The latest edition of SBC Leaders magazine features some of the betting and gaming industry’s biggest characters, as Alea Founder Alexandre Tomic, Paddy Power’s Head of Brand Paul Mallon and MrQ Founder Savvas Fellas share the secrets of their success.
In a wide-ranging interview, issue 41’s affable cover star Tomic chats about everything from Alea’s birth to Latin American expansion and even psychedelics.
He also discusses what is next for a business that has moved from being a pure-play games aggregator into a developer of engagement tools, a major content supplier to the North American sweepstakes sector and, via a partnership with FIRST, a sportsbook platform provider.
Tomic and his co-founder Charlotte Lecomte have no intention of stopping there though. Next in their sights are some of the video gaming industry’s more engaging elements, which Tomic believes the gambling sector can learn a lot from.
“That I find extremely interesting, and I think that we’re going to see more and more of that in our industry,” he says.
How Paddy Power won the World Cup
One of the off-field highlights from the World Cup was Paddy Power’s advertising campaigns, which included a host of attention-grabbing creatives based on events that happened during the tournament.
Heading up the team that delivered the clever, well-executed adverts in just a few hours was Mallon, who returned to the Flutter Entertainment-owned operator last year after six years away. In his previous spell, he had overseen many memorable stunts as the Head of Mischief, and the 2026 World Cup saw the spirit of those days revived.
But while his team’s seemingly unbridled creativity grabbed the attention, Mallon insists that they can’t take all the credit for Paddy Power’s reactive marketing.
“We’ve been doing this since 1988,” Mallon explains. “It involves finance, procurement, legal and an army beyond marketing who don’t often get the credit.
“It’s always a flurry of emails, calls, WhatsApps and it’s rarely a perfect linear process. But it is rigorous and always part of our strategy, so we’re built for it.”
Equally important is the fact that the creative team has earned the backing of senior management.
“You need the big dogs at the top to come with you on the idea,” he adds. “The grown-ups at Paddy Power are brilliant in terms of trusting the teams. Trust is such a big aspect.”
Bashing the black market
In difficult times, independent thinkers have to show some defiance. Step forward the maverick Founder and CEO of MrQ, which during the past 12 months has shrugged off its challenger brand status to become one of the UK’s best known online gambling brands.
This has been achieved during a period of rising taxes; something Fellas is not going to waste his time moaning about, as his business is demonstrating that growth is still attainable.
“We try not to get hung up on things we can’t control. Tax is definitely one of those. So go crack on. Get better value out of your players,” he says. “Give them better experiences. Give them fewer reasons to leave. Innovate your product. Innovate what it means to sell entertainment. If you do those things, everything else follows.”
Fellas is, however, more than willing to speak out about the UK industry’s other great bugbear – the increase in illegal operators targeting British players.
And he doesn’t hold back.
“They’ve got zero moral compass. Zero,” he, very accurately, observes. “They don’t care about deposit limits. Their KYC is a mess. You could sign up as Little Bo Peep, put your age as six and still deposit”
That has just served to make Fellas more determined to prove that licensed businesses can beat them.
“They don’t innovate because they don’t have to. Why would they? They don’t pay tax. They don’t have affordability checks. They can advertise 99% RTP all day long. So beat them somewhere else.
“You can beat them on product because they don’t care about product. You can beat them on brand because they don’t care about storytelling. They’ll generate an AI kangaroo, throw up a website and buy traffic.”
Around the world
Tomic, Mallon and Fellas are far from the only big personalities in the bumper edition of SBC Leaders.
It also features Totalizator Sportowy CEO Beata Stelmach outlining her plan to defeat black market operators, BetPlay Capital’s Tomasz Juroszek looking at investment opportunities, BetWarrior’s Chief Revenue & Growth Officer Santiago Gandara considering the value of trust, and Novibet CTO Yiannis Stavroulas examining the technical challenges of competing in Brazil
Rich Clarke of Flutter details its Center of Excellence for Customer Safety, Gaming1’s Chief Compliance Officer Thibault Collard explaining the success of the Belgian operator’s ROBIN player protection system, and Arizona regulator Jessica Roza discusses the state’s responsible gaming training for the public.
Kevin Saliba, Chief Business Development Officer of Betsson Group, shares the secrets of multi-jurisdiction success in the casino sector, Coolbet’s Chief Operating Officer Tomas Graham discusses the company’s big ambitions, Boyle Sports’ Global Head of Fraud and Payments Matthew Greenman talks about the challenge of battling fraud on multiple fronts, and Rolands Grancovskis, Group Head of Payments at TheLotter, muses on stablecoins.
There’s also a host of tech talk, with BetConstruct’s new CEO Lena Yasir, First.bet Founder Tom Light and DATA.BET CEO Yurii Berest among those outlining the latest developments in the betting industry.
From the world of online casino content, Games Valley CEO Ariel Reem, Kanggiten CEO Viktor Cherkas, Pateplay CEO Georgi Aleksandrov, Greentube’s Director of Global Sales & Marketing Markus Antl, GAMOMAT’s Head of Commercial Joss Webster, Hub88’s Director of Product Gabriel Kolawole, Kalamba Games COO Alex Cohen, and Wazdan CCO Andrzej Hyla share insights on how to stand out from the crowd.
You can pick up a copy of issue 41 of SBC Leaders magazine at SBC Summit in Lisbon (29 September – 1 October 2026) or read the digital edition here.