SBC Leaders Issue 41: Tomic, Mallon, Fellas Talk Strategy
SBC Leaders issue 41 is out now, with Alexandre Tomic on the cover. Tomic founded Alea, and the interview follows the company's path: from a pure-play games aggregator to a builder of engagement tools, then a content supplier to North American sweepstakes operators, and now a sportsbook platform provider via a partnership with FIRST. Neither Tomic nor co-founder Charlotte Lecomte treats that as the end of the road. Video gaming's engagement mechanics are the next target, he says, and gambling will keep borrowing from them.
Paddy Power's head of brand, Paul Mallon, takes the World Cup slot. During the tournament the Flutter-owned operator ran reactive ads around events, turned around in hours. Mallon came back to the business last year after six years away. Before that he ran stunts under the Head of Mischief title. Marketing doesn't own the process, and he says so plainly. "We've been doing this since 1988," he says, pointing to finance, procurement and legal. Emails, calls, WhatsApp messages. Not a clean linear sequence. Senior backing counts for plenty too. "You need the big dogs at the top to come with you on the idea," he adds.
MrQ founder and CEO Savvas Fellas gets the maverick slot. His numbers make the case: 12 months, past challenger status, now one of the UK's better-known online gambling names. And it happened while taxes climbed. Complaining about what he can't move isn't his style. "We try not to get hung up on things we can't control. Tax is definitely one of those," he says. Better player value, better experiences, product innovation. Those are the levers that work, in his view.
Illegal operators get a sharper answer. Fellas doesn't soften it. "They've got zero moral compass. Zero," he says. Deposit limits go ignored, KYC checks are effectively absent, and a user could register under a nursery-rhyme name aged six and still fund an account. His response isn't a plea for regulation. It's competition on ground the black market won't defend. Product, because unlicensed sites don't care about it, and brand, because they don't tell stories. "They'll generate an AI kangaroo, throw up a website and buy traffic," he says.
The issue runs well past those three. Totalizator Sportowy CEO Beata Stelmach sets out her plan for taking on black market operators. BetPlay Capital's Tomasz Juroszek covers investment opportunities, and BetWarrior chief revenue and growth officer Santiago Gandara writes on trust. Novibet CTO Yiannis Stavroulas handles the technical side of competing in Brazil.
Compliance and player protection get their own space. Flutter's Rich Clarke details the group's Center of Excellence for Customer Safety. Gaming1 chief compliance officer Thibault Collard explains the Belgian operator's ROBIN player protection system, and Arizona regulator Jessica Roza discusses the state's responsible gaming training for the public. Betsson Group chief business development officer Kevin Saliba shares what multi-jurisdiction casino success takes. Coolbet COO Tomas Graham outlines the company's ambitions. BoyleSports global head of fraud and payments Matthew Greenman covers fraud across multiple fronts, and TheLotter group head of payments Rolands Grancovskis looks at stablecoins.
Technology and content fill out the rest. BetConstruct's new CEO Lena Yasir, First.bet founder Tom Light and DATA.BET CEO Yurii Berest are among those covering betting tech. On casino content, Games Valley CEO Ariel Reem, Kanggiten CEO Viktor Cherkas, Pateplay CEO Georgi Aleksandrov, Greentube director of global sales and marketing Markus Antl, GAMOMAT head of commercial Joss Webster, Hub88 director of product Gabriel Kolawole, Kalamba Games COO Alex Cohen and Wazdan CCO Andrzej Hyla all weigh in on standing out in a crowded market.
Print copies are at SBC Summit in Lisbon, which runs 29 September to 1 October 2026. A digital edition is out now. For operators, the useful read is Fellas on tax and product economics, plus Mallon on the cost structure behind fast-turnaround creative. Both come down to what gets funded and how quickly. That's where the next set of margin decisions gets made.