From the Dull of Same to the Hall of Fame, Each Category Has Its Own Rules
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Different categories in iGaming B2B have different brand plays. A brand play is how you present yourself in the market, shaped by the dynamics of your category. After nearly 20 brand reviews, the patterns are clear. Here’s what each category demands.
As an iGaming platform business, you’re competing with tens, if not hundreds of platforms. Everyone’s trying to get a piece of the pie, shipping similar products and making a lot of noise in the market. Unless you have the deep pockets to outspend the competition, you’re stuck between the big players who do and the small players nibbling at your market from below.
There are tens of thousands of operators out there, but you can’t reach them all with your current strategy.
You have to make them come to you. They need to learn about you before you know them.
How do you make them come to you? Affiliates, networks, and streamers are a numbers play. They are beneficial for their customers in one very particular way. They drive traffic. They signal their scale, costs, and terms to the market, and operators are attracted to the ones with the best numbers.
Platforms are a narrative play.
They benefit operators in different ways, which means rich positioning opportunities. Vegangster brings product innovation with UX built for a new generation of players. Elantil’s design philosophy rethinks integration from the ground up. Maincard offers fast and simple. Finnplay offers precision and grit.
But being different isn’t enough.
Narratives are how platforms package their competitive edge and make operators reach out. Platforms spread their narratives in the market, and operators gravitate to the ones whose story resonates with them.
But you can’t just spread your story to the wind. It costs money, your pockets aren’t deep, and your story isn’t relevant to everyone anyway. Vegangster fits operators who serve the TikTok generation. Elantil fits elite builders. You need to appeal to a precise set of customers and focus your energy and resources on the right message. The right prospects will hear of you, get excited, and come to you.
Narratives are how platforms package their competitive edge and make operators reach out. Platforms spread their narratives in the market, and operators gravitate to the ones whose story resonates with them.
The banking and payments business isn’t a numbers play. It’s a trust play.
The global financial network, a vast web of banks, financial institutions, and payment providers, formed the way it did due to regulatory, contextual, and operational constraints. It’s a network governed by trust. Without it, a bank or PSP loses its right to be part of it.
That trust comes at a cost. If you want to be part of the network, you play by the rules. And when everyone plays by the same rules, everyone ends up offering pretty much the same thing. Bank and payment providers are nearly commoditized, offering almost identical IBANs or payment methods.
Operators aren’t attracted to the providers with the best numbers. It’s not just about who has the cheapest fees or fastest transactions. It’s about who they can trust with disputes and interruptions, flow and service, reconciliation and settlement. It’s about whether they can trust someone with their money.
When the product itself can’t help you stand out, how do you get a merchant to trust you over everyone else?
With a brand.
In a trust play business where competition is intense, narrative is an instrument you cannot afford not to use. It builds trust before you even know the prospect exists. It travels ahead of your sales team, reaches merchants you’ve never met, and creates familiarity before the first conversation.
Almost no one in banking and payments in iGaming is investing in brand, and that’s what makes it an even greater opportunity. The field is empty.
When your core offering looks like everyone else’s, what do you build your brand around?
The core offering is the same, but the edge around it doesn’t have to be. Your culture, your design philosophy, your depth of services. Rather than lead with the same generic promise (trusted, secure, seamless), lead with that.
finera. wraps the same services in a promise to end the hassle of complex payments once and for all. Inpay spent nearly two decades building the vastest, fastest, and most reliable payout network in the industry. Same offering, but to an extent that’s hard to replicate. Yaspa and Neosurf, each in its own way, offer the same basic payment services their competitors do, but vertically integrate compliance into the flow. ISX provides the same IBANs and payments, but with a depth of services and connection to the network that few EMIs can match.
How do you surface your edge in a way merchants understand and act on? It’s all about getting the right story to the right audience with the right reason to act.
In a trust play business where competition is intense, narrative is an instrument you cannot afford not to use.
Games are where eyeballs turn into money. But turning eyeballs into money takes both players and operators to engage and commit.
Players need to recognize your games and choose them in a crowded lobby. But that’s only half the job. Operators need to champion you, actively drive traffic to your games, promote plays, and iron out issues to ensure a smooth experience.
It’s a dual play. One brand, two faces. Players need to love your games. Operators need to know your games make them money.
Platipus is a good example of the dual play in action. It engages with players directly and removes friction for operators to back them. Player demand fuels operator demand. Both sides are acknowledged and served.
Endorphina is what happens when the dual play is out of balance. Players recognize and love the games, but operators are missing from the narrative. Without both sides served, the goal of turning eyeballs into money falls short.
155 is an example of how great product drives duality naturally. Players are mad about the live chaos games, and that demand makes operators chase the studio for content. The dual play exists even without a narrative. But the craze won’t last forever. Investing in a brand now is what will sustain growth when the company scales, releases new games, or the current wave passes.
The principle across all three is the same. For game studios, it’s a dual play, and they must cater to both players and operators.
It’s a dual play. One brand, two faces. Players need to love your games. Operators need to know your games make them money.
Every category has its own shtick.
CRMs, for example, have a timing element built in. Contracts run for years. Only a fraction of potential buyers are actively looking for alternative solutions in any given month. When that window opens, operators reach out to the names they remember. If you’re not one of the big players, you don’t have the budget to stay visible to the entire market all the time. This is why your narrative needs to be precise, focused, and consistently communicated. Not broad awareness, but surgical. Always on, only for your target market.
Content aggregators’ play is similar to platforms. There are many ways to be beneficial. Do you position around content freshness? Cultural fit? Exclusive content? Pre-integrated with a platform? Relationship and familiarity? There will always be a bigger fish, someone else with more content. What makes you different? The secret, as always, is to focus on the customer.
Affiliate tracking, compliance software, technical certification, web hosting, licensing, corporate services – each category has its own dynamics. But the principle holds across all of them.
If you don’t clearly state what you offer, in a language prospects can understand, internalize, compare, and choose, people will create their own vision of your brand. Don’t leave it to chance. Manage what they say about you when you walk out the door.
If you don’t clearly state what you offer, in a language prospects can understand, internalize, compare, and choose, people will create their own vision of your brand.
The big ones have the deep pockets to spread generic messaging and still win business. The small ones are nibbling at your feet, taking market share from below. You’re squeezed in a noisy market.
You cannot trust technology to save you. You cannot trust “creativity” when it’s not tied to how you benefit your customers. And no, “omnichannel presence” isn’t a brand strategy. It’s a marketing strategy, and it’s derived from a brand strategy you may not have. “Trusted. Safe. Human.” isn’t a way to brand a company in this market, either.
Pushing your brand to the market is hard enough. You must use every opportunity to send your message across. No matter who’s doing the speaking, no matter where. Whether it’s your CEO at an event, your CMO in an interview, or your CPO on a blog post. Every touchpoint that doesn’t clearly communicate why you’re different and how is a wasted opportunity.
The story stays the same at its core, with the necessary adjustments for context. Different people, different settings, different shades. But always the same narrative underneath.
Concise narrative that captures your essence. Emotionally charged. Rationally sound. Easy to remember.
You must brand. If you don’t, the price is your business. You can lose everything.
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