AI in iGaming| What 80 Industry Leaders Revealed | Viktoriia Grygorenko|The Playa

iGaming Real Talk is launching the next series. This is the fourth event out of the 11 events we're doing this year, and I'm very excited to bring you the insights from the expo floor. This time on the affiliate as well as operator relationships as well as what's missing in the industry, what's the trend, what are we looking at when it comes to 2026, 2027 and beyond in terms of the trends, AI and everything else. This series is brought to you by EvoVerse.

They offer custom crypto casino solutions as well as source code. This series is also brought to you by Wicked Games. They create slot games that slap. Hello and welcome back to another episode of iGaming Real Talk. Today, I'm with Victoria from The Plya. We are here at Afiliapub conference in Madrid. And in this interview, I'm very excited to talk about the AI and what's happening with AI in the space, in iGaming space. So, I'm very excited to have Victoria here.

Victoria, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Great. First of all, before we start off, congratulations on winning an award yesterday. I don't know which award was it, but I saw that it was an award. So, can you tell us what it is about?

Well, so there was like one small conference where there was startup pitch competition.

Ah, okay.

There were just three startups.

But you were a startup last year.

No. No, I actually I hate the word startup for the company because I mean it seems like we're I don't know 3 months in a go, but we're actually more than 3 years.

Yeah. Yeah.

The definition of the startup was like the company which is less than 5 years old. And I'm like, "Okay, we're fine." So, what was that? And on the other side, given like all the technical advances which are happening in right now in the world, I feel like every company is feeling like a startup.

I like that's... Should be fine. That's a good one. Cool. I mean, congrats anyways.

Thank you.

Let's get into this interview. What I'm very interested about is the report and the research that you have done about AI adoption in the iGaming space. And you know, I was thinking about it. We had some discussions behind the scenes as well. So, why did you decide to do this research? And what was the gap that you are seeing in the industry that made you go out and collect this data and information?

So, you know, AI has a lot of noise. Everybody is talking about it, but nothing practical. It's like, "Yes, we do need to do AI. It's very important. You know, we try to be ahead of the curve." But like, what exactly everybody is doing is just very blurred and nobody knows. And that's why we were thinking like, "Could we actually try to do a research around like a report in a sense around AI adoption?"

And AI adoption means like, "What are the practical use cases that are right now on the market? And how everybody is like whether they're actually doing this use cases or not. How satisfied are they are with them those for those who are doing that and those who don't like what are they're thinking about it as well."

So that was the whole idea just to kind of have a better depths in terms of what is going on who is doing what what are the use cases right now on the display and where we are headed and we've got a very good response. So I'm super happy about it.

Oh that's really interesting and I can agree about what you said there because there is a lot of noise there is a lot of saying that yeah we need to integrate AI yeah we need to you know but you know in reality it's still a lot of things are not clear. So I'm looking forward to reading the report when it comes out but for the sake of this interview what are the key findings?

For example do you see particular type of companies adopting AI faster than others or what are the findings?

I would say that I think the biggest surprise for me was actually the response rate. Because of course I was talking about this idea with a number of people.

Rate on service is is is traditionally forever been I don't know 20%?

Yeah exactly and you know and in in AI gaming where we're all super close we try to be very confidential and not to expose anything that we're doing so that nobody's taking you know action around it. So that nobody like everybody is in their iterations alone and there is no knowledge sharing happening and I was really talking to a number of people around it like do you think people will actually respond?

And they were like oh probably not you know this is like come on this is confidential no you have everybody's has NDA and I was like well...

But it is anonymous or...

Yeah it is anonymous.

Yeah of course.

It is I mean of course. It is anonymous otherwise I think nobody would respond.

Exactly I yeah but That's a good one, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But we anyway decided to go in and the response rate was very good. Like we've got 150 people starting the survey and we received like 80 full responses call questionnaire.

More than half, that's very good.

Yeah, super good. So we are super happy that, you know, and it seems like people are so interested. So they were like, "Yeah, we do want to understand like what is going on."

Yeah.

So yeah, so it was pretty good. And regarding the findings around the report itself, for me... The type of companies that are fast adopting. Yes, yes. I was also super surprised that in iGaming actually the big companies are moving faster than the small and medium size.

Maybe they are scared more.

I mean, comparing to other industries... Typically you have like the smaller or medium size who are much faster, more flexible, you know. And they are typically trying to disrupt the big ones. The incumbents, as it is. But in iGaming the picture is totally different. The big ones, I mean, of course they have budgets. They probably understand that they're still moving much slower than everybody else. So they started doing it much earlier.

And now like really big companies, I would say more mature in terms of different use cases compared to mid-size and small size. That's fascinating.

