ChiefsClash | SBC Lisbon, SEP 2025

ChiefsClash is back to the on- site interviews, the format that everyone is fond of! In the scope of SBC Lisbon conference, Shahar interviewed 4 fantastic industry leaders right there in their company booths. The guests were Julia Uskova, Business Development Manager of Comtrade Gaming, Yann Bautista, Commercial Director and Founder of Peter & Sons, Head of PR and Communication of Alea- Märit von Stedingk and Betina Todorova, Partnerships Manager of Smartico.

1. What does your company do and how do you do it better than others?

• Marit: Alea is an iGaming aggregator. We provide one single API to operators. We acquire over 160 software and even over 19,000 games, where people can just get it in one place, instead of having to go through all the different softwares, we just simplify operators work. We do it better than anyone else because our API is more secure than any sort of banking API that you want. We actually have fast integration which means that the software is going to integrate to us and not the other way. That allows us to set the standards and that's a very helpful way. It's a longer way, but it's a better way.

• Yann: Peter and Sons offers games. At the end I think what you need to have is your own style. When Peter and Sons came you can see right away that it's a different scale. We are at the stage where we have a lot of partners and it's good to meet partners face to face. We need a space as well so we can get like organic meetings with people that are interested in things.

• Julia: I'm Julia from Comtrade, business development manager. However I tend to say I think I'm a doctor. My job is to find operator what's the problem, identify the problem and find the right solution. Operators need some analysis and expertise to help them achieve better results to get them where they want to be in a fast time possible and with minimum cost.

• Betina: Smartico is a CRM automation platform. We help basically operators, gambling operators with their retention efforts to keep those players in entertained and loyal to their play. We've been having two in one product from the beginning. We are CRM operation and gamification from the very start. We've very strong focus on the loyalty and gamification our systems are much more flexible, much more creative and players can actually customize everything.

2. What upcoming trends do you see emerging in the 2026?

• Marit: I think for us like the thing that we've been really working on especially is scaling like we've got we work in markets and we're really noticing that regulation and compliance is becoming in itself like a whole division that every single company needs to have by far in order to get through and that's actually leading to a lot of localization especially in sort of like emerging markets. So I find a lot of clients wanting to go more towards like Brazil and Africa and Latin to get away from all of the sort of hyper regulation that's happening doing more and better of the same thing. We were working towards finding an AI solution to sort of make the data. Yeah, what's that? Is that I don't know but you know I just, I didn't want to be too basic but ultimately like we are data driven aggregator we have got all that data and in order to get through all of that information a computer is better than anything.

• Julia: Well, I think the development of AI, all the data, players become smarter. They want more control of the game. I think this is cool that the, Crash Games players feel a little bit more control of the game. So I think we need to look into more personalization, engagement. Also I think we need to keep players, loyal to the brand because so much competition in the market. So it's about gamification, it's about loyalty, giving back to the players. It's more about that. But also you need to work smarter, be more efficient. So use the technology to drive you where you want to be in the past time. But also use the maybe human power out people to make smart decisions. So it's more like controlling AI to, you know, smart decision.

• Betina: We see more and more AI being included into the products. Not sure if that's a great way to do things, but definitely people are more and more acting on that, like more automation. We have a lot of stuff to offer to help the operators to detect problematic areas players, you know, catch them on day one and then in the best possible way.

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