iGaming Business magazine iGB 111 July/Aug | Page 86

Feature
S
TRONGER
TOGETHER
Stride Gaming chief executive Eitan Boyd has pointed
towards an increasing focus on B2B partnerships
going forward as he seeks to defend the AIM-listed
operator’s track record of double-digit growth.
Boyd launched Stride Together, the operator’s B2B
arm, in May 2017 as part a joint venture to deliver
Aspers’ first online casino.
The partnership, which is structured round a
50/50 revenue split, has exceeded expectations in its
first six months and Boyd is already looking for new
partners with whom he can replicate the model.
“We wanted to make this work, so it had to be
a win-win for both sides,” he says of the Aspers deal.
“We’ve taken our risk, we’ve got skin in the game and
it’s worked well.”
He attributes the success of the JV not just to
Stride’s platform but also to the strong brand
recognition of Aspers’ side and the casino’s
“optimum player base”.
“These are players that play in the casino.
And if you can get those players to play
online which has never been easy for anyone;
Genting struggles, Rank struggles, but if we
can just bridge that gap and reach out in
digital, we’ll do fantastically well,” he says.
However, it’s not just casinos that Boyd
sees as having potential to partner with
Stride Together, and he is clear that Stride
Together is not a white label arrangement but
a true partnership.
He is currently in discussions with a number
of media companies and also hasn’t ruled
out retail partnerships, which is just as
well as the Aspers deal bars Stride from
partnering with a competitor for
the first 18 months.
“Fewer than 40 [of Stride’s 160 sites]
generate 90% of the revenue.
So that’s what we focus on”
84

iGamingBusiness | Issue 111 | July/August 2018
Having grown Aspers’
online presence from zero
to a multimillion venture in
six months, Stride Gaming is on
the lookout for fresh partnerships.
Hannah Gannagé-Stewart reports
Stride Together currently consists of three people:
Boyd, business development manager Sara Lelli
and newly appointed head of international
development Richard Sager, who are responsible
for the Aspers relationship.
Boyd is conscious that they will need to staff up
to take on other partners. “We’re still not bulked up
enough to go the full shebang, the full B2B,” he says.
As a listed bingo-led business with investors to
answer to, Boyd’s necessarily focused on carving out
new growth opportunities.
In the UK, that will be ramping up the B2B casino
offering and adding extra verticals, starting with
sports betting.
“People have seen how we’ve been growing in
the last five years, we’ve been growing double digit
year-on-year so I think it’s a strong indication that the
platform is solid,” he says.
An internal restructure is in the pipeline to ensure
that the new B2B arm is fit to duplicate the success of
the Aspers JV with new partners in future.
“Stride Together will get more love this coming
financial year. It will have more visibility and will be
marketed better,” Boyd adds.
However, he is conscious that pumping more
resource into B2B must not be to the detriment of the
rest of the business. “We’re doing B2B, but we don’t
want the shoe maker walking barefoot,” he says.
“People ask if going into casino will harm our
margins and what I say is ironically it won’t because
the infrastructure’s already there – it’s easy to add an
extra site or two efficiently.”
A deal earlier this year with sportsbook provider
Amelco was secured to help the business leverage its
position in southern Europe over the coming months.
Boyd says he expects Stride to be live in Italy by
the end of the year, and will then turn his attention to
acquiring licences in Denmark and Spain.
In the six months to February 28, 2018, Stride’s net
gaming revenue (NGR) grew 14% to £44.9m, compared
with the same time the previous year.
The firm’s proprietary platform grew 25%, “so the
thinking going forward and the ethos in the group is to
focus on our core,” Boyd explains.