Beyond the gossip and speculation over the fate of Catena, the activities of Q3 provided many telling indicators regarding the strategic direction and priorities of its listed peers. Scott Longley analyses the main developments and financials from an eventful quarter for iGB Affiliate.
So what next for Better Collective? Questions over the endgame for long-time rival Catena may still be hanging in the air, but BC is already looking to write the next chapter in its history following its stellar rise to the top of the tree by forcing home its advantage.
Weaning itself off the sugar-rush hits of state launches and big sporting events comes with some short-term pain as CFO Fleming Pederson revealed to analysts in the Q3 earnings call. However, its principals believe that moving to the more sustainable revenue share model in the US will enable BC to share more fully in the overall growth of the market. A second pillar of BC's plan to put more clear water between itself and its listed rivals appears to be its strategic repositioning as a digital sports-media business. “It will be up to investors to decide if that one will fly”, writes Scott Longley on p4.
The business arguably closest to the model that BC now aspires to be, Playmaker, actually took a step in the other direction, with CEO Jordan Gnat heralding the Wedge Traffic deal as “key to rounding out our offering as a leading sports media business” (p23).
Elsewhere, Raketech (p26) and Acroud (p28) continued their diversification away from the pure affiliate model towards lower margin, but also lower risk, network and SaaS products.
GiG’s Jonas Warrer also used the platform of the AskGamblers deal to set out its stall on becoming the “leading casino affiliate in the industry” (p18), while Gambling.com Group also continued on the premium domain acquisition trail, adding Casinos.com to its main Gambling.com and Bookies.com brands (p21).
As always, I would love to hear any feedback you have on this and other iGB Affiliate content. You can reach me at stephen.carter@clariongaming.com.