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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
Charlie Horner (00:02.57)
There has perhaps never been a more important time for operators to protect their margins. While taxes and expensive compliance measures are unavoidable in today's landscape, operators need to control the controllables. And bonus abuse has long been a problem, as groups of users seek to take advantage of sign-up offers and more. It's a problem that many simply can't afford. So how big of a problem is bonus abuse, and how can operators protect their bottom line by stopping these users?
Welcome back to iGaming Daily, by Optimove, the creator of positionless marketing and the number one player engagement solution for sports betting and iGaming operators. I'm Charlie Horner and today I'm delighted to be joined by Tetiana Dychenko, CPO of Casino at Every Matrix. Tetiana, thanks for coming on, how are you?
Tetiana (00:49.686)
our journey. Good, very good. Thanks for inviting me.
Charlie Horner (00:55.39)
Very good, not a problem at all. It's an important topic. It's something that I'm sure will be impacting many of our listeners, so I'm sure there's plenty of value for everyone to take away from this one. Perhaps it's a good place to start by just outlining the problem. So how big of a problem is bonus abuse for operators in 2026, and how much is it costing them in revenue leakage?
Tetiana (01:21.006)
Bonus abuse is a very serious problem for operators in 2026 and it has been for a few years. And I would say that it's a much bigger problem than most
people think. We've seen in industry studies that bonus abuse accounts for around 60 to 65 percent of all fraud cases in iGaming and it means that it's the largest frauds category that the operators need to deal with it today. And when we talk about cost estimates vary for different operators but many industry
reports they say that the leakage is around 10 to 15 percent of promotional spend.
Some operators say that it's closer to 20 % so the numbers are pretty big and The problem is that this leakage is not something that it's easy to see right because it could appear like the bonus campaigns just perform poorly and the acquisition costs too high and the industry actually moved from from individual bonus hunters to the
group of people, this is like an organized business and
Tetiana (02:50.658)
They work in the organized groups, they use multiple accounts, they analyze promotions, they share in tactics, and they actually adapt pretty quickly to operators' reaction. So the problem is it's getting bigger and bigger, and I don't think that we can expect that it will become easier for operators in the future.
Charlie Horner (03:17.482)
Yeah, absolutely. think some of those numbers that you mentioned there are really stark. I 60 to 65 % of fraud in iGaming comes from bonus abuse. I mean, it just goes to show that if you can get in front of this problem, you know, that's a significant improvement from where the industry is now. And up to 20 % of revenue leakage from promotional spend, that's really significant. Do you think this problem's only being amplified by the fact that...
many operators in regulated markets, particularly in Europe and Latam, are facing more stringent regulation, higher tax rates, that's also eating into the bottom line. Do you think bonus abuse is only amplifying that problem?
Tetiana (04:02.214)
absolutely absolutely agree and the reason is actually simple because like every euro that's that is lost on bonus abuse now hurts more than it was in a few years ago
And if we talk about, if we take for example some numbers, like for example in UK in April 2026, the remote gaming duty increased from 21 % to 40%. And it means that the operators, they already given the large share of the revenue to taxes, right? And besides taxes, they have marketing costs, they have platform fees, they have support costs.
They have payment processing costs, platform fees, for example.
And overall in Europe, like Netherlands, they introduced one of the highest gaming taxes. An increase happened from $30.5 to $34.2 last year, with the further increase that is planned. Sweden increased gaming tax from 18 % to 22 % in...
2024. And we see that a few other European markets, they are also moving towards the higher taxation and also the stricter compliance requirements. Like in Germany, the operators are paying 5.3 % tax and it's on turnover, right? Not on...
Tetiana (05:49.038)
So the taxes are higher and complying costs are higher and the regulatory requirements they are not there.
they can be stricter. And in this environment, like the numbers that we just talked about, 15 up to 20 % of bonus budget, it actually hurts because you can't afford to waste that much of the money on the promotion.
