SBC Affiliate Leaders & Marketing

Dear Leaders, I love the idea of a penned letter, a way to share thoughts and insights, a personal view into what goes on every day within our lives or community. Letters seem a bit simpler and more thoughtful than other forms of communication and include a lot more anticipation for when they will arrive. So here goes.

I can’t believe it’s been two months since I wrote last. Where has the time gone? How have you been? I’m feeling the excitement and anticipation rising as the industry goes back to live events all over the world. It’s time to reconnect!

By the time you read this, SBC will have already hosted SBC Summit Barcelona, and you’ll be at G2E (or, like me, wishing you were!). Lately I’ve been constantly finding myself asking, how do we get back to live events? And what I mean by that is, how do we successfully transition our Affiliate Leaders community from a totally digital group to one that can meet and network in any environment, digital or live? Should we be aware that there may be a new way of interacting in our ‘new normal?’

I go back to the values that I wrote about in the last issue: ● Engaged Membership ● Quality over quantity ● Easy to scale

Since I wrote to you last, we at SBC have been working to ensure our Affiliate Leaders members are engaged and stay engaged. We are growing the membership at a rapid rate with over 170 member companies now!

Most of our members are CEOs and founders with a desire to be part of the wider gaming community (Quality!) And the best news is that because we are building a community that people want to be part of, we aren’t short of referrals that are helping us to scale easily.

Things are off to a great start, values in check, but we have big plans. So, my question to you, our members and community today is: How can we help you do business better?

Is it information and content? Is it learning and development? Can we help you make better connections? How about advisory services? Whatever it is, we are listening and building this community with you in mind.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I’ll be in touch and send an update when I write to you next. In the meantime, I’ll hope to see you at our next live event!

Take care, stay safe and keep in touch!

WE AT SBC HAVE BEEN WORKING TO ENSURE OUR AFFILIATE LEADERS MEMBERS ARE ENGAGED AND STAY ENGAGED

SBC AFFILIATE LEADERS

Kelly Kehn

Global Relationship Director at SBC

BWISE MEDIA: BRAZIL THE PRIORITY BUT NEW MARKET OPPORTUNITIES EMERGE

BUILDING ON ITS STRONG FOOTPRINT IN BRAZIL

remains a key priority for global marketing agency bwise Media, but it also has its eyes firmly set on emerging and ‘freshly’ regulated gambling markets across the world

BY LUKE MASSEY

bwise Media delivers igaming advertisers with highly targeted inventory on the most relevant sports platforms and social channels, but also owns a collection of its own SEOfocused sports betting and casino review sites.

“Our role is helping the most renowned global operators - for sports betting, gaming, esports as well as crypto - getting their promotions in front of the right premium organic audience,” said Sebastian Paris, COO at bwise Media.

“It's very important that we offer various services across different verticals which all complement each other. We help operators buy the right advertising inventory for their brand promotion on premium platforms, execute high performance marketing campaigns and retarget the audience through programmatic channels.”

The second key pillar, Paris explained, is the bwise Media affiliate business served through websites specifically aimed at emerging markets such as Brazil, Latin America or India.

“Affiliation is very complementary to our sales and media business, because we have the opportunity to offer exposure on our SEO websites, deliver significant volumes of high-quality conversions and provide extensive reviews of our client’s products, customer service, payments, bonuses and odds. It helps us get a deeper understanding of the brands that we are working with and see the effects of increased organic traffic from our media activities.”

As we’ve already alluded to, Brazil is the key market for bwise Media, both on the affiliate side and for what Paris defines as ‘premium marketing’ activities for gambling operators.

He confirmed: “Brazil is our biggest and most active market, it's where we have a very significant exclusive portfolio. This includes 365Scores, which is one of the biggest live score applications in Brazil, BOLAVIP.COM Brazil or popular fantasy app Parciais.”

This ‘exclusive’ reference is important to elaborate on, as it means more than an operator simply choosing an ordinary agency to manage their marketing campaigns. bwise Media can leverage a unique premium network of sports publishers. bwise boosts a variety of services to their portfolio to further enhance their marketing capabilities for operators, such as creative service, ASO and user acquisition for mobile apps as well as

BRAZIL IS OUR BIGGEST AND MOST ACTIVE MARKET, IT'S WHERE WE HAVE A VERY SIGNIFICANT EXCLUSIVE PORTFOLIO

programmatic media buying.

The agency, run by industry veterans, has an exceptional reputation among sports websites and live score apps. David Watkins, Chief Business Development Officer at LiveScore Group, says about bwise Media: “We have worked with bwise since their inception. They are a pleasure to work with thanks to their combination of experience, pragmatism and work ethic. They have a thorough understanding of both publisher and operator spaces which uniquely places them to meet the demands of performance marketing.”

Paris explained: “What makes us unique as a 360 digital marketing agency, is that we not only provide our services to gambling operators, we also manage an exclusive global portfolio of the most relevant digital platforms for gambling, especially in emerging markets.

“This gives us a huge competitive advantage and makes the work for both the publisher and operator much easier, more efficient and highly profitable. We tie all the strings together on our end and make sure our clients and partners benefit the most.”

Many of the most renowned

operators enlist bwise Media as their independent marketing partner, providing marketing budgets and briefs for bwise to create, and then execute comprehensive media plans to their target audience.

Paris added: “We aim for as little work as possible for our clients. The operator provides us with the campaign direction, KPIs and budget. Then bwise adds significant value and creates efficiencies by finding and

Sebastian Paris, COO at bwise Media

closing the right partners, leading negotiations, campaign management, optimisations as well as data-led reporting to provide insights for the business to improve on.”

“It's important to recognise that the better and more transparent the relationship between the operator and bwise, the more bwise can do in terms of campaign optimisations and deliver the best results on brand reach, engagement and activations of new users.”

Brazil might be a long way from Europe, but marketing restrictions in Spain and Italy - two gambling powerhouses in their own right - highlight the clear advantages for a company such as bwise Media in diversifying its business across multiple territories.

Paris said: “One of the biggest challenges, but also one of the most exciting things about this business, is that the regulatory landscape changes constantly. If you fail to diversify your business, if you fail to think ahead or take certain precautions, if you only focus on one market and the rules change in that market - it may kill your business.”

“This is why we focus on a lot of freshly regulated markets and emerging markets where we believe you will see regulation in the near future.

In Europe there are markets with heavy advertising restrictions such as Italy and Spain, two countries with sports publishers that have huge audiences. The lack of revenue from advertising from gaming operators can be felt on the digital platforms just as much as it is by the leagues and clubs.

“Working with the likes of BeSoccer or OneFootball, the most popular football platforms in Spain and Italy respectively, we had to pivot and change our whole advertising strategy to comply with new restrictions like the Royal Decree in Spain.

“This includes developing dedicated gambling sections with age verification on the BeSoccer platforms or providing a match prediction tool on OneFootball that engages the target audience like no other.”

To conclude this exclusive interview

with SBC Media, Paris reiterated the key company goal for bwise in the 12 months ahead. “Our ambition is to cement our very strong foothold in Brazil, Latin America and other emerging markets, and to strengthen our position as the number one choice for advertisers and publishers in this industry.” •

OUR AMBITION IS TO CEMENT OUR VERY STRONG FOOTHOLD IN BRAZIL, LATIN AMERICA AND OTHER EMERGING MARKETS