iGaming Business magazine iGB 111 July/Aug | Page 87

Feature
Boyd’s philosophy is simple but effective: act as
your own affiliate to draw as much traffic into the
profitable core of the business as possible.
Creating a structure that can drive that traffic
itself lowers the cost per acquisition of each player,
and Boyd hopes that the service once they are on the
platform increases their lifetime value, too.
“We dominate more of the search engine, dominate
more of the affiliate sites, so our brands appear
everywhere,” he says.
Stride’s multiple brands may seem like a lot to
manage, but Boyd concedes that 121 of the sites are
effectively trawlers searching for players and feeding
them back into the Stride ecosystem. “Fewer than
40 of them generate most of the revenue,” he says.
“They produce 90%, so that’s what we focus on.”
What Stride’s multi-brand set up may lack in brand
recognition, it more than makes up for in scope.
With just under 160 brands in the Stride stable, Boyd
says even if a player stops playing in one part of the
portfolio, the likelihood is they have jumped to another.
“We can be unique and stand out from the crowd
as far as content is concerned,” Boyd explains. “For
example the Queen’s birthday last month was an
opportunity to make content around that, the World
Cup has been as well. You’re not reliant on a third
party to generate content for you.”
Despite all this, Stride is faced with a change when
it comes to the fact that the bulk of its business comes
from casual gamers.
It’s a niche Boyd’s pleased to be serving but not one
that can sustain growth in isolation. “We are still a
dwarf among titans,” he says.
“So we are going to be replicating this model going
forward in other markets, and replicating this model
in other verticals in the UK. This is very much a bingo-
led environment and we know the bingo market
grows at best in single digits. So to continue growing
in double digits, we can’t rely solely on bingo.”The
joint spectres of increased regulation and compliance
burdens are also not far from Boyd’s mind as he
plans the future. He expects higher taxation and the
more draconian compliance legislation to cause a
slowdown in growth.
Can Stride mitigate the risk? Boyd says the
acquisitions the business has made have created cost
saving synergies and, with some homing of analytics,
there are more savings to be made from better
optimisation of marketing spend. “So yes, there are
ways,” he says.
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