Parimatch: “It’s not even about money. It’s about your brand’

Despite the recent challenges laid out to gambling companies this year, mainly the COVID-19 crisis and the temporary halting of sport and retail, firms in the sector are always looking to develop its brand to secure long-term benefits.

Speaking at SBC Summit Barcelona – Digital, Ivan Liashenko, Parimatch chief marketing officer, provided his services to discuss how to take a local firm and transition it into a global brand, similarly to how his own company achieved such success.

During the ‘Go Global! The Parimatch experience’ presentation Liashenko discussed the importance of investing in your brand, particularly when it comes to marketing, with the CMO highlighting that not every piece of investment is about financial return.

You can click here to watch the full presentation from the event, or see the video embedded above.

“When you become a global company, you have to invest millions of dollars every month and understand that you are doing it, if not the most efficient way, but at least so the correspondents understand that you are doing it quite well,” he said.

“The first thing is, it’s not even about money. It’s about your brand. We in Parimatch went through rebranding almost three years ago. I think that this rebranding was like the concrete, you know, that basis for all other further developments of our company, we basically went from a company with the logo from 2005, to the company with a logo from 2025.

“When you’re forming your brand strategy you have to find your key clients for whom you want to hear and when you’re trying to do this, you have to focus on the particular regions with the particular customers.

“But then when you’re going global, you have to try to link up traction from him into a more global way. Because the one guy with the same interest, in for example, Germany, or Ukraine or Russia or India will earn other money, he will drive another car, and maybe he will spend his leisure time in another way. That is a lesson you are facing with the global challenges. You have to find the same things with these guys to work with them well.”

Secondly, Liashenko explained the importance of analytics and how in order to propel a business into becoming a global brand, it is crucial to have a solid analytical system so you know if the financial investment is working.

In particular, he explained the importance of ensuring that metrics are counted the correct way whilst also insisting the importance of detecting fraud in your statistics.

He explained: “When you have to spend a lot of money, you have to analyse in the very short term that you’re doing it in the most efficient way, because this role is changing quite first. So you can’t just wait and say ‘Okay, let’s just spend $10,000 this month and see what happens next month, if everything goes well, we will spend $20,000, and so on’.

“We divide analytics into two streams. One of them, of course, is anti-fraud because we understand that when you are operating on your current markets or entering the new market, you can find new ways of fraud.

“I’m sure that if you’re looking to be a global company you have to invest a lot, both in manual and automatic marketing, fraud detection.”

Other topics which Liashenko delved into included the importance of developing technology internally within the company in order to enhance your product, again with the CMO particularly focusing on boosting Parimatch’s marketing ability.

Moreover, he commented on affiliate marketing, its risks and rewards, plus what firms should consider when wanting to partner with these companies.

As the presentation came to an end, the importance of global sponsorship was brought into question. Liashenko firmly believes that for a company to take that leap from local to global then sponsorship is imperative in attracting audiences and extending customer reach. 

“The last thing I wanted to do today is of course, talk about global sponsorships,” he added. “Without global sponsorship, without having the worldwide reach, you will never become a global company. And now it’s pretty much become increasingly global in terms of football as well.

“If you’re developing and marketing 360 degrees, you will find yourself in one to three years as a global company and the main players and market.”

Liashenko concluded the presentation by discussing how creating a strong vision for a company sooner rather than later will help the business grow, with the CMO insisting that local firms should also think big.

He emphasised: “Just don’t think local, even if you are a regional player, just think global. That was the very beginning of Parimatch and that was the difference between us and our competitors. We thought about ourselves as a global company five, six years ago, when we were very far, far away from it.

“Now with Conor McGregor, UFC,  Juventus and Fnatic it’s becoming reality.”