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PIN-UP GLOBAL: The Key to Rapid Growth, Challenges & Strategies in iGaming by Marina Ilina

October 31, 2024

The iGaming industry is highly competitive, and the market never stands still, even when there’s been no big news for a while. Never stopping is part of the policies of the huge market players, and PIN-UP holding is definitely no exception to this rule.

Marina Ilina from PIN-UP GLOBAL shared thoughts on the iGaming market’s major changes, potential, and challenges and explained how she, as the CEO, views the industry’s future.

Ecosystem vs. Holding: What’s the Future of PIN-UP GLOBAL?

At the very beginning of the conversation, Marina Ilina emphasizes the technology-driven, ever-changing nature of the iGaming industry. This is a complex, dynamic, and tightly regulated business, and the only way for everyone to keep up is never to stop their development and evolution. That’s the foundation of the holding’s strategy. PIN-UP is focused both on technology and the variety of solutions it offers to partners. The brand is expanding its geography, becoming visible and recognizable in promising new markets, and creating a serious portfolio due to the investment fund.

Reorganization & Restructuration as the Part of the Strategy

When asked about the changes that PIN-UP has faced between 2023 and 2024, Marina Ilina emphasizes the importance of the transition from the ecosystem format to a holding company, placing it above all other changes. PIN-UP became an ecosystem in 2021. As is often the case, the more popular the format became, the less meaningful it was. A close look at the iGaming market reveals that the “ecosystem” has become just a widely used fashionable word, and it’s no longer enough to identify the role, function, and organizational structure of big players like PIN-UP GLOBAL.

A holding structure that demonstrates core principles like full transparency and ultimate reliability is a better fit. Marina Ilina notes that they expect to get multiple certifications and licenses, making their solutions even more competitive. This is crucially important, considering that PIN-UP is now focused on B2B market, offering unique, outstanding products backed not only by the technology and team’s creativity but also by lots of experience and deep expertise.

It’s interesting how the team sees failures. The company views them as opportunities for future growth. Each challenge allows the company to draw a lesson so that it can grow and develop further. According to Marina Ilina, for PIN-UP, mistakes are basically just part of the work in progress.

More than Just Management: What Makes a Good Leader in iGaming

It’s no secret that the competition in the iGaming market is fierce. Being a leader of a huge holding herself, Ilina agrees that her management style is demanding, but that’s not all that makes a good CEO.

First and foremost, a leader must see the company’s right direction and fully understand why it should move this way. PIN-UP acts according to its two-year plan — the industry is changing too rapidly to plan for the longer term. That’s reflected in the structural level. All the employees have specific goals to achieve in shorter and longer work periods. Every department is part of the system, and each contributes to the general growth.

With such a high level of responsibility, everyone is 100% motivated to complete the task, as the entire holding company is expecting the result. In this context, the leader’s role in establishing the right pace, process optimization, and evaluating competencies can hardly be overestimated.

Every manager must be open to new ideas and oriented on the results. Moreover, every employer must have a clear understanding of why they are doing what they do and why that is absolutely worth every effort. That’s why PIN-UP GLOBAl has made intellectual honesty and full integrity their top priorities. The goals can be achieved only if everyone who participates in the working process communicates honestly. If someone can’t cope with the task, it’s immediately addressed to keep the development process going.

iGaming Regulations: Challenges & Room for Improvement

Within the past few years, many countries have made their gambling regulations even stricter. The question, however, is whether such tightening will impact the industry in a good way or just make it go in the shadows.

Marina Ilina says that in a perfect world, the government should work shoulder-to-shoulder with the top players in the market to create legitimately relevant regulations. In reality, however, the situation is often the exact opposite of that. Sometimes, the superficial approach leads to businesses either leaving the country or going into the shadows.

Basically, there are the two most critical regulation aspects: the taxes for operators, and taxes for players, and gray market regulation. However, some states just tighten up the market players with multiple deductions, supposing it will work well for society and economics.

In practice, it makes players choose gray businesses over approved ones, and operators avoid working in these countries. Now, all eyes are on Brazil. The approach to regulation in this country will determine whether iGaming business will enter this market or not.

Still, PIN-UP GLOBAL offers software solutions that are customizable for regulatory markets. They cover it all, from the must-have responsible gaming policies to KYC (know your client) tools. However, they also adapt to local customer preferences and offer great marketing solutions, allowing customizing loyalty programs and communication tools according to local legislation. That allows the holding to expect more and more new franchisees to be interested in their product.

The Present & Future of PIN-UP Holding in iGaming

How does a big holding like PIN-UP see opportunities for growth? Will the multifunctionality of the solutions, innovations, or blockchain technology be the game-changer of the industry? All these directions are important, and Marina Ilina shares her thoughts on all of them.