And that is why working with the fraud and detecting bonus abuse, it's not longer a problem that the fraud team should be dealing with, but it has become a business-wide concern because it actually could affect the operator and could hurt the operator pretty bad.
Charlie Horner (06:51.581)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, the cost of doing business in all of these regulated markets just seems to be going up and up and up. So, you know, I think...
getting in front of that bonus abuse problem and being able to reduce that leakage is essential to success over the next few years. One thing that you mentioned earlier, Tetiana, is that we're sort seeing an evolution in terms of the people who are doing this bonus abuse. Do you think it is a case now where it's gone from...
just individuals seeking out bonuses that they can they can abuse to now a sophisticated organization and using sophisticated and more advanced technology to identify those those bonuses that they can abuse.
Tetiana (07:39.15)
Absolutely, this is exactly how I would describe it. Because if you go back to like 10 to 15 years ago, bonus abuse was kind of opportunistic. A player creates an account, asks his friends to create an account.
They try to find the loophole in the promotions and to those who are individual, they were looking for quick gains, for quick cash. And today it's much more sophisticated. They are working in organized group and they are actively searching for profitable promotions. They share knowledge across the whole network. They adapt to new techniques.
very quickly and it's already a business, right? They treat bonus abuse as a business and they know what offers are worth targeting, how to get the maximum value from those offers and how to avoid the traditional checks by the operators.
And I would say that the technology actually played a huge role in this evolution because the bonus abuser, have access to a variety of automation tools, AI, course, VPNs, device proofing and other technologies.
They help to create account pretty quickly. They help to, for those players, at least for the first time to see pretty much like a normal player. And the result is that the modern bonus abuse often doesn't look like fraud anymore. And first player account may appear perfectly normal.
Tetiana (09:38.318)
But only when you connect those multiple behavioral signals together, you can say that it's a bottom-subuser.
Charlie Horner (09:48.586)
Yeah, I mean, you can see from, you know, your answer there and the evolution that we're seeing in terms of the technology and the organization that these people are using to do bonus abuse that it must be quite difficult to detect and it must be tough for operators to get ahead of. Why do you think operators have struggled to keep up with the evolution of bonus abuse?
Tetiana (10:13.646)
I would say like a few reasons and first of all, bonus abusers, actually have one job, right? To find ways to exploit promotions, but operators who are running their business, they focus on hundreds of areas, hundreds of things at the same time. They focus on player sequestration.
They focus on player retention, player engagement. They deal with compliance.
with compliance requirements in also responsible gaming. All kind of operational activities like payments, supports, also product development to offer their players some interesting functionality and so much more. And at the same time, like bonus review, they just want one direction, right? So it has, of course,
makes for the operators quite hard to keep up with that speed and adapt faster than the bonus abusers evolve. And what else could be mentioned is that most of the operators, they still rely on the traditional way of...
checking on bonus abuse using the static rules, checking on some parameters, doing manual reviews, checking against certain ratios. For example, like checking the numbers of how many bonuses claimed, bonus to deposit ratio, wagering completion speeds, deposit sizes, and repeated sequences of deposits.
Tetiana (12:16.174)
withdrawals. And that approach, it worked relatively good when the bonus abuse was simple. sophisticated bonus abuse doesn't look that simple anymore. And what we see today are multiple behavioral patterns instead of like metrics and individual actions. And when I am saying about behavioral
Partons I mean stuff like behaviors like
specific gameplay strategies like switching between games with exploitable mechanics and players being targeted only specific bonus triggering games or when players cycling through bonuses very quickly coordinated patterns across different accounts and when those accounts those player profiles they don't they look completely different and not connected
And different kinds of behavioral inconsistency like playing patterns that doesn't look like a normal player profile, unusual session behavior, playing long hours, playing off-peak like very weird hours probably like at night, right? Different kinds of deposit patterns when one plays a deposit.
exact amount, right, that specific amount and it's repeated. And of course, like it's simply not realistic anymore for the fraud team to manually identify those complex pattern. And they definitely can't do that at the same speed that the organized bonus abuse.
