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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
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Hello and welcome to another edition of iGaming Daily Live from the floor of SBC Summit in Lisbon. I am Jessica Wellman, editor of SBC Americas and I've got one of my favorite people in our organization who I managed to rope back into the podcast loop every event. Lou Mourinho, what is your, I get your title wrong now because I'm just like general badass Lou Mourinho, but you have an official title so I'll give that to you. Yeah, it's a VP Relationships letter. All right, well, since you are on the relationship side of things, we're going to talk to you a bit about who you've been speaking with this event. Quickly, though, want to shout out our sponsor OptiMove, number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. You can get your first free month of OptiMove. Hey, visit the stand. They're here. Or, well, I guess by the time you hear this, none of us will be here. So next year, next year, they can come visit next year. Yeah. Or will they be at? SBC Summit, Latam. You can go to Fort Lauderdale and meet them. Yes, please. It's at the end of October. So be there or be square. All right. How's the event been for you? Oh, it's been great. Like we knew that it was going to be the biggest to date, but seeing it in person and actually getting to walk the floor and meeting the people that you've been speaking to for all these months, it's amazing. And the feedback has been incredible. I will say this is not like anything I've ever been to. It's. so much bigger than any gaming event I've ever been to. Can I mention the Super Stage? Like, I don't know. It's wild. Guys, have we? I've been busy and I haven't gotten to listen to other gaming daily episodes. I mean, it's a little like it's like a Taylor Swift performs in it arena. Yeah, like I don't know about you guys, but I've never been to an event where there's a stage that big and that pretty. Like it's a pretty stage. I've never thought that I would say that a stage is pretty, but it is. Oh, I'm a theater nerd. I've had, I've seen plenty of, but like opera houses, you know, not necessarily an arena. You've been, you know, talking to clients and that sort of thing. What's been kind of the buzz of the event? Is there any particular news story, any particular verticals that people are really talking about and interested in? Brazil. Yeah. It's not just that we hear Portuguese because we are in Portugal. I keep hearing the Brazilians and even the non-Brazilians are interested in Brazil. That's pretty much all they talk about. Even the non-Brazilian Latam operators, they know that something big is coming. So like I walk the different halls that we have here and there's always a conversation about that for sure. And they do hear Latam in your title and I feel like I've been around you many times with like, tell me about Brazil. Yeah, no, I mean. We've heard that in the next few weeks, they're going to officially name all the operators with licenses in Brazil. That doesn't mean that they won't continue working on the regulation. It's a work in progress. It always is, especially in Latam. But they know that this is the right time for them to work on getting everything in place, but also getting partners, providers, just people who will help them build their businesses for the years to come. Are you a little sad about LATAM leaving? I mean, like, you'll be there in October, and it'll be at Hard Rock, and we'll be back in Fort Lauderdale for the co-branded SBC America's event in May. But are you a little sad to say goodbye to the Hard Rock home? I am kind of heartbroken because the venue is amazing. Like, not just the hotel. The hotel is something else. Like, the guitar-shaped hotel that's iconic, but also like the venue. And just the fact that... you can stay there and go to the event and then go up your room if you forgot something. I know, but we're too big now. Yeah, yeah, we needed more space. I don't know, like, if you are out there listening to this and you went to the event last year, we had booths at the hallways. Because like there wasn't enough space and the interest in LATAM, it's not just Latin American companies there, it's just international ones as well because they wanna see what's up, they wanna know the companies, they wanna know. all the stakeholders and I am not just saying this because I'm from SBC, but that really is the place to be. We're just, it's a sales pitch. Yeah, no, I'm not concerned. Surprise, we're an infomercial this episode. I'm just telling you all the places that you need to go. No, it is my favorite event. I'm not trying to sell anything. I just, I'm really excited about the event. It's one month away, so favorite time of the year. Are you going to dress up for Halloween again? Oh, yeah. Do you have a costume? I do. I bought it two months ago. Oh, wow. I mean, it's up to you if it needs to be a surprise or not. No, no, it's Waldo. Oh, fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm really excited. Last year was Damien from Mean Girls. Yeah, that one. She literally had to carry her phone around with her and show people the picture of what she was referencing. Because you know what happened? A few people thought that I was the Unabomber. So I had to clarify. No, I'm not. I mean, I dated myself going as Rainbow Brite. And then someone asked me if I was the reading Rainbow. And I was like, another great 80s throwback. But no. I wish people could see the costumes because they were amazing. Yeah. Well, come in October. You can see it. Exactly. Closing party. All right, I'm going to go back to the super stage because what was also cool was that an initiative you put a lot of time and effort into wasn't it got the VIP treatment of being on the super stage and being part of like the big showy flashiest stage we've got. So for those who don't know, can you talk a bit about the women's empowerment initiative? Yeah, so