That's really good to understand. I mean, I think once the report is out, it would be good to know more about this. Like why and the reasons behind it. But yeah, for the sake of this interview, I also have a little interactive segments planned. Wherein you ask me the questions on iGaming real talk. This is the first time cuz usually I'm asking the questions. But this is a nice one. Let's try.

So we can do a little bit interactive and yeah, so you ask me the questions and I try to guess the answers and then we can see the report.

Yeah, let's let's go. So the question number one. What do you think which business areas have the highest and lowest AI adoption right now?

I think highest would be fraud detection. Yeah, and the lowest probably LTV prediction.

Okay, that's interesting. So the largest actually has everything around process automation. So many are using this... That is interesting. That's a good use case. Yeah, yeah, and I mean and it's actually, you know, well once you understand the results, you're like this is so logical because I mean this is just something which is easy to understand like what do you need to do? You have a easy outcomes that you can easily measure.

Plus it's quite a safe space because these are about internal...

Because you can build anything once the process is defined, but if you don't have a defined process or the foundations, what would you automate?

Exactly or if something new, you know, you still need to try to figure out... Make it, test it, iterate and then...

And the lowest one is around bonus recommendations and player acquisition this is actually LTV, so you were right.

Yeah, I mean that's surprising though, but I would imagine maybe it's complex, that's why it's lowest.

I think yeah, so in my view LTV prediction is it's tricky. It's very complex. Because it depends on multiple data points and dependent on these multiple data points sharing current data.

Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, true, so you need a data infrastructure for that first. And then you kind of need to build it. And LTV prediction this is something like you need something which you can trust. And LTV prediction, you know, it can be quite hectic. And how do you make it stabilized or at least understand that it is trustworthy? You know, that's an interesting question to solve.

So, yeah. Good catch. Okay, question two. What do you think is the number one barrier to AI adoption right now?

Probably lack of understanding. Like lack of expertise more like...

Yeah.

That's actually was also high, I would say, overall. But the top barrier, which was also super interesting, is the competing priorities.

Competing priorities?

Yeah, so inside you typically have, you know, plans, road map, whatever, whatever, whatever. And then there is AI adoption. And typically you... Because maybe the priority is to take care of the customer or whatever is for the customer. But say I also can help your customers.

Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I mean, I think it's more like it's all understandable. Typically you have like road maps, you have kind of things that you're doing quarter to quarter, and that's very clear. While this is something that again we don't know yet the outcome of it. It's more like an experiment. And once you have some problems within your like main thing, this one goes down in priorities, which makes sense as well.

So, they're waiting for specific problems to be solved by someone rather than just we will integrate AI to you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super cool and very interesting. And question three. How satisfied are operators with the AI they've already implemented in your view?

Probably totally dissatisfied.

[laughter] That's a good catch as well, I would say, here there is an interesting thing as well. So, actually like more than 50% saying that it is too early to judge.

Oh.

Which means it's, you know... Feeling it's for the future.

Yeah, so it's it's like, you know, we are trying to iterate, but you don't know yet where you are. So, so I guess this is like one thing. And for some use cases which are much easier and clearer like process automation, satisfaction level is very good.

It's kind of like you already have some SOPs. You just kind of document them and then try to... Okay. Okay. All right. I mean, I'm looking forward to the report, but the last question I have before I let you go is what is the one big takeaway from this report that both operators, platforms, anyone in the industry should be really paying attention to?

I would say that, you know, it was also very curious to learn that there is no disbelief in the AI. Like 0% people said that they don't believe in the tech. Which means that this is just a new norm. And everybody is either doing something or planning to do within the, you know, next six. So, this is a thing which maybe we don't see yet the results like big changes or something, but we are going there.

And I would say that for those operators who have not started doing something around it... Probably it's a bit too late. But I mean, you know, but it's better to start like now. Otherwise, you will be so far away from like what everybody is doing that it's going to be difficult to catch up anyway. So, so yeah, so this is I would say is the biggest takeaway from that whole thing.

Yeah, thank you for summarizing that. And when is the report going to be out?

It's going to be out early June.

Okay. So, we're going to have a... Yeah. Not far away. Yeah. By the time this video is out, maybe the report is out.

Yeah, should be out soon, I think. Yeah, yeah, so should be super interesting.

Okay, sounds good. Thank you for joining me as well as sharing quite a lot of insights from your report as well as doing this interactive session because this is the first time on Real Talk.

Thank you.

Thank you for watching guys. Thank you so much for listening. Do share your thoughts or questions in the comments below for Victoria. Do connect with her on LinkedIn and I will see you on the next one. Thank you.

Thank you.