GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 25 - June 2013

all sorts. However, when you get it right it is one of the biggest highs in the world! What are three aspects of organizing an event that most people don’t think about (or are even aware of), but you have to? The biggest thing is location. At every event I get cornered and told an end- less list of cities where we should host an event, but people don’t realize how limited you are with an event our size both by ven- ue and availability. There are literally just a handful of locations that work for us. The second thing is when. This isn’t as simple as people think. For example, first we have to check Jewish holidays as a vast amount of people in our market are Jewish. Then we have to check sport- ing events as they always seem to pop up around our events, and then there is a whole bunch of other stuff from national holidays to royal weddings! The third is how much is the VAT? Boring, I know, but under EU rules we have to pass that onto exhibitors, delegates and spon- sors no matter where they are based and this can add a lot to the price. One of the reasons we haven’t been back to Budapest is because they now have the highest VAT in Europe – 27 percent!!! You are in a position that requires spurts of long hours and plenty of travel. How do you manage balancing that with your family life? This has been hard, especially with the birth of my daughter just over two years ago and my upcoming new baby in August. The key is to make the most of the time between the travel. So for exam- ple I drop my daughter at nursery every morning and always get home for “bath time,” and once she is in bed I get back to the laptop. Work is important, but when it’s all said and done my family is the most important thing I have. One of the interesting things about the land-based gaming industry is that the personal relationships forged among op- erators, suppliers and vendors are criti- cally important. If you’re unable to build those relationships, you can’t succeed. It looks like a similar thing is happening in the online gaming world. Theoretically, you should be able to do business online effectively without ever having to meet in person. But increasingly, forging that personal relationship – in person – is be- coming critical in the online space. Why do you think the online gaming space has evolved that way? I think this is basic human instinct. In many sectors publishers have tried to create virtual events and these are great from an initial networking per- spective and for listening to content, but as humans we need personal interaction – the opportunity to look into the whites of some- one’s eyes. The affiliate sector in my opinion relies on trust; affiliates trust programs with their traffic and that they will be paid for it, and programs trust affiliates to send decent traffic and to take care of their brand. Of course these deals can be done virtually but in reality when you have met someone and properly hung out with them there is noth- ing that can beat that personal interaction. When you approach a convention cen- ter or exhibition hall for the first time and tell them you want to put on an online gambling conference there, what type of reaction do you normally get? And what’s the strangest response you’ve received? Most of the time the first ques- tion they ask is around legal permissions or whether we are going to be running an illegal casino. I think the strangest reac- tion was when a venue canceled on us three months before the event because it turned out the venue was allegedly con- nected to some very dodgy people and they were concerned we were bringing attention to their venue, which I suspect was used to launder money! Quite glad we never ended up there! Malcolm Gladwell argues in Outliers that timing is critical to success. That someone like Bill Gates, if he had ar- rived on the computer scene two years earlier or two years later, could not have achieved the level of success he did because there was a narrow window of opportunity for being transformational. How does that concept apply to the online gaming world? And how does that apply to you? Is the affiliate mar- ket still conducive to people just enter- ing the market? Do you think that, in the online gaming world of today, a young Alex Pratt would be able to have the career you’ve had so far? It is certainly a lot tougher than it used to be, but it is not a closed door. When I started in this sector almost nine years ago everyone said there was no space in the affiliate sector, so don’t bother…. They are still saying the same thing now! Opportunities lie around the emerging areas; this could be geographical, niche areas such as live gaming, mobile gaming and social gaming or marketing strategies such as social marketing. On top of that if you know what you are do- ing and have investment you can still build a brand in this sector. Many of the biggest affiliates in our industry were not known two or three years ago, and I am sure peo- ple told them the market was saturated. Among the more important develop- ments in the past few years is the emer- gence of a small but regulated U.S. mar- ket. You launched iGB North America to serve the B2B side of that market. What has surprised you about the B2B side of the U.S. market? And what has gone completely as you expected? To be honest it’s gone as we expected, slow and steady. Our strategy in that market is to build a brand and be there when the market eventually takes off, but we always expected this to take time and so we are fully prepared to continue to invest in the market and ultimately be the biggest in- formation provider in the U.S. In terms of the market itself the biggest learning for me has been around the make- up of the land-based sector and the various stake holders, from lotteries to tribal gam- ing. I feel embarrassed now about how little I knew about Native Americans, let alone their gaming market, but with some help from Victor Rocha, who owns Pechanga. net, I am much more educated. As you gaze into your crystal ball, how do you see the U.S. market evolving? Is it going to evolve in a way that’s friend- ly for European suppliers? How about European operators? What do you envi- sion as the eventual role of affiliates in the U.S. market? I wish I did have a crystal ball, as I would love to know what will hap- pen with the affiliate market. I think there will be one but in terms of the format it will take I genuinely don’t know. I have met new operators that are focused on affiliates as an acquisition channel but then I have also met operators that don’t even know what CPA stands for let alone what an affiliate does. The licensing approach is going to make it tough but not impossible, especially if you can come under a “master affiliates” license. The one thing I don’t agree with is that affiliates won’t have a role in the market. The only way I could see this hap- pening is if legally they make it very dif- 36 “I kind of fell into it” – An interview with Alex Pratt