“All changes in the gambling industry are for the better and the strongest will win,” CEO of Quints Roman Bout

Roman Bout has been working in the gambling field for 13 years. He held executive positions at Pari-Match, M.S.L, and UB Gaming. Today he is a founder and CEO of Quints, which provides software to the affiliate marketing industry and develops artificial intelligence solutions, intended to forecast player behavior. In 2018, he founded SupportLab, a customer support outsourcing platform for casinos.

Having extensive experience in the gambling industry, the expert can view the iGaming field from the standpoint of both operators and affiliates. Therefore, he told RGW 2019 how the tightening of regulation influenced the gambling industry, how to assess the efficiency of online marketing, and what would happen in the industry in the next 5 years.

“Tightening of regulation does not have much of influence on people that used to violate the law for the sake of making a profit in the past”

It is important to understand that there is illegal online gambling in Russia. Many players in the country like to spend their free time in casinos. Demand creates its own supply, so new gambling facilities regularly appear in the market.

I do not think that tightening of the gambling regulation strongly influences people that used to violate the Russian law intentionally to make a profit. As a rule, online casinos are foreign companies. People that reside abroad manage them, so it is unlikely that they will halt their work due to the tightening of regulation.

As for illegal offline gambling, I suppose that tightening of the law primarily targeted this market. Perhaps people that used to work as managers at illegal facilities will ask themselves now, “Isn’t it high time to change something in life?” However, I think that no big changes will take place and they will continue doing what they were doing before. At the same time, they will have more problems with sleep.

As for advertising, methods currently used by Roskomnadzor are not always efficient. So, I do not think that the law will fundamentally change something.

“Demand for gambling solutions is a rather subjective factor”

Today thousands of companies work around the world and in Russia, so the demand for solutions is a rather subjective factor. Young market participants primarily solve issues related to the acquisition of new players. Medium and large businesses have already found their traffic tools and channels, so they can now focus on the work with the customer base.

Only websites that offer interactive bets and owned by Russian licensees are legal in the Russian online gambling market. The barrier of market entry is rather high, so the market comprises only large companies. Most of them currently focus on the question of how to increase revenue from the customer base. However, even big market players face situations when their customer acquisition solutions fail, so they have to pay attention to this problem as well.

“Not to experience restrictions, operators give preference to our company”

We offer a customer acquisition service called Quints and intended for affiliate marketing and tracking of media buys.

Now many operators, that have been using other solutions for five and more years, experience restrictions that hinder their development. Therefore, they move to our platform. For example, one of the largest bookmakers in Ukraine Favorit Sport has opted to move from another affiliate service to Quints.

“We help to set up efficient online marketing”

Performance Marketing has started to gain momentum with the development of online marketing. I like this concept because it is about figures measured in money. In other words, the days are gone when the performance of marketing specialists was estimated through the number of displays of banner ads or some other ephemeral units.

Today everything is extremely simple. A company invests Хmoney in marketing. Further, it can easily measure how many new customers it acquired and how much money they brought. Then the company compares marketing expenses and revenue. Further, the management decides whether to penalize the marketing department or to dismiss them. Sometimes it pays to praise them, though.

The key idea is that you have to understand clearly, where the customer came from, how much money you spent on his acquisition, and how much money you earned from him, or what lifetime value he has. With numbers, it is getting very easy to estimate the productivity of marketing.

Quints aims to help our customers to set up efficient marketing.

“The gambling industry will be growing, the competition will be getting tougher, and the quality of services will be improving”

For several years now, the gambling field has seen three main trends that are gradually strengthening positions: eSports is growing in popularity; shares of mobile and live are increasing.

I believe that in the next five years main trends will be about the ubiquitous legalization of online gambling and arrival of local licenses, what is happening in Europe now. The country starts gaining a clear understanding: if you cannot beat something, take charge of it. Money brought by players will not go offshore but will start refilling the budget in the form of taxes paid by gambling business operators.

Currently, a generation of players is growing on eSports and computer games. Therefore, the popularity of eSports betting will be growing in the future, and casinos will be focusing more on gamification and socialization of the game process.

Online casinos will start developing faster than land-based facilities. In general, the industry will be growing. Besides, the competition will be tightening and as a result, quality of operations and offered services will improve, including customer service, advertising campaigns, offered games, etc.

Today online gambling is still a highly profitable business. Therefore, a growing number of large investment funds is paying attention to this sector. Like in traditional business, this market is striving for monopoly: a large number of merger and acquisition deals takes place. As a result, the barrier of market entry is growing.

Overall, all changes are for the better, and the strongest will win.

On June 7, Roman Bout will take part in Russian Gaming Week,
where he will speak about customer acquisition for casinos.

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