The necessity of building and maintaining a strong network is a familiar construct among numerous industries, and is certainly one that is not lost in the gaming community.
However, among the multitude of strategies and expert tutorials on how best to achieve such a goal, is the question of: how much do you know about your network? With this in mind, CasinoBeats is aiming to take a look under the hood, if you will, and has tasked the 100 Club to help out.
Tales of a financial crisis leading to a departure from a past career path, the fortuitousness of being in the right place at the right time and the impact of tightening regulations are all touched upon by our latest participant, Adam Doyle, Head of Gaming at RiskNarrative.
CasinoBeats: Could you begin by talking us through any past experiences that have been gained outside of the gambling industry? Could your career have taken any different paths?
Adam Doyle: Outside of the world of risk and compliance, my previous working life was very much centred around sports and property. I first entered the gambling industry back in 2015 when I joined identity verification solution provider GBG as New Business Sales Manager for ID Verification.
I spent almost a decade with GBG, rising to the role of Head of Gaming and New Business Team Sales Manager before moving to Bede Gaming as Sales Director. When the opportunity to become Head of Gaming for a new orchestration platform came around, it was too good to turn down, and I have now been in this position for the past three years. During this, the business has grown at an incredible rate, culminating in its acquisition by LexisNexis Risk Solutions in August last year.
CB: What was it that eventually led you into this industry?
AD: I decided to leave the property industry during the financial crisis that hit the UK in 2008. I signed up with a recruitment agency and they put me forward for an interview with a gaming company, GBG, that was close to home, offered an interesting role and paid well.
My experience and skills were the right fit for the position, and I was given the job. Once I started, I had a conversation with one of my bosses and it came out that I really enjoyed working in the gambling sector, and my career just took off from there.
CB: How would you assess your progress through the industry to date? Are there any interesting anecdotes that would interest our readers, or any stand out experiences that may not have been possible without the current, or a past, role?
AD: I was definitely in the right place at the right time in terms of kick-starting my career in the industry. But since then, it has been about working hard, putting in the hours and being willing to travel – a lot.
When I started back in 2009, it was the start of regulations really beginning to tighten and operators trying to meet these new requirements in the most cost-effective way possible while still offering the best customer onboarding journey. This is still the situation more than ten years later.
Most of my career has been on the supplier side, but I did enjoy a great 12-month period working for Bede Gaming as Director of Sales. That gave me a lot of insight and perspective regarding the challenges that operators face, and this has helped me better understand how RiskNarrative can help them overcome these challenges.
CB: What would you say have been the major changes during your time working in the industry? Both for the better and worse.
AD: The tightening of regulations has absolutely been the biggest change during my time in the industry. There are upsides to this, with players better protected than ever before. But this has also driven competition among suppliers.
When I first started out, there were perhaps three or four suppliers working in the risk/compliance space but now when I attend conferences and award ceremonies there are businesses that I have never heard of looking to claim their share of the market.
This shows that regulation is here to stay, and with requirements only getting tighter, operators need to ensure they can meet these new requirements and ensure compliance at all times.
CB: If you could ask the 100 Club any questions, or task them with tackling any issue, what would that be?
AD: I’d like to turn this one on its head and ask the 100 Club what they see as the biggest challenges right now. As knowledgeable leaders and influencers, it would be incredibly valuable to understand the pain points they are encountering across their organisations and what changes they would like to see, certainly from a regulatory perspective, that would allow them to build and grow sustainable businesses while also ensuring that players are properly protected at all times.
If you would like to tell your story, or be considered for the CasinoBeats 100 Club, please email us at [email protected].
Launched to give a voice to the industry on a range of key issues, the 100 Club tackles the tricky questions and shares members’ views across the CasinoBeats network. Have your say by joining the 100 Club.
