The Affiliate Marketing Podcast - Jesper Søgaard (Better Collective)

CEO & Co-founder of Better Collective Jesper Søgaard joins Lee-Ann in our final #RGWeek19 special podcast. Jesper shares his insight in the importance of the role that affiliates have in Responsible Gambling. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Affiliate Insiders Through Question Podcast with me, Leanne Johnston, and today I'm incredibly excited to invite CEO and co-founder of Better Collective, Jesper Suclub, with me on the podcast today. Hi Jesper, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hi Lianne, I'm I'm good and thanks a lot for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Thank you very much for joining me today. So we're talking about responsible gambling because this week it's um a hot topic in in our industry. And I've invited you on the call today as a leading affiliate business owner and obviously experienced affiliate in the space to talk a little bit about your um you know innovations and techniques for managing responsible gaming within your business. I wanted to kick off with the first question, which I noticed last week um I saw some PR about the fact that you guys have recently invested in a business called Mindway AI. And I wanted you to just talk us through a little bit about that partnership and you know why you've invested and are getting involved from an affiliate's perspective.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yeah, uh well, uh Mindway AI is really an exciting company that is focusing on early on detection of problem gamblers. So basically a B2B business uh trying to sell their products to the operators in in order to help them detect uh behavior that that could lead to a problem from the different players. Um, and then of course you ask, so why are you guys doing that? And um it relates to the fact that I think um in our industry, like the the way we look at it in better collective with with the sports betting and online gambling in general, is it it's a source of entertainment, it's a way to have some fun, and um really especially with regards to sports betting, to to make a game that you're about to watch even more exciting. So that that's our take on that. And and to me personally, that's exactly how I actually uh enjoy sports betting. So whenever I'm watching a football match, I um I would typically put a bet on to make it just a bit more exciting. Um at the same time, we're very much aware that um in this industry there is a small minority where it goes from being entertainment and good fun to becoming a problem. And I think we it's very important that we actually tackle that, not just better collective as a company, but I really think all stakeholders uh that are in in the e-gaming industry, we need to be very aware that that here we have a responsibility because we are building businesses on sports bidding and and iGaming because it's fun and it's good entertainment, but we need to take care of that small minority that are at risk. Otherwise, I yeah, yeah, uh vulnerable, and and otherwise I think we are not really being our responsibility to like fully aware and living up to that.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

That's great, and I think it's important that we talk a little bit about the fact that affiliates are a big part of the ecosystem, you know, from um GamCare's perspective, they're obviously looking at how operators perform and manage this function within their businesses, but I think affiliates have kind of moved on in recent years and are becoming a bigger part of the ecosystem between the relationship between a player and an operator. So it is very important that affiliates start taking more of a social responsible and responsible marketing uh perspective in terms of how they engage with players as the end user. So, what do you see are the biggest challenges being faced in the eye gaming industry in regards to problem gambling and how affiliates play their part in this early detection? Um, what are you guys doing in terms of systems and processes or customer outreach in your business to manage this problem?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, I think affiliates really play an important role here because we we're the ones providing uh information and sort of we're the first touch point for for users who are about to sort of embark on the journey of uh sports betting or online gambling in general. Uh so so we are really there to help them benchmark the operators, educate them about the games, but at the same time also uh having the opportunity to to make them aware of of the potential risk with with gambling addiction. Uh so so being uh at the essence information providers to to these users, uh we need to be transparent about that as well. And I think coming back to what I said just before, that uh we're we're in a great industry, uh a very profitable industry. And to me, the the biggest uh risk that we actually uh face is public opinion and um and regulators wanting to sort of uh control this if we can't manage ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

