Selling into a regulated customer
A supplier to online gambling operators sells to a customer that is itself heavily regulated, accountable to a licensing authority for everything that happens on its site, including the products it buys from others. That single fact shapes the whole sale. It decides who sits in the buying group, what they worry about, how long the decision takes, and which suppliers are allowed to compete at all.
This course is about the commercial side of the business to business market: how a game studio, platform, sportsbook supplier, data company, payments or KYC provider, regtech vendor or media business finds operators, wins them, prices and contracts the deal, and grows the account. The companies on both sides are listed in the iGaming Times directory. It builds on The iGaming Value Chain, which explains who pays whom, and on iGaming Platform and Technology, which explains what operators actually run. This first lesson is about the customer: who decides, what each person cares about, when operators build rather than buy, and how regulation enters the sale.
The buying centre
An operator rarely buys anything significant on one person's say-so. The decision is made by a group of people with different jobs, different measures of success and different fears. Sales teams call this the buying centre. In an operator, the usual members are these.
| Role | Cares about | Fears | What to bring them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chief executive or managing director | Growth, market entry, valuation, regulatory standing | A failed launch, a regulatory sanction, a supplier that becomes a competitor | The strategic case in one page: markets opened, revenue, risk |
| Chief product officer | Player experience, differentiation, roadmap control | Being locked into a supplier's roadmap | Product depth, roadmap influence, evidence from comparable operators |
| Head of casino or head of sportsbook | Revenue per player, retention, margin, content that players want | Lobby slots wasted on titles that do not earn; poor pricing in the sportsbook | Performance data, launch support, promotional tools |
| Chief technology officer and engineering | Integration effort, stability, security, scalability | Outages, integration work that crowds out their roadmap | Clear APIs, integration routes they already use, uptime record, security certifications |
| Chief financial officer | Total cost, cash flow, predictability | Minimum guarantees that bite in a bad year; hidden deductions | A clear commercial model and its arithmetic under several scenarios |
| Compliance, legal and the money laundering reporting officer | Licence conditions, certification, player protection, contracts | A supplier failure that becomes the operator's regulatory breach | Licences, certificates per market, responsible gambling features, audit trails |
| Procurement | Process, competition, contract terms, vendor risk | An unmanaged supplier or an uncompetitive price | Complete, accurate responses on time |
| CRM and marketing | Campaign tools, promotions, segmentation | Products that cannot be promoted within advertising rules | Promotional mechanics and compliant marketing assets |
In a small operator, three or four of these roles may be held by one person. In a large group each may be a department, and decisions may also involve a regional managing director for each market and a group function above them.
Three roles matter most in any particular deal. The economic buyer controls the budget and can say yes. The champion is the person inside the operator who wants the product and will argue for it when the supplier is not in the room. The blockers are people who can stop the deal even if they cannot approve it, and in gambling the commonest blocker is compliance, because compliance has a veto that nobody else in the business will overrule.
A practical rule: a deal that has a champion but has never been discussed with compliance and engineering is not a qualified deal. It is a conversation.
The buying centre differs by what you sell
The table above is general. In practice the centre of gravity moves with the product, and a seller should know where it sits for theirs.
Content (slots, table games, live casino) is usually decided by the head of casino, with engineering consulted on the integration route and compliance on certification. Because content often arrives through an aggregator the operator already uses, the technical decision may already be made and the sale is about commercial terms, launch support and lobby placement.
Platforms and sportsbooks are board-level decisions. They replace systems of record, involve data migration and carry the operator's licence obligations for reporting, player protection and anti-money laundering. Every role in the table is involved, the evaluation runs for months, and the incumbent has a strong advantage because switching is risky.
Data and odds are decided by the head of sportsbook and the trading team, with the CFO watching the cost, since official data is a significant and rising cost for most sportsbooks.
Payments, identity verification and geolocation are decided by payments, compliance and fraud teams, who compare suppliers on coverage, approval rates and unit price. The commercial conversation is detailed and numerical.
Regtech and responsible gambling tools are sold to compliance first. The economic buyer may be the chief executive, because the purchase is often a response to a regulatory finding or a new rule, and the timetable is set by the regulator rather than the operator.
Media and affiliate services are bought by marketing, under rules that make the operator responsible for its affiliates' conduct. The Affiliate Business course covers that side of the market.
How long decisions take
Operators move at different speeds, and the speed is mostly predictable. A content deal with an operator already connected to the studio's aggregator can be agreed in weeks. A payments method for a single market may take a quarter, much of it spent on compliance checks and integration testing. A platform or sportsbook replacement commonly takes a year or more from first meeting to go-live, because it waits for contract expiry, board approval, migration planning and regulatory notifications in each market.
The decision also has a calendar. Operators set budgets annually, review suppliers when contracts approach renewal, and freeze technical changes around major sporting events, when no head of sportsbook will risk a migration. A seller who knows the operator's financial year, its contract end dates and its event calendar knows when a decision can actually be made, and does not waste a quarter pushing for one that cannot.
Reading an operator before the first meeting
Much of what a seller needs to know about an operator is public. Before the first meeting, a prepared seller has checked:
- The licence registers in each market, to see where the operator is licensed and which brands it runs (lesson two shows how).
- Annual reports and results, for listed operators, which disclose revenue by market and product, strategy and often supplier relationships. Reading iGaming Financial Results explains how to read them.
- Regulatory enforcement notices, which reveal the compliance weaknesses the operator is under pressure to fix, and therefore what its compliance team will ask of any new supplier.
