In the lead-up to SBC Summit and the Affiliate Leaders Summit, iGaming Expert and Affiliate Leaders spoke with David da Silva, gaming consultant, board advisor at Easyodds, and co-founder of SoGood Partners, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping charities become more efficient and effective.
During the conversation, da Silva shared insights into his motivation for advocating broader charitable engagement within the gambling industry beyond traditional harm minimisation, the limitations of current ESG frameworks, and how strategic partnerships with diverse causes can reshape public perception of the sector.
Hi David, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your journey in the industry?
David da Silva: Sure. After graduating with a degree in Business and Marketing, I began my career as a strategy consultant for a London-based digital agency specialising in delivering digital transformation to enterprise clients. This was over 20 years ago, and mostly involved the creation of internet channels by established enterprise companies.
I worked across retail, CPG and media. It was this last vertical where I came across the online gaming industry. A friend had moved out of my world to join a casino company in Gibraltar that was struggling with the transition of its casino product to smartphone users. He persuaded me to ditch agency life and join them as commercial director.
The rest is history. Since those days, I’ve worked across most aspects of online gaming – from game studios, to casino platforms, to sports betting, social, sweeps and affiliation.
What inspired you to advocate for broader charitable engagement within the gambling industry beyond player protection and harm minimisation?
DS: I’ve been fortunate in life. I have a wonderful family, fulfilling work, and have enjoyed my share of professional success. After COVID, a conversation with a friend prompted me to reflect on the role of charities. Like many who have spent their careers in the commercial sector, I hadn’t given much thought to organisations that exist solely to make the world a better place. But the pandemic underscored just how vital they are.
At the same time, Terence Cole—the founder of Easyodds.com and a truly remarkable individual—fell ill and sadly passed away. Terence was a larger-than-life figure and an incredibly successful entrepreneur. But in the end, it was clear that what mattered most was what he left behind. It was one of those moments that brings the bigger picture into focus.
I realised I wanted to do more than just talk about making a difference. I wanted to act. The skills I’d developed in the commercial world—particularly in digital strategy, transformation and operations—were in short supply in the charity sector. So I gathered a small group of like-minded former colleagues and friends, and together we created SoGood Partners: a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping charities become more efficient, effective, and sustainable.
Within weeks, we raised £250,000 in seed funding to get started. Two years on, we’re building technology solutions that will be donated to charities free of charge.
Along the way, I came to see the gambling industry as an ideal space for new forms of collaboration. Charity partnerships are most effective when they deliver mutual benefits. While charities need funding, they can also benefit from in-kind support, such as technology, services, or expertise, that enables them to do more good. In return, industry partners gain reputational value, particularly when social impact is tangible, measurable, and communicated with integrity.
Do you think the current ESG frameworks used by the industry are sufficient, or are they too focused on compliance rather than community contribution?
DS: The gaming industry, like many large businesses, has embraced ESG frameworks. However, in practice, the ‘Social’ component has largely been interpreted as supporting charities that address gambling harm, addiction, and responsible gambling.
While these are important and worthwhile areas, this narrow focus tends to amplify the negative perceptions of the industry. I believe the gambling sector should broaden its charitable support to include causes with wider social impact, such as poverty alleviation, education, medical research, environmental sustainability, wellbeing, etc.
Expanding this focus would help create a more balanced and constructive narrative around the industry’s role in society.
How can companies overcome potential backlash from critics who may view such charitable partnerships as a way to “buy goodwill”?
DS: The gambling industry is more accustomed than most to dealing with critics, and it faces ongoing scrutiny from a particularly vocal anti-gambling lobby. Supporting charitable causes offers a meaningful way to respond to these negative perceptions.
The more genuine and aligned the partnership between a gaming company and a charity, the harder it is for such efforts to be dismissed as insincere. At SoGood, we recommend focusing on causes that resonate with your customers, reflect the interests of your employees, or are connected to the communities where your business operates.
Do you think engaging with a diverse set of causes—like education, climate, or social equity—can actually shift public and media narratives about gambling? How?
DS: We know this approach works—just look at the National Lottery, both in the UK and internationally. While they hold a commercial monopoly, they’ve also established an emotional monopoly by becoming synonymous with supporting good causes. Their social impact and public benefit credentials are the core reasons governments grant them licences. In return, lotteries help plug funding gaps in areas that government spending doesn’t reach. It’s a mutually beneficial model.
But this dynamic shouldn’t be exclusive to lotteries. If commercial gambling companies also built social impact into their operations—supporting causes people care about and delivering tangible benefits—they too could earn a more positive reputation. Strategic, authentic partnerships between gaming companies and charities have the power to reshape public perception. I’d argue that no other strategy is likely to be as effective.
Tell us more about the nonprofit you helped establish—how does it enhance charity effectiveness, and how might the gaming industry plug into that?
SoGood Partners is a team of digital transformation experts, bringing that expertise to the charity sector. From the outset, we invested significant time in understanding the sector’s unique challenges and needs.
The UK has around 200,000 charities with a combined income of £70 billion, but funding is heavily skewed. Small charities—making up 80% of the sector—survive on just over £10,000 a year, receiving only 1% of total funds. These organisations often serve vital community-level or hyper-local needs, yet face inefficient fundraising and constant financial strain. Corporate partnerships with smaller charities can help redress this imbalance while delivering measurable social impact.
A key challenge for companies is identifying the right charities to support. We recognised that improving charity visibility was essential to advancing our mission of helping them operate more effectively.
Charity discovery is uniquely difficult. While official registers exist—such as the Charity Commission for England and Wales—data is fragmented across nations and largely administrative, offering little insight into causes or social impact. No unified, searchable source exists.
SoGood set out to solve this with SoGood Finder—a comprehensive, proprietary database of all UK charities. We’ve integrated multiple official datasets, enriched them with web-scraped content, and added geolocation, attribution, and categorisation to enable intuitive searching. Our latest upgrade includes an AI chat interface for effortless access.
We plan to launch the first public version on our website ahead of the SBC Summit in September. Though UK-focused for now, our goal is to expand internationally, as the same discovery challenges persist elsewhere.
You’ll be at SBC Summit this September, which also includes the Affiliate Leaders Summit—aimed at bringing affiliates closer to both operators and each other. What are you hoping to get out of the event, and what are your main goals heading into Lisbon?
DS: I love Lisbon. Aside from it being my spiritual home, I really enjoyed last year’s event. SBC Summit is always well-attended, making it an ideal opportunity for me to meet a wide range of industry friends and colleagues. Aside from the topics covered here, I’m interested in meeting gaming companies that are looking for help with strategic development, ESG, marketing, or affiliate growth.
I can be reached at [email protected] if anyone is interested in following up on any of the topics above.
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