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Big brands win player acquisition. In the US, Flutter is putting an extra $270 million into FanDuel this half to buy shares for 2027, and DraftKings is pulling promotional spend forward for the NFL season. What that money buys is shared against each other, and the bill is visible: DraftKings reported second-quarter revenue down $69 million on heavier promotional reinvestment, revenue per monthly payer down 13%, and both stocks are off more than 20% this year. The two operators who can afford the auction are being marked down for winning it. Every other operator is priced out of it, which means the offer is not where a challenger wins, whatever the welcome page says.
So where does it win? The change shows in what operators now ask for. "Two years ago the question was where can we be seen," says Josh Yates, whose global agency Ignite iGaming does casino and gambling link building for affiliates and operators. "Now it’s what we should stand for in this market, who is the player here, and where does that player go to make up their mind about a brand. That is positioning and visibility. It is what wins the sign-up, and it is the part most of the industry skipped."
The data backs the good briefs. The SOFTSWISS 2026 iGaming Trends Report, built with NEXT.io and Kantar from more than 350 industry professionals and 120,000 media headlines, finds brand reputation and trust now outweigh bonus size in a player's decision to sign up, and operators reporting Top of Mind and Purchase Intent to their boards as KPIs. One survey would be thin ground for a market view. It is worth acting on because the operator filings above, Similarweb's discovery data below and the share prices of the biggest spenders all point the one way. The usual response is another platform or channel tactic. The right one is older, and the incumbents did it before they had the budgets.
Know the Player Before You Pick the Channel
SOFTSWISS flags Brazil, Finland and France moving to competitive licensing. Players in those markets arrive with no loyalty, their own payment habits, their own sports and their own idea of what a legitimate operator looks like. A challenger that studies that player first beats an incumbent whose media plan was built for a different country. Most iGaming marketing tools assume the target is understood before the campaign starts. It usually is not.
Position Against What the Big Brands Cannot Claim
The biggest brand wins the general claim: broadest, most famous. It cannot win every specific one. Fastest payouts in one currency. Depth on one sport. A product built for one regulated market. Similarweb's 2026 Generative AI Brand Visibility Index found specialist brands ranking far higher in AI answers than their search demand would predict, with niche names beating household ones in their categories. A USP that is true, specific and repeated is the cheapest brand asset an operator owns, and most challengers never write theirs down.
Say One Thing and Say It Where the Player Checks
A player checking an operator looks at review sites, industry press, search results with some history, and now an AI answer. If the message differs in each place, or is missing from most, the check fails. Phishing against operators is up 180% since 2023, and a player caught by a lookalike domain leaves the brand whose name was on the fake. SOFTSWISS treats trust, compliance and retention as one number for that reason. A consistent presence in credible places is what holds it up. Gambling911 has made a related case for content as an advertising strategy: the audience that comes for the content stays for the brand.
Google Reads a Brand the Way a Cautious Player Does
Search demand for the name. Mentions in publications with reputations of their own. Consistent details wherever the brand appears. Independent coverage no single campaign could have produced. Not one of those is a tactic. They are what years of showing up in the right places leave behind. A placement bought once reads as a placement. A presence built over years reads as a brand that belongs, and that is what Google's reputation signals and a player's two-minute check are both measuring.
Google's Own Policy Draws the Line Between Marketing and Manipulation
Google's spam policy, updated 28 August 2026, defines link spam as links created primarily to manipulate rankings, and in that section says it "does understand that buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web" for advertising and sponsorship, with no violation where the link is qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". Its site reputation policy names editorial articles, and sponsored content written for a publication's readers, as not what it acts against, and its reviewers look for presentation and quality that match the host, a named author, and content that does not turn up elsewhere.
"Read that as a marketer, not as an SEO," Yates says. "Google is describing an advert with editorial standards: a real publication, its real readers, a named voice, something written for them. That is the test a player applies to. If the value of an appearance disappears the moment it is marked sponsored, it was never marketing. The brands that passed were not trying to trick a ranking. They were trying to be recognised by the right people in the right place, and Google is telling you in writing that this is fine."
AI Answers Are the Proof, Not the Cause
Similarweb puts 35% of consumers inside AI tools at the early-discovery stage. eMarketer, citing Profound, has generative AI suggesting products in 34% of US conversations that were not about shopping at all. Similarweb's Adelle Kehoe on who gets those mentions: "Years of building trust, deep specialism, and recognizable positioning are now compounding in AI search." That is awareness, positioning and message discipline, measured by a channel that did not exist when the incumbents built theirs.
The Basics Keep Getting Buried Under the Stack
Target market, positioning, USPs, key messages, awareness, visibility. First term of any marketing course, and the incumbents did it with television money before iGaming had a performance stack. What changed is where the work shows up: in a board pack, in how Google reads a name, in which operator an AI assistant names when a player asks where to sign up. The platforms sit on top of that. For a challenger in 2026, the cheaper route is to lay the foundation and let the big brands keep paying for the auction.
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- B.E. Delmer, Gambling911.com