PIN-UP Multifunctional iGaming Solutions

All PIN-UP products are divided into multifunctional platforms, which means they can integrate smoothly with multiple providers and operators. There’s an opportunity to get a great CRM and use marketing and retention tools, and a top affiliate solution is expected to be launched soon. The holding doesn’t stop there, though. Marina Ilina mentions that the market players will be able to use the all-in-one product from PIN-UP, covering such important aspects as risk management and antifraud on a fundamentally new level of quality.

Innovations: The Challenge or the Key to Growth?

Innovations will apply both to the games and the user experience on the platforms. The games are supposed to be really diverse. A good selection will include basic games with simple interfaces and less room for decision-making, while advanced solutions will have a lot of action, deep mechanics, and multiple bonus features.

As for the user experience, major changes will be applied to improve the automation of the processes. The solutions offered to a player will be simpler, and the human labor will be replaced by smoother solutions, in particular, for communication. Such changes will boost the convenience and diversity of funnels. Software developers can get creative and offer something new to a user.

Cryptocurrencies & Their Potential in iGaming

According to Marina Ilina, the PIN-UP team sees the potential of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. At the same time she admits though they can really boost convenience and transparency, it’s still hardly the most widely used payment solution for now. Holding is now focused on more popular payment options but keeps an eye on crypto. It’s very likely to evolve the entire industry and will become a big competitive advantage in the future.

Cybersecurity

PIN-UP has made cybersecurity and partners’ data and transactions their top priority. The holding takes both organizational and technical measures, and its approach is multi-level. Employers use the workstations both to develop and operate all the products. Moreover, the team doesn’t just use the old approach that works well enough. Safety solutions are constantly being modernized, and everyone who works for the holding gets informed of the newest types of treats before they become an actual problem. Round-clock monitoring, in turn, helps address all the issues in real-time and respond properly to them.

Startups: New Ideas

PIN-UP has always been interested in promising startups related to iGaming. When asked about the new interesting projects, Marina Ilina notes that they keep looking for new ideas and directions — currently, the team is reviewing hundreds of applications within the 6-month time frame.

Still, she also notes that the projects are really different. Most are just ideas that may work, but they don’t come with financial models and basic estimations. After all, business is mostly driven by financial outcomes that come side by side with potential improvements for users and customers. This is why startups with no economic model and specific purpose definitely aren’t the company’s main focus.

Of course, there are the solutions that grab the attention of the team, which are the new approaches to advertisement, scalable platforms, and interesting traffic solutions that are 100% compatible with financial models and can boost the work of operators, along with the market at large. They are used to strengthen the current teams and lead to specific results for all the parties involved, including the end customers.

PIN-UP GLOBAL: How the Award-Winning Holding Plans to Maintain Its Leading Positions

PIN-UP brand is recognized as one of the leading brands in the market, and though it already has multiple awards, the team puts an emphasis on further achievements. Ilina notes that their holding sets unrealistic goals instead of choosing moderate goals. When you aim to achieve higher heights, you may actually succeed — and PIN-UP proves that by developing outstanding products and seeing problems and challenges. If a market still doesn’t know how to solve the problem, PIN-UP is already working on that and then enters it with a solution, Marina notes. That’s the secret to multiple innovations and actual results. According to her, there’s one point where any business can stop developing, and that’s when the manager is tired and unmotivated. PIN-UP is very unlikely to face such a scenario in the near future.

The Ban of the Industry: The Plan of Action

What happens if the iGaming industry gets a worldwide ban in every country simultaneously? Marina Ilina was asked this quite a controversial straight-to-the-business question and said that even that wouldn’t be the end of PIN-UP.

If we assume that gambling operation is non-existent, holdings like PIN-UP will still have their software solutions, expertise, experience, and practical skills. They can operate complex, high-load systems all over the globe and have top anti-fraud software solutions and great traffic and customer retention tools. Ilina notes that they could choose between e-commerce with different services or fintech, and the latter is even more preferable. Banking is more similar to iGaming than most think, she notes. Of course, there’ll be differences and new challenges, but the holding has good prospects in the neo-baking and exchange-traded or lending segment of the market.

PIN-UP in 3-5 Years

As we noted previously, PIN-UP management doesn’t make long-term forecasts. 2 years is the maximum timeframe for planning. Ilina says that no one knows what the market will be like in over three years and which direction of its growth and development will be the primary one. Still, there’s one thing she’s sure about — there’ll be strong competitors who, just like PIN-UP, will be good at managing finances and focus on diverse, high-quality products and services rather than just one direction.

Dominating Trends in the Industry & Future Surprises from PIN-UP

To sum up, optimization through automation and using software solutions instead of human labor will definitely be the dominating trend in iGaming. This will have a positive impact on the user experience for every customer due to the boosted convenience and accessibility. Blockchain technology will shape the market even within the following year — there’s no doubt about that.

Marina Ilina fully admits that but doesn’t want to share all the secrets and plans of PIN-UP. She only mentions that the holding is focused on anti-fraud solutions using machine learning and AI. The goal is to deliver the most versatile and effective solution in one platform that would work equally well for different businesses, from iGaming to banking and e-commerce.