you can easily use it to go down a own path but it's just

it's turning I always say this and people don't know find it very boring but you've got the now data the now today's data and which is basically the what and then you've got the context of the data which the so War but this the really the really hard part is the last bit which is the now do we do with this information and if you can c that then you you basically won that's the where you need to get to that's where we're trying to be

we try to be the nail business in and there's been discussions in the background of people saying you know do we need to hire more people within IG gaming or bring more people outside coming in with new ideas and I think you've already answered that question with uh um your short time uh with game Lounge to be able to bring these new ideas into the space so yeah I think that's are easy executions the hard hard part so that's the bit that we should get right

and many companies got executions and if you didn't get around that then you make good sh awesome Richard uh thank you so much for doing this I want to pass it back to how can people get a hold of you if you want them to get a hold of you Linkin usual La Linkin request since I started I've never know if you like people try to get hold of you but yeah okay get okay we'll include the game loue link to the website and more importantly

we'll also put your LinkedIn there thanks a lot for doing this thanks great thanks very very much thank you for tuning in to the affiliate bi podcast I'd like to take this time to ask for a small favor to leave a raing and review wherever you listen to your podcast that helps us expand our reach to rank higher in podcast directories and reach more listeners