Tetiana (14:11.316)
And that is why we are seeing this shift towards the AI in behavioral analysis for detecting bonus abuse.
Charlie Horner (14:23.431)
Yeah, I think it all goes to show that this is an increasingly complex topic and something that, yeah, operators, it turns out, are quite busy most of the time and it's quite difficult for them to keep on top of this all the time. But Tetiana will take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll look at some solutions to this complex problem.
Tetiana (14:29.462)
Absolutely.
Charlie Horner (14:46.609)
Welcome back to iGaming Daily, today we're putting bonus abuse under the spotlight and I'm joined by Tatiana Dichenko, CPO of Casino at Every Matrix. Tatiana,
How does the Every Matrix bonus guardian as part of the Engage Suite solution help operators manage these threats and get ahead of bonus abusers? Because we've outlined that it's a complex topic and operators have a lot on their plate, so they might need a little bit of support on this.
Tetiana (15:20.062)
Absolutely, absolutely. And first of all, Bonus Guardian is AI driven. Bonus Guardian uses AI to analyze how players interact with bonuses, how players play, how to deposit, how to withdrawal. So Bonus Guardian looks for the behavioral pattern that's different from genuine players, different from normal players. And...
Bonus Garden is a part of our Engage Suite ecosystem and we have all the data. We know each and every action that the player does.
The problem that today organized bonus abusers, they are very good at hiding. They use different accounts, devices, player identities, profiles, and they might seem acting like normal players at the first glance, like for the first periods of time.
And Bonus Guardian, what it does, it detects behaviors that were basically hidden or invisible before. For example, precise sequences of actions that are targeting of getting maximum value from the bonuses.
coordinated patterns across accounts, all kinds of behavioral inconsistency like switching between games.
Tetiana (16:55.662)
with exploitable mechanics, unusual session behaviors, all these behavioral patterns. And when we detect those patterns, we flag the players that look suspicious and the operator can stay in control what kind of restrictions, what kind of...
how to work with the players players. And they can do this automation with excluding players from promotions or entirely blocking the account or just simply keeping the player for further monitoring or...
holding the withdrawal so it's up to the operator to react on in different cases on deflect players, the players that's bonus guardian detected. So this is what we offer to the players this flexible
control for the players that tool flagged. And what's most important that the bonus guardian model keeps learning from the new cases, keeps evolving and it is getting feedback from the operator. We call it like providing the verdicts. And while constantly evolving,
Guardian continues to adapt to the new bonus abuse tactics and it keeps being effective for the operators in the long term run.
Charlie Horner (18:53.865)
I think that's a really important point to make is that because we've outlined that this is a fast
paste changing situation in terms of the technology and the organization that the bonus abusers have that the solutions need to evolve quickly as well. guess with the AI and all the data analysis in the background, that's really useful for operators. Tessiana, you contributed to an article that went out on iGaming Expert where we did some mythbusters on bonus abuse and we'll put the link in the show notes for anyone who might want to take
a full read of that, that's with yourself and your colleagues, D and Enga Petersen. I thought we could do some quick fire myth busting on the podcast when it comes to bonus abuse. I've picked out three of the myths and just very briefly for each of them, just give me your opinion on whether they are a myth and how you would bust that myth. So the first one is a bonus abuse is an isolated predictable cost.
Tetiana (19:59.686)
So it's definitely not true, it's definitely a myth and modern bonus abuse is neither isolated nor predictable.
And this is because today we are seeing an organized groups that's actively looking for weaknesses in promotions. once they find something that works, they can share it pretty quickly. They can repeat it pretty quickly and they can scale it very quickly. And what starts as a small issue,
it could quickly become a major source of leakage across the entire operator system, across multiple campaigns. And that is why operator, cannot slung your trade bonus abuses as fixed cost of doing business. It's something that needs to be constantly monitored and managed.
