The post Movers and Shakers: The blueprint for boutique studios looking to crack America appeared first on Americas iGaming & Sports Betting News.

Article by Vikki McCausland, Head of Account Management

In a lot of industries, the first few weeks of the year are about catching up with the ‘let’s circle back in January’ tasks and slowly easing your way back into your work routines.

In iGaming, especially within marketing departments, January provides no such luxuries. This is the time of year when iGaming companies and marketing teams have to be at the top of their games. Why are we so busy, you ask? One word: ICE.

Building Momentum

ICE is the industry’s premier event. It brings together iGaming’s biggest names and companies under one roof.

While the event may be the best part of a month away, the companies that will perform best in Barcelona are those that are planning. It is not enough to simply show up and attend the event; the companies that will succeed in Barcelona are those that have thought ahead, crafted their narratives, and have a clear strategy.

To say ICE can feel like an Olympic event might feel like an exaggeration, but anyone who has spent their time running up and down those halls will know how tough those few days can be.

It is competitive. People are vying for attention, and trying to grab people spontaneously on the day can be even more difficult. A carefully considered pre-ICE marketing plan can be highly effective in saving you time and ensuring you schedule the talks and the time you need.

Releasing News

From a news perspective, ICE can also be another minefield. Everyone has some sort of announcement to make, and generating buzz, especially for smaller businesses, is challenging, to say the least.

Getting ahead of this and building momentum as you head into the event is a much smarter strategy. With so much competition for headlines and attention during ICE week, making major announcements before the event and securing some pre-ICE exposure can be a brilliant way to stand out.

The effects of this are two-fold: firstly, you do not have to compete with major companies that can dominate headlines if they drop big announcements during the event. Secondly, getting attention ahead of the event means that you have a talking point for it and that you can secure the kinds of meetings you want ahead of time.

A Structured Narrative

The smartest businesses are the ones that do not just treat ICE as an isolated event. Their marketing departments, much like ours, go into ICE mode early and begin to build their narratives for the event. Whether this is pre-event announcements, Q&As or just social media buzz.

This continues after the event, as you shape the narrative around your announcements and develop future plans based on any discussions and new partnerships you have built.

Having this fully fleshed-out plan also signals to the wider industry that you are a serious participant, not just an opportunistic exhibitor seeking short-term attention and capitalising on industry chatter.

Getting your pre- and post-ICE strategy in place with no support can be challenging. At GameON, our work for ICE starts long before we sit down on that plane to Barcelona. We speak with our clients in the weeks and months leading up to the event, carefully planning the narrative they want to build and helping them capitalise on the opportunities the event can create.

A Victory Lap

ICE can, undeniably, be a time of stress and high activity. Still, with proper planning, it can be a productive few days where you can achieve everything you need to, chat to the people you want, and even enjoy a few sangrias in the Catalonia sun.

This planning should be a carefully curated roadmap covering press releases, editorials, social media, and booking management. Crafting this strategy requires exactly the kind of expertise our team is equipped to offer at GameOn.

When executed right, ICE should feel like a victory lap. A well-planned and executed exhibition that showcases your business and positions you precisely as you want to be. It should be the culmination of your efforts, not a last-minute scramble to make sure you can grab a tiny bit of time with potential partners.

The post The Power of the Lead-Up: Why Visibility Before ICE Defines Success appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

“Movers and Shakers” is a dynamic monthly column dedicated to exploring the latest trends, developments, and influential voices in the iGaming industry. Powered by GameOn and supported by HIPTHER, this op-ed series delves into the key players, emerging technologies, and regulatory changes shaping the future of online gaming. Each month, industry experts offer their insights and perspectives, providing readers with in-depth analysis and thought-provoking commentary on what’s driving the iGaming world forward. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the scene, “Movers and Shakers” is your go-to source for staying ahead in the rapidly evolving iGaming landscape. 

By Claudia Heiling, Co-Founder & COO, Golden Whale

For years, iGaming has considered itself a data-driven industry. We’ve all spent time refining segmentation, optimising CRM journeys, mapping behavioural signals, and building increasingly complex player models. And with machine learning now widely available, whether bought, built, or borrowed, it would be reasonable to assume that the industry is already fully realising the benefits of AI.

But speak to most operators, product teams, or data leads and you’ll hear a different story.

There are models running somewhere – and usually several. There are predictions being generated. There are dashboards, reports, and insights circulating. Yet the business impact often feels inconsistent. Some initiatives deliver a clear uplift; others stall or never make it past a proof-of-concept stage. Projects that shine in testing environments don’t always translate into live, reliable operations.

The issue is rarely the model. And it’s rarely the data team. The gap is operational.

It’s one thing to build machine learning models. It’s another to make them function as part of the daily working rhythm of an iGaming business.

The operators and providers seeing the strongest and most reliable gains are the ones who treat AI not as an experiment, but as a capability: something that must be designed, deployed, monitored, re-trained, and continuously improved. This is closer to how we already treat core game operations, promotional systems, risk tooling, or CRM orchestration. It’s iterative, structured and ongoing.

In practice, that means building the frameworks around the models, not just the models themselves. Continuous data flows. Automated re-training. Real-time deployment pipelines. Feedback loops that allow systems to learn not just once, but constantly. When we work with iGaming clients who have embraced this operational mindset and leverage our ready-to-deploy MLOps system built for iGaming, the impact becomes both compounding and predictable.

The other shift happening is cultural. There has been a lingering expectation in some corners of the industry that AI will replace manual decision-making entirely and that it will “take over” processes like CRM optimisation, fraud detection, or product adjustment.

That’s neither realistic nor particularly desirable.

iGaming is too contextual, too human, too dependent on craftmanship and intuition.
The real value of AI is in augmentation: giving teams better visibility, faster feedback, and stronger evidence on which to base decisions.

In organisations where this mindset has taken hold, you see a different dynamic.
CRM teams run more experiments, more often, because they aren’t spending time rebuilding segments from scratch. Analysts spend less time on manual spreadsheet simulation and more on strategic exploration. Live-ops managers can respond to player behaviour as it changes, not after the weekly report comes in.

AI becomes the layer that enhances judgement, rather than replaces it.

And when AI is integrated technically and culturally, the commercial outcomes are hard to ignore. In setups where continuous learning pipelines are properly established and aligned with live operations, we’ve seen engagement and retention metrics improve dramatically and sustainably, with activity and revenues rising by 100–200%, while bonus and incentive costs drop by 20%+, driving growth and both securing and expanding market share. Operational teams benefit too, with workflows becoming smoother and less manual because the system is handling the constant data processing and iteration.

The improvements don’t come from having more complex algorithms. They come from having a structure that allows those algorithms to perform reliably, adapt to change, and keep learning over time.

This is where the conversation about AI in iGaming is quietly changing.

It’s no longer dominated by model performance or dataset scale, rather it is focused on repeatability, reliability and learning speed.

The distinction matters because it separates having AI, from running AI.

And the operators and providers who get this right aren’t just improving performance in the short term. They are building organisational momentum, a capability that compounds over time and is very difficult to replicate quickly.

In a sector defined by tight margins, competition and rapidly shifting player expectations, that advantage is significant.

So, if there is a “next step” in the industry’s AI journey, it’s not a more complex algorithm. It’s not a bigger data pool. And it’s not a new suite of predictive dashboards.

It’s the ability to learn continuously, responsibly and at scale.

Because in iGaming, as in intelligence, data alone doesn’t win. What wins is the ability to turn learning into action again and again.

The post Movers and Shakers – From Data to Decisions: What It Really Takes to Make AI Work in iGaming appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.