Who Are the Women Leading Britain’s iGaming Sector?

Posted by Harry Kane on Friday, April 12, 2019

Bet365 founder Denise Coates hit the headlines in November last year, when it was announced that she’d received a record-breaking £265 million pay packet in her role as Chief Executive.

To put this into perspective, this sum of cash would form a tower almost twice as high as London’s Shard skyscraper if it was stacked in £50 notes, while Ms Coates’ pay packet was more than three times greater than Apple CEO Tim Cook (who banked £80 million last year).

This occurrence was not an anomaly either, with Coates having banked £217 million during the previous year and currently established as the best paid female executive in the world. She’s also blazing a trail for other women to succeed in the lucrative iGaming space, while potentially making online gambling more popular amongst female participants.

Which Other Women are Lighting up the iGaming Space?

While some may have baulked at Coates’ take-home pay during the course of the last two years, this is a hard-earned reward for some expectational work undertaken behind the scenes at Bet365.

After all, the brand achieved a turnover of £2.7 billion in the year ending November 2018, while recording an operating profit of £628 million. This equates to a large margin of 25%, which is relatively high even in a market where fixed store costs and overheads don’t burden brands.

At the same time, gamblers wagered an estimated £52.5 billion with the company last year, and this sum continues to rise incrementally every single year.

This is a common trend in the iGaming market, with prominent women also being significantly rewarded for their work with other successful brands and service providers.

Another prominent female in the iGaming space is Lydia Barbara, who works as the head of innovation at market leading game development firm Microgaming. This long-standing company has continued to enjoy exponential growth of late, with the brand adopting an international focus and striving to diversify the array of titles that it offers to its clients.

Microgaming recently expanded into the burgeoning Czech Republic market, which grew by an impressive 56% in 2017 and produced a gross gaming yield (GGY) of $370 million. This sum represents one-fifth of the overall marketplace, with growth levels most pronounced in online casino gameplay and sports betting.

This represents an important breakthrough for Microgaming and one that could well blaze a trail for other developers to follow in the future.

At the same time, Barbara has also overseen an overhaul of Microgaming’s library of titles, with an increasingly diverse array of games being made available to players. Many of these were showcased at the ICE event at the ExCel in London earlier this year, with the most stellar titles including a Village People-inspired online slot and the long-awaited return of the brilliant Agent Jane Blonde (we’ll have a little more on this and similar iGaming heroines a little later in the piece).

Another female to achieve success in the iGaming space is Ebba Arnred, who currently works as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at games’ supplier Play’n GO. This Malta-based firm is another has enjoyed sustained and global growth in recent times, while it hit the headlines recently for conquering the Philippines and expanding its footprint into the Asia-Pacific region.

Since its inception in 2005, Play’n GO has become one of the best media and entertainment suppliers in the world, with Arnred having played a vital role in this journey having joined the company in January 2007 and gradually worked her way up through the ranks.

Elsewhere, Hanne Aimonen has the distinction of being the CMO at Casumo, which is one of the most popular up-and-coming online casino brands in Europe.

Tess Ingvarsdotter Ahlin has also done sterling work as the head of VIP at the established Betsson Group, which was founded as an offline gambling company back in 1963 and had continued its growth through a series of collaborations of late.

How Has This Impacted on the Industry?

The rise of prominent female business leaders in the iGaming space is obvious, while it has also coincided with a significant increase in the number of women who gamble online on a regular basis.

Even back in 2012, it was estimated that 68% of women in the UK (which remains one of the world’s most progressive and best-regulated markets) regularly participate in gambling activities, with this trend impacting on sports betting, bingo and casino gameplay.

The question that remains, of course, is whether this is a mere coincidence or the direct result of talented females adopting senior roles in some of the world’s best-known casino brands?

In the case of Microgaming, there’s no doubt that this brand has placed an increased emphasis on diversity whilst introducing a plethora of fearless heroines into its games’ library.

These include the developer’s new and hotly-anticipated Lara Croft game, which has been developed in collaboration with Square Enix and is the product of the world’s longest-running brand partnership.

With the number of female players has increased incrementally for several years now, it’s almost unarguable that brands have invested more in the development of diverse games in order to appeal to this audience.

It’s also not too fanciful to suggest that prominent female leaders in the market have overseen the implementation of such a strategy, which continues to revolutionise the iGaming space across the globe.

Interestingly, the last 15 years have also seen a considerable rise in the number of successful female gamblers, and this has also made the iGaming market increasingly accessible to women. Take Vanessa Selbst, for example, who managed to earn close to $12 million (or £9 million) from the card tables prior to her retirement and remains the top-earning female poker player of all-time.

Back in 2007, trail-blazing Barbara Enright also became the first ever women to be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame, while Kathy Liebert is another high-profile card players who can boast career earnings of more than £4.7 million.

These successful individuals undoubtedly serve as prominent female icons in the iGaming marketplace, who have played an influential role in inspiring the current generation of women gamblers. This trend is certain to continue well into the future, with women increasingly prominent both in the poker rooms and the boardrooms of casinos throughout the UK.