After more than thirty years in the gambling industry, the founder of Bulgarian supplier Pateplay, Papazki, decided to hand over the company's steering wheel to a new generation of leaders. Last August, he promoted the then Chief Product Officer Alexandrov to CEO, completing a carefully rehearsed leadership transition. Papazki, one of the founding members of Euro Games Technology, now has companies covering over 700 casino sites across 15 European and Latin American markets. He put it bluntly: the key to the handover is not age, but mindset, responsibility, and hunger. For Alexandrov, the first rule he learned from the veteran was not the business model, but a seemingly simple yet consistent belief—we are the only source of our obstacles.
Only by hitting the south wall do you truly learn
Papazki's method of knowledge transfer is somewhat counterintuitive. He didn't list precautions in the meeting room but actively let Alexandrov collide with reality. Negotiations, mistakes, tough times, each was seen by him as a more authentic classroom than verbal instruction. He even admitted that often he would deliberately let the successor take a wrong step, then make sure he climbed out of the pit he had fallen into. Alexandrov admits that he did not truly understand some lessons at first, until he saw firsthand how Papazki turned ideas into reality, realizing that this seemingly unconventional trial and error was at the core of the handover plan. Papazki added that each generation sees opportunities from different angles, and the speed, energy, and intuition for online business brought by the young team are exactly the space that the predecessors need to leave, while his role is to use experience and stability to underpin this transformation.
Leveraging autonomy for international expansion
Pateplay's expansion blueprint also bears the early imprint of Papazki. Alexandrov defines entering the American market—including online and physical cabinets—as the current biggest goal, and also the most challenging upgrade for the company's reputation and financial capacity. This March, the company just received certification in the Greek market, continuing to advance the layout in multiple regulated jurisdictions. The new CEO emphasized a path that is consistent with the founder's values: finding the right people in each market, giving them the real power to make decisions, rather than keeping the decision-making chain tightly in the hands of headquarters. Alexandrov believes that it is this kind of delegation that allows the team to have autonomous judgment locally, enabling Pateplay to execute quickly in multiple regions without dragging each other down.
Papazki's summary is quite concise. He believes that the company must be built around the organization rather than individual figures, even if someone leaves midway, the wheels must keep turning. This is his deepest belief in thirty years of business, and it also explains why he is willing to actively step aside during the handover process—true leadership succession is never accomplished by handing over titles, but by long-term trust accumulation and side-by-side combat in real battles.
PASA official website continues to track the corporate governance and intergenerational succession dynamics of global gambling suppliers, noting that Pateplay's expansion path from a local Sofia company to the international market is providing a noteworthy practical example of how traditional gambling suppliers can transition from founder-driven to organizational operations.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
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