It’s been a year since the regulated iGaming market went live in Brazil. How are affiliates holding up? We speak to Sébastien Risse, CRO at MoveUp Media, about the company’s recent acquisitions in Brazil, why it sees Latam as a key growth pillar and the innovative community-driven products it is launching in the region.
Drawn by the rigour of science and physics, Sébastien Risse (pictured) spent five years at Pierre and Marie Curie University studying civil engineering. After graduating, he jumped headfirst into entrepreneurship for the excitement, launching a bespoke concrete furniture business.
But being a young founder wasn’t easy. Risse learnt fast – “often by making mistakes”. The experience pushed him to understand every aspect of running a business, with online marketing inevitably becoming the core of his adventure. Ranking for “custom-made table” was Risse’s first foray into the world of SEO.
“After a few years, the company’s growth wasn’t where we wanted it to be, so we closed that chapter. I decided to stay in the online space and completed an MBA in Paris,” he recalls.
Passionate about sports, Risse joined PullMedia, a small iGaming publisher, in 2012 to help develop commercial strategies. There, he befriended Hassan Bousalem, the company’s digital marketing manager. After the business was acquired by listed giant Better Collective in 2017, Risse stayed on for eight more years, while Bousalem left in 2020 and eventually founded his own iGaming affiliate company, MoveUp Media.
It came as no surprise when Risse was invited by Bousalem to join the new venture as its CRO, leading revenue growth. “We had worked side by side for many years, with a natural complementarity. We consistently achieved strong results together,” he says. In just three years, the company has grown to a team of over 150 professionals and a portfolio of eight proprietary products with more than 150 million monthly visitors.
The country’s deep passion for sports, vibrant digital culture and highly engaged online communities made it the perfect environment for our model
Sébastien Risse
Brazil as a Latam launchpad
With a strong focus on emerging markets, MoveUp Media has established a footprint across more than 25 countries, including India and Japan. But one of its key regions from the very start has been Latin America, particularly Brazil.
Explaining the rationale, Risse says “the country’s deep passion for sports, vibrant digital culture and highly engaged online communities” made it “the perfect environment” to apply the company’s business model of “combining premium content, technology and fan engagement”.
M&A has been central to the affiliate’s growth. In 2024, it acquired ThePlayoffs and Netflu, two established media brands with loyal audiences and strong social media presences in Brazil. Specialised in US sports coverage, the former attracts over three million monthly visitors, while the latter serves as a fan base for Brazil’s oldest football club, Fluminense FC, and reaches more than eight million monthly viewers.
Brazil remains not only one of our largest audience bases but also a launchpad for innovation, shaping how we expand and localise our offerings across other Latin American markets
Sébastien Risse
“Together, these brands gave MoveUp Media a solid foundation to grow a multi-sport, multi-platform ecosystem tailored to Brazilian fans and bettors,” Risse adds. “Brazil remains not only one of our largest audience bases but also a launchpad for innovation, shaping how we expand and localise our offerings across other Latin American markets.”
It’s showtime
According to Risse, what makes the affiliate’s brands “genuinely Brazilian” is their localisation strategy and community-driven engagement. “We believe that to truly connect with fans, content must reflect their language, humour, cultural nuances and viewing habits. To achieve this, we’ve built local editorial and production teams that live and breathe Brazilian sports culture,” he says.
Risse sees shows and podcasts as an important channel for broadcasting that authenticity. Taken together, ThePlayoffs and Netflu have nearly 200k subscribers on YouTube and have generated more than 115 million views over the years. All programmes are produced in Portuguese, aired at times that fit local routines and feature relatable Brazilian hosts and creators.
To truly connect with fans, content must reflect their language, humour, cultural nuances and viewing habits
Sébastien Risse
In 2025, the company made a major stride in partnerships, signing a multi-year deal with the NBA as its exclusive local media partner in Brazil. One of the standout achievements from this collaboration is the basketball programme Conexão NBA, which offers fans official insights, expert analysis and interviews.
“Overall, this partnership has allowed us to bridge the NBA’s global brand with Brazil’s unmatched passion for sports, creating a new kind of relationship between the league and its fans here, but also with our partners who have embraced the fast-growing interest in NBA content to market their products. And we are just getting started – there’s much more to come,” Risse explains.
Next level community building
Affiliates are no strangers to organising contests when it comes to fan engagement, but MoveUp Media has taken this a step further with Lebi, a 100% free standalone platform where sports fans can connect through live chats, polls and prediction games, with online shopping gift cards as prizes. Having gone live in Brazil just nine months ago, the platform has already attracted more than 25k users. It recently expanded to Chile, with more Latam countries set to follow in the coming months.
“We built Lebi to create a new and more interactive way for fans to engage with live sports,” Risse says. “It represents our next step in building community-driven fan experiences, turning passive viewers into active participants and helping us connect content, community and competition in one ecosystem.”
Lebi represents our next step in building community-driven fan experiences, turning passive viewers into active participants
Sébastien Risse
Beyond strengthening local fandoms, Risse explains that the platform also diversifies MoveUp Media’s revenue streams through sponsorship and brand integration. By supporting challenges, operators and other partners can gain direct exposure to the player base. Meanwhile, the company is partnering with other affiliates and developing data-driven campaigns to improve user rewards while providing measurable ROI to partners.
Looking ahead, Risse sees the next few years as a period of strong growth for the affiliate’s portfolio, with ThePlayoffs continuing to expand its Portuguese sports coverage and enter new markets with localised editions. “Overall, our focus is on internationalisation and innovation, building on the success we’ve had in Brazil to create a truly international sports media network that blends premium content with interactive fan experiences,” he sums up.
From designing custom-made tables to iGaming affiliation in Brazil, Risse’s journey certainly isn’t linear. But driven by an unquenchable passion for entrepreneurship, he is engineering the next chapter for both MoveUp Media and his own career path.