Ahead of the AskGamblers Awards 2018, we caught up with three winners from last year – BitStarz, King Billy and ShadowBet – to find out more about the sites and their thoughts on the awards.
Tell us a bit about yourself
Srdjan Kapor, Affiliate & Marketing Manager, BitStarz
First of all, thank you so much for the interview opportunity, I will try not to make it sound like a profile on a dating website, I promise:)
So, I started working for AskGamblers in 2014 as a Content Manager, then moved on to Program Manager and finally Product Owner prior to joining BitStarz as an Affiliate Manager in the beginning of 2017.
I think my major strength as an Affiliate Manager is that I got to see the business from both sides, which gives me a deeper understanding as to what the affiliates want. As I’ve been there I always try to ask myself “If I was an affiliate, what would I want?”
Ruslan Legenzov, Affiliate Manager, King Billy 
Isn’t life what’s happening to us, while we make plans? About 5 years ago, armed with a degree in linguistics, I was ready to dive into a world of semantics and phonemes. Instead, after meeting a couple of guys from the igaming industry, I found myself first mesmerised by this beautiful world and then diving into it head on!
At the beginning of my career, I took various roles in affiliate departments (the languages did, in fact, help) and started to get to know this “beast” called the affiliate. Actually, I was surprised to find out that affiliates are a rare combination where extroversion meets mathematical acumen – not to mention the “coolness factor”!
Artur Różycki, Head of Affiliates, ShadowBet
After 15+ years’ experience at Polish Capital Market in IT I started working in igaming business in 2016 when we launched ShadowBet Casino. We decided to use our wide knowledge to create casino with a strong focus on stability, UX and innovation. It was a friend of mine, who worked for one of the biggest casinos before, who invited me to work on this project. He convinced me to join the team, by telling me how nice it is to work and meet people from all over the world. I decided to give it a try and now it’s more than two years in this industry. I still find it very attractive, because there is always something new.
What makes you stand out from the crowd?
SK: First of all, I’d like to say that we at BitStarz are extremely honoured and humbled to have received such a prestigious award. The fact that it was also a “Players’ Award” made us even more grateful.
I think that many casinos nowadays offer a lot of the same things (games, payment providers, etc) hence we have to focus on areas that we can actually make a major difference and put emphasis on the particular things players actually care about.
I hope I speak for the players when I say that our 10-minute average cashout time, massive welcome package of 5 BTC + 200 Free Spins, fun and rewarding promotions and the fact that we offer both multiple crypto currencies and FIAT (major international currencies) gives us the versatility that caters to a wide range of players.
Ultimately I think our excellent support staff deserves the biggest praise here. We only pick guys who have a long casino industry experience and have the social capital to offer service with personality. Our support is truly the cornerstone in our operation, if you guys read this, you’re awesome!
RL: There can be only one King, but there are also a lot of potential usurpers! We were fascinated to discover that our King spawned about a zillion “Kingbillish” replicas and that made us extra vigilant to never let go, even for a minute, of what makes us stand out from the crowd.
Basically, we have bought the King Billy’s beautiful myth and fantastic universe, so much, ourselves, that players recognize it, trust us and are enchanted in turn by the experience and come back from more. To see what we really mean, go read our replies to the AskGamblers King Billy review page, or read our blog or visit our YouTube channel.
AR: From the very beginning, the concept for our casino was to create a place, which has some mystery and uniqueness while providing a great user experience and hours of fun to our players. We are always describing our casino as secret place run by a mysterious bearded guy called Jack Pot. He is our boss so, we wanted the name of the brand, to include the atmosphere and feeling we’re trying to create and here comes the first part of it – “Shadow”. Second part “Bet” is associated with Sports Betting, which is the next step of our evolution.
We are currently working hard to implement everything and to start offering Sports Betting in 2019. And why do we stand of the crowd? It’s innovative ideas, fantastic promotions and pressure on our clients satisfaction, which is our highest priority.
Affiverse is the exclusive media partner for the AskGamblers Awards 2018, held in Belgrade on 17 January.