Charlie Horner (21:01.564)
Fantastic. Well that leads nicely into another one of the myths on the list which is bonus abuse is a necessary evil of promotions.
Tetiana (21:12.878)
Actually, I believe that promotions can be designed in a way that it's attractive for genuine, normal players and at the same time they are less, much less attractive for bonus abusers because the mindset is different, right? Normal players, they are playing for fun, they want to get their joy, they want to get their fun while bonus abuser,
They are looking for the quick rewards. And promotion mechanics like challenges, tournaments, different kinds of loyalty programs, they engage the junior players in the long term. good players, they enjoy this experience. But at the same time, bonus abuser, they are only looking for quick cash with...
and ideally with minimal effort put from their side. So I would say that it's like a combination of first designing the smarter promotions, right? And at the same time having the right tool to detect bonus abuse. That's the key strategy to build the...
have the effective promotion system, design promotion smarter, and have the right tools to detect bonus abuse.
Charlie Horner (22:46.76)
Fantastic. last one, you said that bonus abusers are looking for quick wins and fast rewards, is bonus abuse, does it only happen during the welcome bonus then? Or is that a myth as well?
Tetiana (22:59.278)
It is actually partly true because it is indeed associated with welcome bonuses. And indeed, the onboarding is a high-risk moment. But in reality, bonus abuse doesn't stop on the onboarding process. And sophisticated groups of bonus abusers, they...
they continue to exploit during the whole lifecycle and they continue to exploit with the new bonus campaigns, free spin campaigns, different kinds of gamification.
mechanics and rewards. So I would say that even that's the most advanced bonus abuse. It happens, it could happen and quite often happens later in the life cycle when players already look like a normal player, when operators treat this player to be legitimate players. And then basically like they build the trust first and then they exploit
later. So my response would be that it's super important to do the monitoring across the entire life cycle of the player from the registration to the long-term engagement.
Charlie Horner (24:34.886)
Fantastic. There was a nice little quick fire round. again, we'll put the link in the show notes so people can go and take a look at the full Mythbusting article. It's a nice piece. But finally, Tetiana, let's look ahead to the future. What do think the future of bonus abuse looks like? And how do you think operators can remain vigilant to tackle that next era of threats?
Tetiana (25:04.372)
I think that bonus abuse will continue to become more organized, more automated, and it will be even more difficult to distinguish it from the genuine behavior, because...
We already see bonus abusers to use modern technologies to analyze promotions, identify weaknesses, share successful techniques and techniques, and AI become more accessible and it could be used for both as the same effective for good and for bad, right? So I expect that we will see more sophisticated bonus abuse and faster adoption to operate
reactions and the challenge here that the operators who are using traditional approach of handling bonus abuse, they won't be able to scale as quickly and they won't be able to keep up if they still use and do all the checks based on the rules, based on the certain metrics, based on some manual review. So I truly believe that
the future belongs to behavioral analysis and predictive models that can identify suspicion patterns over across the millions of player actions and interactions.
This is more about asking ourselves the question, does this behavior look like a normal genuine customer or it's an organized bonus abuse? But I would like to add that the human expertise will remain extremely important and the best results will come from the united efforts from combining AI-driven detectives
Tetiana (27:10.96)
detection approach with experienced fraud team who can validate the findings and make sure that the tool is continuously improving in this process of detecting of bonus abuse.
Charlie Horner (27:35.122)
Sure, sure, yeah, I'm definitely on board with you there in terms of having the AI, but also the people and the expertise to use the AI and to understand how to use it and how to interpret what it gives you. But Tatiana, look, it's been fantastic to have you on the show. We've really enjoyed our conversation and thanks for sharing your expertise on the show today.
Tetiana (27:56.878)
Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Have great day.
Charlie Horner (28:00.839)
Thank you. And to OptiMove, our sponsor, thank you for supporting the show. And to our audience, thank you ever so much for tuning in to today's episode of iGaming Daily. And come back tomorrow to keep up to date with all the latest global gambling news.