I'm sure that you guys all know that there's a few associations out there that focus on empowering women. However, we were at Rio earlier this year, and we were talking about how there's not a single event that reunites all these associations. We thought, why not do it ourselves? Why not, as event organizers, give them the platform to tell everyone what they've been doing, how they can help women improve their careers, or whatever they need? They have multiple tools for whatever they want, basically. And we said, OK, we have all the events coming up. Rio was the first one this year. And why not do it in Lisbon? It's our biggest show to date. It's the biggest platform that we can give them. And we started talking to all these associations. And they were like, OK, this is a fantastic idea. We need to unite our efforts to make something bigger. And that's basically how the Women's Empowerment Initiative was born. And now we have the support of. I would say 10 associations and they just launched one on stage today. So yeah, that's amazing. And we've had breakfast yesterday courtesy of GGW. Then we had a meetup in the afternoon. We had the panels this morning and later today we will have a dinner tour. Learned this week what a dinner tour is by the way. A fantastic word though. Like I know now that I know it, I'm going to. throw dinertoires simply to be able to say it. If I invite people to my house. Our producer is making a face. So for those who don't know, a dinertoire is like light bites. Yeah, but also like standing up. Like you don't just sit down with a plate and people come serve you. You basically get the food that's available there. That sounds like a buffet. It kind of is. But the buffet doesn't sound nearly as fun as dinertoire. Yeah, right. But like we wanted to give people the opportunity to talk to each other and. Whereas you're sitting down, you just kind of stuck with the people around you. And this way you can just walk around and, you know, do whatever you want. I mean, so going forward, like what will the WE initiative look like at SBC events? Is it, you know, more breakfast and that sort of thing? Are there going to be opportunities to get involved outside of events? You know, what's the scope of it all? Yeah, it could be. I mean, we are not limiting anything around this initiative. What we do want to do is, like Lisbon is our global event, so we want to have everyone here. However, we know that, for example, in one month, we have the Latam event. We have Latam associations. So we want to give them the opportunity to take over and do whatever is more useful for them and for their members or prospective members, whatever it might be. And then in the following events, because we have regional events, the other associations can take over there. And it's just, it's a work in progress and we are welcoming any comments, opinions, feedback that you might have. So we can make this better for everyone, I guess. Yeah. And for those listening too, I think the point that some of the people were making on stage today was that it's, you don't have to be a woman to be involved. Um, because I think all of us who are women in gaming kind of know what is holding us back and it's. the larger institutions themselves. So if you don't get men involved and help them understand why there are issues, sometimes it feels like we don't go anywhere. Like it's nice to connect and everything, but in terms of actually making tangible changes, if you want to be part of it and you aren't a woman, by all means, you're still welcome. Of course. There are some associations that actually were telling me that they have workshops or they were thinking about having workshops for men. Because it takes everyone to change things for the better, for everyone. And if we, I mean, it might sound like a cliche, but if we empower women, we are actually empowering everyone. And again, we cannot do it just ourselves. We need everyone involved. So yeah. And yeah, about the audience. Um, there was a speaker at one of the panels that pointed out that the audience at that point was 50% male. So again. It's amazing that the interest is out there and that now they have kind of a platform to showcase that. I mean, I will say too, walking around, there are some events I go to and I am very aware that I'm in the minority. And I think walking around this, maybe it's because it's so large, but it feels like we're making up and globally, it seems better than the US sometimes in terms of representation. I don't remember her name, but the African women in gaming was saying that the industry there is actually 51% female, which was shocking to me. Awesome. But that's what's interesting about the initiative and why it's going to be so helpful is you learn those things and you can ask them, like, how'd you do that? Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's a great example. And Personally myself, I would like to attend another conference that's headed by them so I can learn about that and just By hearing these stories, I think we can all get something out of it and eventually that will help us in our own careers So I managed to tune into a bit of the women's initiative stuff This morning, but I'll be honest the past couple of days I may just retire and become a professional moderator because I have moderated three panels over the course of the event. It was cool though, I enjoy moderating. It's always nice to have conversations and as a former competitive public speaker, it scratches that itch the same way I was doing the podcast does, you know. The first one on the first day, I found super interesting and learned a lot. It was part of the player protection symposium, talking about influencers what role they kind of play in responsible gaming and how different regulators are starting to ask questions around influencers. I learned in Greece, for example, you essentially have to be regulated as an affiliate if you are like a streamer kind of influencer or something like that. In Latam, are