If outsourcing sports betting to Kambi was a rational strategic compromise for Glitnor, then the absence of the third pillar—Affiliate Marketing in the "Trinity" strategy is a structural flaw that Glitnor has yet to fix.
Ironically, this gap did not originate from market conditions, but is intricately linked to the new CEO Richard Brown, whom Glitnor struggled to recruit. It can even be described as a "direct confrontation" at the capital level.
👾 A seemingly perfect capital "marriage"
In February 2022, Glitnor proudly announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire the iGaming affiliate marketing company KaFe Rocks.
At that time, KaFe Rocks was already recognized as a top-tier affiliate group in the industry, owning a complete set of mature websites including Time2Play.com (emphasizing user experience and depth of review for casino/sports betting comparison) and USCasinos.com (a major traffic gateway in the US market).
If the transaction had been completed, Glitnor would have truly owned its own traffic engine.
However, nine months later, the deal abruptly stopped; in November 2022, just when the outside world generally believed the transaction was about to be finalized, Glitnor and KaFe Rocks suddenly jointly announced: the two parties "amicably decided" to terminate the acquisition.
The official explanation was brief—"Given the current market conditions, now is not the right time to complete the acquisition." This is a standard diplomatic phrase in the capital market, almost without explaining any substantive issues.
Glitnor subsequently announced that it would become a "significant shareholder" of KaFe Rocks and established Glitnor Ventures in the same month, claiming to continue maintaining relationships with key traffic assets through investment.
But the business reality is that holding shares is not control, and cooperation is not equivalent to controlling traffic. For an iGaming group highly dependent on customer acquisition efficiency, not fully controlling affiliate traffic means fate is still in others' hands.
What made this failed acquisition dramatically ironic is what happened a year later. In November 2023, Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) announced the acquisition of KaFe Rocks for 35 million euros.
The person orchestrating this deal was none other than the then CEO of GiG—Richard Brown.
In the official statement, Brown openly pointed out: this acquisition will consolidate GiG Media's leadership in the casino affiliate marketing sector, especially in the North American market.
That is to say, just two months before he was about to leave GiG to become the CEO of Glitnor, he personally secured for GiG the very core puzzle piece that Glitnor had wanted a year earlier.
Therefore, after Brown joined Glitnor, the traffic business was inevitably a time bomb given to him by the group, which had to be defused first.
👾 The essence of competition in iGaming is actually a war about traffic
In the iGaming industry, technology, licenses, and game content are certainly important, but the realdecisive factor of life and death is always one variable—traffic. Top affiliate groups are powerful not because they "make websites," but because they often control long-term stable organic traffic.
Groups like KaFe Rocks, GiG Media, and Better Collective are essentially the "central banks of traffic" in the industry.
And Glitnor still lacks such a traffic alliance. Glitnor's B2C casino brands, no matter how good the products are, must pay high CPA or RevShare to external super affiliates for a long time;
Now, Richard Brown sits in the CEO position of Glitnor carrying an unavoidable reality—Glitnor's biggest strategic shortcoming is exactly what he once handed over to the competitors.
After taking office, Brown chose a more restrained and realistic path than expansion through acquisitions—through minor equity investments and strategic shareholdings, Glitnor manages to maintain contact with key affiliate assets without controlling stakes, gaining data and industry insights, and reserving interfaces for deeper future cooperation.
This approach cannot immediately close the traffic loop, but at least it prevents Glitnor from being completely isolated from the traffic system.
Meanwhile, Glitnor tries to send a signal to smaller affiliates: even without the endorsement of super affiliates, it can still be a "good partner." Glitnor is also shifting from a path of "acquiring to compensate for shortcomings" to a more patient combination strategy—cooperative penetration and simultaneous internal capability building.Because in the long-term competition of iGaming, traffic operation is also a marathon.
Whether the third pillar can truly stand up determines whether Glitnor qualifies to step over the threshold of "medium-sized operators." As for the outcome, the battle over traffic has just begun.
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