GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 36 - October 2016

ERIK KARU | OEG Partners / OlyBet But our OlyBet.com site and its affiliate program get a lot of attention from the Finnish and Scandinavian markets. The Olybet.com site has English, Finn- ish and Russian as language options. Why did you decide on these lan- guages, and do you have any plans to expand to other languages in the near future? We have geo-IP targeted web- pages in the Baltics, so we have support for Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. In these countries there are quite a number of Russian-speaking inhabitants, so it is essential to have Russian and English. Finland is our neighbor country, so it is good to offer them our products in their native language. We are already working on expanding our webpage with Swedish and other languages. OlyBet has been open since 2010. How important are longevity and reputation in the online gambling industry? Yes, we started operating under the brand name Olympic-Online in 2010, and then rebranded in 2013 to OlyBet when we added sports betting. Longevity and rep- utation are very important in the online gambling industry, because it gives a hint to the customers that the company is trustworthy. OlyBet is part of Olympic Entertainment Group (OEG), which is a publicly listed company, and our mother You’ve had several positions at OEG Partners, in both affiliate management and online marketing. What drew you to this line of work? I have worked in the online gaming sector since 2010, when we launched Olympic-Online in February. We rebranded the business into OlyBet in August 2013. Since then, I have had four different working positions. I started as marketing project manager. My second position was affiliate manager at Olym- pic-Online Times, where I receivedmy first experience in that field. My next position was as the head of online marketing for OlyBet in Estonia, which was a very good experience to take with me to my current role. In 2015, we decided that we needed to switch to a more appropriate affiliate platform and to operations at a group level, and inMay we launched the OEG Partners affiliate program and my new title became head of affiliates. Tell us a little bit about the branding and customer base of OlyBet. You’re based in Estonia; how much of your customer base is Estonian? What other countries do your customers come from? With OlyBet, we currently hold licenses in all Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lith- uania – and this is where we do traditional marketing as laws allow us. We are in a market-leading position in this region. brand is Olympic Casino. OEG has over 23 years of gambling business experience, which gives us a very strong market po- sition in Europe. In addition to OlyBet, the OEG Part- ners website lists a few other brands as “Coming Soon,” including Olympic Casino and Orakulas. Can you give us a quick sneak peek at these brands? Olympic Casino is our land-based brand, and through this we operate in eight differ- ent countries in Europe – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Italy and Malta. We are working hard to offer the affiliates an option where they can send their traffic into land-based casinos and earn a CPA-based commission on these re- ferrals. Orakulas is our Lithuanian brand, which was bought by OEG. Through the brand Orakulas, in addition to the online operations, we have 35 betting shops in Lithuania. We will start offering the Ora- kulas brand to affiliates for promotion in a few months. Describe your role in regard to affiliates. How much of your traffic is attributable to affiliates? My role is directly connected with affiliate partners, so I personally communicate with them with help from the OEG Partners team. In addition, I am responsible for other non-core, internation- ally focused markets where we could and For this issue of the GPWA Times Magazine, we talked to Erik Karu from OEG Partners and Ioannis Pagounis from Tipbet. Both affiliate managers have held a variety of posi- tions within the iGaming industry, and they both enjoy the multifaceted nature of their current jobs. They also both enjoy attending industry conferences, saying they’re great places to meet affiliates face-to-face – so make sure to stop by and say hi to them at the next one you attend! Meet the Affiliate Managers AFFILIATE MANAGER INTERVIEW SERIES 64 W W W . G P W A T I M E S . O R G