So it's something yeah, there's there's the misunderstanding as well, because I think you know not many people understand the impact that the affiliate ecosystem has. And I think through misunderstanding, they automatically assume that affiliates don't act responsibly, and and that's really why I wanted to bring you on this podcast because I know that there's a lot of stuff that you guys are doing in your business to make sure that you're educating customers, to make sure that you know putting content live on your website and directing people on where they can seek help. I mean, now you've taken it to the next level and you've invested in this AI technology that's going to support the process of early detection. So I think that's really important to actually bring to the attention of people listening to this podcast that as an as a leading affiliate business in this industry, you are taking this incredibly seriously.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Yes, I agree, and I think there are a lot of affiliates out there doing doing uh the best they can. Um but but there's also uh of course sort of a resource issue to this. So uh of course, Better Collective is in a better position to sort of uh dedicate resources to to make sure that that we we take this issue uh seriously. Um whereas if you are uh a one-man band, it's it's of course more tricky and difficult to to dedicate a lot of resources to this. So I think it's also uh it has to do sort of with the evolution of affiliates. Yeah and probably affiliates are maybe the the part of the ecosystem in iGamer that are sort of uh sort of the the the least mature so far. We we are definitely uh growing, we're maturing, but still we we we we are a group of uh a group of stakeholders in this ecosystem that have sort of like you've only seen listed companies just a few years back, uh and we don't have that many listed companies. So um I think affiliates um they are maturing, but but uh fundamentally um there is a resource issue for a small affiliate. I I can relate to that thinking back of you know the early days of our business.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

And in terms of um sort of you know best practices and things, just moving on to our last question. Do you think that you know the smaller affiliates can possibly get a little bit more help from the operators? Because you know, affiliate managers are you know getting the training and and the understanding internally from the bigger companies to help them to understand regulation and and you know to to be more responsible with their marketing practices, with the the promotions that they offer to affiliates, you know, which get advertised to customers as the end user. What sort of things can affiliate managers do to maybe help affiliates that aren't maybe as big as you with the resourcing? I mean, are there you know content pieces that they can provide or maybe many training sessions or something like that? Do you think that smaller affiliates would find that useful? Would your own team find that useful?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah, I I I think uh there are already uh actually a lot of operators and affiliate managers doing a lot. Uh so you will see a very big difference in the approach also on the operator side of uh how detail-oriented they are towards the the content affiliates produce. Yeah, um, and and some are really sort of setting uh guidelines, they are monitoring affiliate websites, they will follow up with affiliates if there are some issues. Uh and I think that's great, especially because coming back to the smaller affiliates, they probably need some guidance in this and help. And it's not really bad will, but sometimes mistakes can happen. And and there it's great that they have a larger partner being the operator that can help them uh navigate this. Then at the same time, I think you also have responsibility on the operators and the affiliate mandates to make sure if you have some affiliates that are maybe being too aggressive in in the communication and and the content they display, to ultimately make make sure you sort of get rid of those so you can focus the energy on on the affiliates actually trying to do buy by by providing good content and living up to the guidelines. So it is that balance, and and I do see that I think there's a pretty big difference uh from operator to other operator on how they approach this.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yeah. And in terms of how your relationship with MindWare AI is going to work, I mean, is it just a kind of investment into the tool itself, or will you actually be trying to see if you can use that technology in your own business throughout your sites? I know you've got lots of different ways that you work with um you know content and and and end users. So, how how do you see that partnership working up?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

I think first off, for us, um uh two we invest in MineWay for two reasons. One I explained before, but the second is also that we do see a commercial opportunity with this business. Uh, but the way we will assist here in the beginning is really to help open doors uh for for them so they will have easier access to operators and get in in meetings where they can actually be able to really demonstrate uh their products. Um, I can also see uh the use case for us being that uh some of the tools uh could actually be applied just on a website for for users to test. So uh you can actually play a quite simple game and see so are you uh are your behavior behavior uh similar to that of a problem gambler? And that could be sort of uh maybe a small wake-up call for you. So so that's where it uh it's concretely is relevant for our business.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

That's amazing. I think that's really cool. And and the fact that we've got this AI technology that allows us to actually preempt this kind of behavior is amazing too. So I'd just like to thank you so much for your time and and for your insights on how the market is changing and how affiliates need to play their role. And thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Thank you, Leanne. It was a pleasure.