Floris Assies, Founder of Better World Casinos, will take to the stage at SBC Summit 2026, taking place from 29 September to 1 October at the Feira Internacional de Lisboa (FIL) and MEO Arena in Lisbon.
The event, now established as SBC’s flagship global gathering, is expected to welcome around 40,000 professionals from across the betting and gaming industry, including operators, affiliates, suppliers, regulators and sports organisations.
Ahead of the event, Assies sat down with SBC Notícias Brasil to discuss the future of the industry, the role of responsible gaming, and why he believes technology itself is not the problem.
The gaming industry sits at the intersection of entertainment, data and user behaviour. How have increasingly sophisticated targeting and personalisation tools changed the ethical boundaries of customer acquisition?
In my view, the ethical boundaries haven’t really changed. What has changed is the technology available to operators.
Personalisation is simply an amplifier. It makes companies more effective at whatever they’re trying to achieve. For many businesses in this industry, the primary objective is profit, so technology is often used to identify the players who spend the most and encourage them to keep spending. The same data could also be used to identify players who may be showing signs of harm and intervene earlier. Both approaches are possible. One is viewed as revenue, the other as a cost. It’s not difficult to work out which tends to attract more investment.
My point is that technology doesn’t make ethical decisions. Companies do.
What changes over time is what the industry comes to regard as acceptable. Every new practice that becomes normal creates a precedent for the next one. To someone outside the sector, that can make it appear as though the ethical boundaries have shifted.
The real difference today is that operators can know far more about the people they’re acquiring. The old excuse of not knowing no longer stands up. Choosing not to look is a decision in itself.
Regulation is often viewed as a clear line between what is allowed and what isn’t. In practice, is that line becoming harder to define as operators move faster than regulators in many markets?
Regulation often struggles to keep pace because operators are constantly looking for new ways to work within, and sometimes around, the rules. Where regulations are vague, there’s room for interpretation, and commercial incentives tend to fill that space.
From a regulator’s perspective, the objective is usually straightforward: protect vulnerable consumers. The industry, however, is focused on growth and profitability, so there will always be pressure to find loopholes and exploit grey areas.
The Netherlands is a good example. When the market opened, there was widespread confidence that operators would act responsibly under a broad duty of care. In reality, that approach was never likely to succeed.
This becomes a race to the bottom. If one company exercises restraint but its competitors don’t, the least restrained operator often gains the largest market share. That creates pressure on everyone else to follow suit. Reputational damage rarely carries enough financial cost to offset those incentives.
The issue isn’t that operators are regularly breaking clearly defined rules. It’s that regulations are often broad enough to leave room for manoeuvre, and commercial incentives encourage companies to push those boundaries.
For emerging markets such as Brazil, the key question isn’t whether regulations appear strict on paper. It’s whether they’re specific enough to ensure that acting responsibly doesn’t become a competitive disadvantage.
There is growing debate around the long-term sustainability of acquisition-led growth. What do you think is the most overlooked issue in the way operators and affiliates currently pursue growth?
I actually think the word “risk” is misleading.
Risk implies that something might happen. When it comes to gambling-related harm, we already know what happens as participation increases. The Total Consumption Model has consistently shown that as more people gamble, the number of people experiencing gambling harm also rises, often at a faster rate than participation itself.
If growth relies on continually expanding the player base and normalising gambling, you’re inevitably reaching people who may never have engaged with gambling otherwise. Some of those people will experience harm. That’s not bad luck. It’s a predictable outcome of the model.
Retention is an interesting area because, in theory, it doesn’t have to increase harm. A customer could continue spending at the same level for years without increasing their risk profile. That makes retention sound like a more sustainable strategy.
Unfortunately, that’s not usually how retention works in practice. Most operators generate a significant proportion of their revenue from a relatively small group of players. Retention strategies often focus on keeping those high-value customers engaged and spending. Within the industry, that’s referred to as loyalty.
While the data linking these practices directly to gambling harm remains limited, we’ve repeatedly seen cases where operators failed to intervene despite clear signs of harmful behaviour.
The bigger issue is that the industry’s growth model creates consequences for the industry itself. As operators and affiliates continue to push for expansion, gambling harm increases, regulators respond with tighter restrictions, and those restrictions can ultimately strengthen the unlicensed market. In trying to grow their share of the market, companies can end up creating conditions that reduce it.
With customer acquisition costs continuing to rise, many operators are shifting their focus towards retention. How can businesses build genuine loyalty without relying on bonuses and aggressive incentives?
That’s the million-dollar question.
You build loyalty through trust and by offering a genuinely strong product. The key word here is genuine. Players need to feel that the company is creating real value for them and delivering an experience they actually enjoy.
The challenge is that genuine trust is difficult to scale. You can’t build long-term loyalty if customers feel they’re simply being treated as data points. People are remarkably good at spotting the difference between being looked after and being manipulated.
You can’t optimise someone to spend more money and then expect them to feel loyal to your brand because of it.
Most people want to be entertained and treated fairly. Delivering that consistently, while operating within the commercial realities of the current industry model, is extremely difficult. It’s something I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about.
As the gaming industry expands globally, operators and affiliates are dealing with very different regulatory environments and consumer protection standards. How does that fragmentation affect strategic decision-making?
Companies go where they believe opportunities exist.
Every market has its own culture, regulatory framework, competitive landscape and consumer expectations. That means each market requires a different approach.
Businesses that assume they can simply replicate a successful strategy from one jurisdiction in another often discover it’s not that simple. Understanding local conditions isn’t just a regulatory requirement. It’s a commercial necessity.
The companies most likely to succeed are those that approach new markets with curiosity, flexibility and a genuine desire to create value, rather than simply exporting an existing playbook.
Fragmentation influences strategy in much the same way as a regulatory change or a new product launch. Businesses have to decide whether a particular market aligns with their capabilities, resources, appetite for risk and long-term objectives.
Industry events such as SBC Summit often provide a snapshot of where the market is heading. What discussions do you think will become increasingly important as the industry focuses more on long-term responsibility and trust?
The nature of those conversations depends heavily on who’s in the room.
Different events attract different audiences, and those audiences shape the discussion. What I’d personally like to see is more cross-disciplinary debate. Too often, people stay within their own areas of expertise.
I’d like to see more conversations that bring together product teams, payments specialists, responsible gaming experts, affiliates and regulators. Those groups often attend the same events but rarely have the opportunity to engage with one another directly.
The industry needs more people who can connect different disciplines and encourage broader conversations. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but I think it would be a positive development.
When it comes to responsibility and trust, the first question I ask is: trust from whose perspective? Are we talking about trust from players, trust within the industry itself, or trust from wider society? Those are all very different conversations.
That said, I think the consumer will remain at the centre of the debate.
As technology continues to evolve, operators will gain access to increasingly sophisticated forms of personalisation. The challenge will be finding the right balance between creating value for players and achieving commercial objectives.
My hope is that this ultimately leads to responsible gaming and harm prevention being embedded directly into products rather than being added as a separate compliance layer afterwards.
Another major theme will be the emergence of new products and verticals. At the moment, much of the conversation is focused on prediction markets. The industry has once again found a new area for innovation, and discussions around trust, responsibility and consumer protection will inevitably follow.
Eventually, regulation will catch up, and attention will shift to the next innovation. That’s the cycle we’ve seen repeatedly throughout the industry’s history.
