GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 49 - April 2021

GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES You work with LegalBet Ltd as site manager. Please tell us about the company and what your daily duties are? I joined quite recently in late 2020 to manage some of the English speaking sites. It is a fairly large company with around 100 employees and the head office is in Riga, Latvia. There are around 20 LegalBet sites around the world and it is still growing. The company roots actually go back to 2006-2007 and I was a friend of the founder. Way back then, it was known as “Intelbet.” It kept this name until around 2018 when there was some trademark issues with an existing Russian brand, so it had to change to complement the global expansion, so “LegalBet” became the brand. My daily duties are quite varied and depend on what is happening at that time and what deadlines need to be met. All duties revolve around maintaining the content of the sites, marketing and dealing with affiliate matters. What previous professional experi- ence do you have and was the iG- aming industry a place you always wanted to work in? Previously, I ran my own (much smaller) gambling portal called TheGamblingTimes.com from 2006 to 2016. I also used to gamble professionally during that time. From that, I knew a large amount about the industry, but at the same time in just four years an awful lot evolved and people had moved on, as well. The iGaming industry is probably my favorite place to have ever worked, or at least it appears to be the thing I am best at. How has your past work experi- ence benefited you in your current position? It has helped that I have a large amount of knowledge and experi- ance in gambling, so writing content is bit easier and, and in my opinion, a bit better. It has helped that I know how to prioritize things, and make sure you dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s before moving on to the next step. Let’s talk more about the LegalBet sites, which have an interesting rat- ing system for bookmakers. Please tell us more about the system, how it works, how well it does converting traffic, and what your site visitors like most about it? There is a small section of the ratings page which are “spon- sored.” This is clearly marked and these positions are paid for by the bookmakers. The majority of affiliate sites rank the op- erators on their pages almost solely on the remuneration they get and they are not always as open about saying so. I can understand that, though. When it was proposed we would have a sponsored section and declare it as such, many people in the company were opposed to the idea, thinking that if we state that, then conversions or FTDs would drop. But after we tried it, in actual fact we realized nothing changed! Other than those positions, the vast majority of ratings are either user generated by a vot- Andrew H. - LegalBetAndy Man Renaissance He’s been a professional g mbler , a part-time pool ‘shark’ and once biked across the U.K. for five days on a whim. But for his day job, “LegalBetAndy” manages LegalBet affiliate sites in some of the biggest markets in the world. G P W A t i m e s . o r g 56