they doing anything around influencers? Yeah, in Brazil, actually. they needed to come up with marketing rules. And I am not currently the best person to discuss that. But I know that there are some stuff in place that they need to follow before being able to actually use influencers in their campaigns. I mean, I've beaten this drum before, probably on this podcast more than once, that social media continues to be one where I think it just There's so much, at least in the US and Canada, and the UK too, there's so much focus on television advertising, and nobody's really shining the light on the fact that operators are posting their own content dozens of times a day, and they're trying to generate engagement, and you've got influencers promoting brands and these sorts of things that like. I feel like being on social media, I certainly am getting more inundated with sports betting in a way that feels intrusive, more than like an advertisement during a football game. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100% in Latam, I mean, I'm from Latam, so I always go back to Latam. But it's a big thing, not just in Brazil, like in every country. You can tell you that in Argentina, like in the city of Buenos Aires, that's the second biggest market. They've been talking about what they can do to stop that because the exposure to everyone on social media, it's like never before. You have even like people who have cook shows promoting sports betting and they're like, okay, but like, do we need some type of regulation here? So we limit what's out there or not even limit so we can. monitor what's out there. And if there's something that we need to do, we can actually intervene. So the discussion is super interesting there. Yeah, we had a good conversation about kind of, you know, how operators can better educate influencers on how to, because I mean, the goal of the influencer is to be able to talk about your brand and their voice. That you don't want to dilute that, but you also want them to be saying responsible things and behaving responsibly. Interestingly, influencers also came up, I had a This one, I always luck out with the, I get the affiliate CEOs a lot of times with panels and I had them and the new Katina Media CEO, Manuel Stan, I asked them kind of the past five years, what was the biggest surprise? And he said, he really wishes the company had understood, I mean, he's new too, so he's answering for other people, but like. that affiliates kind of missed the boat on influencers. They didn't know the role that they were going to play. I don't think any of us expected like the hawk to a girl is suddenly gonna be giving out picks on better. It really is taken it by storm though. But he said, the bright side is we missed the boat on social in a lot of ways that influencers didn't when it came to promoting sports books. But in... they still play an important role because they can be kind of an intermediary between influencer and operator where somebody who is licensed, especially like in the U.S. and in markets where affiliates need to be regulated, helping that influencer make sure that they're adhering to guidelines and creating opportunities for them that they can't pursue themselves because they don't have a license, you know. So, I was, yeah, we heard a lot about it. That was kind of my big message of all of the panels was influencers are increasingly a part of this and they're amazing and useful but they also are potentially very, very dangerous because you have one, the internet moves very quickly so you have somebody go wrong and then it's very hard to come back from it, you know? Do you think that because I've seen an increase in the number of affiliate companies in the industry, do you think that the new ones... will learn from this and focus on that at the beginning, or they will just focus on the traditional way? I mean, the way Manuel was speaking was kind of like the ship had sailed, that these influencers are pick... It's more that affiliates, because they've been traditionally so preoccupied with what's on page, the goal is to get them to your site, that social kind of got neglected as a result. And so the social space, which is where a lot of people are coming to know sports betting brands, is one where they're not as successful as they could have been. So we've seen some groups like, it's SGG, I think, is one that's very focused on like micro influencers, and kind of just creating a bank of them that are doing affiliate work. I think as new affiliate, companies come up and you look to the future. I mean, kids don't even kids like 900 years old. But like my nephew is like they don't Google. Yeah. They put questions into YouTube. And I'm like, what on earth? To me, it's so foreign and crazy. But fundamentally, where people are getting information from is changing. AI is becoming a place where people are getting information. So I think new affiliates and that was kind of the overarching. conversation of a five year look into affiliation was that, you know, people will continue to need information and good information. But the companies have to kind of adapt to it's less about making the user come to your site. You need to go to where the user is. Yeah, that makes sense. So all right. Well, I think we have a dinnatoire to prepare for. So ladies and gentlemen, we are going to wrap up this episode of iGaming Daily. The last one live from Portugal, but I'm pretty sure we'll at least do a phone in or something from G2E and our Vegas baby party. Don't forget, we've got that coming up in a couple of weeks in Las Vegas, if you haven't reached out about getting into that. I already have people, I don't even do the party. And people are texting me two weeks in advance, like. Hey, do you know how I can get on the list for the party? So I can't even imagine what the actual people doing it or dealing with it. Let me tell them they can go to the sbcevents.com website and RSVP. Okay, do that. We'll see you in Vegas and thanks for listening.