- Job advertisements, which show what the operator is building in house.
- The product itself: its lobby, its sportsbook, its payment methods and its registration journey, which show where it is strong and where a supplier can help.
None of this replaces a conversation, but it changes the conversation from "tell me about your business" to "we noticed you are entering this market and your lobby does not yet carry this type of game", which is the start of a sale.
Build, buy or partner
Every operator decision to buy is also a decision not to build. Operators weigh three options for every capability.
Build gives control of the roadmap and keeps margin in house, at the cost of time, talent and fixed cost. The largest operators build their core technology once they have the scale to justify it. DraftKings, after acquiring SBTech, agreed with Kambi a termination date of 30 September 2021 for its sportsbook supply agreement so that it could move to its own platform. In 2022 Kambi and PENN announced PENN's migration to a proprietary sportsbook platform. Insourcing happens product by product as well: Playtech's 2025 results attribute part of a fall in UK revenue to the insourcing of self-service betting terminals by one operator.
Buy (license from a supplier) gives speed, proven compliance in many markets and lower fixed cost, at the cost of revenue share, less control and dependence on the supplier's roadmap.
Partner covers the arrangements in between: joint ventures, exclusive arrangements, revenue-sharing partnerships, and acquisitions of a supplier to secure a capability.
For a seller, the build option is always the silent competitor. The questions to understand early are which capabilities this operator regards as core (and will eventually build) and which it regards as commodity or specialist (and will buy for the long term). A supplier selling something the operator plans to build should sell speed and a bridge, and price for a shorter relationship. A supplier selling something the operator will never build, such as a large portfolio of third-party content, specialist data or a regulated payments licence, can sell a long-term partnership. The Operations Strategy course and iGaming Platform and Technology cover the operator's side of this decision in detail.
Why regulation shapes the sale
In most industries a buyer can purchase from any supplier it likes. In regulated gambling, the operator is often only allowed to buy from suppliers that hold their own licence or registration in the market, and is responsible to its regulator for how they behave.
In Great Britain, a licence condition requires that all gambling software used by a licensee must have been manufactured and supplied by holders of a gambling software operating licence. A second requires operators to contract with third parties on terms that oblige them to conduct themselves as if bound by the same licence conditions, provide information when asked, and allow prompt termination for breach. In New Jersey, enterprises supplying goods or services that relate to gaming must be licensed "prior to conducting any business" with casino licensees. In Ontario, suppliers that develop or run games, platforms and wallets must register with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario before supplying the regulated market.
Three consequences follow for the seller.
The competitive field is defined by licences. In any market, the only suppliers who can compete for a deal today are those already licensed or certified there. A supplier licensed in a market where its competitors are not has a window; a supplier not yet licensed is selling a future date.
Compliance is a buyer, not an afterthought. Because the operator answers for its suppliers, its compliance team will examine the supplier's licences, certifications, ownership and controls. Bringing compliance into the sale early, with a prepared due diligence pack, turns a likely blocker into a source of confidence.
The sale is market by market. A deal signed at group level still goes live one market at a time, as licences, certificates and integrations allow. Lesson four covers how to build that into the forecast.
Due diligence runs both ways
Operators assess suppliers, and suppliers increasingly assess operators. A typical operator due diligence questionnaire asks for licences and their status in each market, test certificates for each product, beneficial ownership and key people, financial statements, information security certifications and policies, data protection arrangements, business continuity plans, responsible gambling features and references from comparable operators. A supplier that keeps these documents current, in a single pack, shortens every sale.
Suppliers have their own reasons to check the customer. Their licences are put at risk by association with an unsuitable operator, and a revenue-share supplier depends on the customer paying. The 2025 sportsbook agreement between a Kambi subsidiary and the US operator VIP Play, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, records that the supplier was performing due diligence on the client and would not be required to provide any services "prior to the successful conclusion of such due diligence processes". A seller should know their own company's customer acceptance rules before promising a launch date.
A worked example: mapping the buying centre
A hypothetical mid-sized operator, licensed in three European markets, is reviewing its sportsbook supplier as the contract approaches renewal. A competing supplier's account executive maps the buying centre after two meetings.
| Person | Role in decision | Stance | Evidence | Next action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chief executive | Economic buyer | Neutral | Wants a second market launched next year | Present the market-entry case with certification status |
| Head of sportsbook | Champion | Positive | Unhappy with in-play pricing and margin | Arrange a trading benchmark with her team |
| Chief technology officer | Influencer, possible blocker | Sceptical | Migration last time took nine months | Show a migration plan and references |
| Head of compliance | Blocker with veto | Unknown | Not yet met | Send the due diligence pack and request a meeting |
| Chief financial officer | Approver | Price-focused | Asked about minimum guarantees | Model three commercial structures (lesson three) |
The map shows where the deal really stands. The champion is strong, but the compliance head has never been met and the CTO's experience of migrations is the operator's biggest reason to stay with the incumbent. The next month's work is not more product demonstrations to the head of sportsbook. It is a compliance meeting, a credible migration plan and a commercial model the CFO can defend.
What this means for the seller
Selling to operators rewards preparation more than persuasion. The seller who knows which licences and certificates their company holds in each of the operator's markets, who has met compliance and engineering as well as the champion, and who understands which capabilities the operator will eventually build, wins more often than the one with the best demonstration. The next lesson turns to finding those operators in the first place: segmenting the market, using public registers as prospect lists, and running a pipeline that reflects how long deals in this industry actually take.