Spearheaded by casino-led Wildz, the operator’s flagship igaming brand, Wildz Group has been on a roll these past 18 months, busily augmenting its burgeoning portfolio of assets. In 2025, a total of five new brands – Tuplaus, Flamez, Speedz, Berriez and Blingi – were released on the company’s proprietary platform and tech stack. These new additions complemented Wildz Group’s existing lineup of brands, Wheelz, Spinz, and Chipz. And last month, the Malta-based outfit rolled out Beazt, a sports-led platform which leans heavily into the booming world of combat sports.
What’s more, the privately owned firm continues to emerge from the shadows of the grey dotcom arena as a reaction to an increasing number of countries transitioning into locally regulated markets. Wildz Group is regulated in Germany – a market which accounted for a good chunk of the operator’s (then known as Rootz) explosive growth after its 2019 launch – while licences are being sought in Finland and New Zealand ahead of those markets regulating.
“Within a couple of years, we’ll be close to fully regulated as a business,” CEO Sam Brown declares on a video call from Malta with EGR while discussing Wildz Group’s journey up to this point.
EGR: In last month’s announcement regarding Beazt, you were quoted saying it is the most exciting product release since the Wildz launch in 2019. Why so?
Sam Brown (SB): About two years ago we launched a sportsbook on Wildz, which is our first and biggest casino brand in the group. Over the course of about a year, we started to learn how it could help with acquisition and complement retention – we were very impressed with the positive impact that sports made. So, we thought we should invest in another one of these but with a sports-leading edge. Beazt is the biggest product we’ve ever launched because it’s the first time we’ve launched a multi-jurisdictional product like this […] as a technical undertaking, it was a very significant piece of work.
We’ll probably make a lot more money on the casino side of Beazt because that’s just the nature of some of the markets that we’re in, but the brand is designed to lead on the messaging around sport and ride on the back of the martial arts and fighting sports craze. So, it’s edgy and focused on combat sports. It was a big build for us but also a big opportunity to remind people how good our platform and product capabilities are.
EGR: How are odds compiling, risk management and trading managed – are they in-house or outsourced?
SB: We outsource it. Altenar provides our sportsbook tech and we have a managed trading solution with them. We have another trading oversight layer on our side with our own sports team, but for all intents and purposes it’s a fully managed trading service.
EGR: Why the name Beazt?
SB: We’d sat on the URL for a while. Where we can, we like to incorporate the letter Z in the brands we build, and it just lends itself to the tonality around combat sports and the modern mentality towards sports gambling in general. You’re fighting for short bursts of people’s attention and this kind of ‘beast mode’ [slang for performing activities with extreme focus and determination] mentality is where the brand is positioned.
EGR: More broadly, how has Wildz Group evolved since the company was founded seven years ago (then known as Rootz)?
SB: We launched with one brand in 2019, but I think it took us a year before we launched the second brand, Caxino. We were one of the first people in the industry to embrace streamers [amplified by the launch of Wildz TV] and as a result we had a rapid growth phase as the fastest operator to reach tier-one status. We got out of the blocks quickly in what was somewhat still the good old dotcom days, and then the German market regulated, which was one of the markets we were very successful in, and so we moved towards the regulated framework there.
Things slowed down as we had to mature and move into this phase of taking local licences. Since then, we’ve been grinding onwards and upwards to try to enter markets we think suit our products and in-house skills. As the market evolved, we saw an opportunity around more aggressive multi-branding, starting with embarking on a mission last year to launch a brand every two months. We succeeded there; we launched five brands in 2025. We scaled really well and had an excellent finish to 2025 and an explosive start to 2026.
EGR: What’s the current headcount at Wildz Group?
SB: Last year, we were around 200 people. This year, we’re slightly less – around 185 – as we’ve been aggressively pursuing opportunities to automate through the use of algorithms and, more recently, AI tools. When we see people leave the business, we challenge ourselves as to whether we need to replace that individual due to the increased productivity from the tools we’re upskilling people in the business to use.
EGR: What are the benefits of Wildz Group’s multi-brand strategy?
SB: The obvious benefit is that almost every study on the planet will reveal that gamblers rarely play one gaming product at a time. They have at least three or four accounts they are active on. One of the biggest factors is the perception of luck; ‘I feel lucky at one brand one month, and I feel lucky at another brand another month’.
To cover more share of wallet is the fundamental principle of multi-branding. You can enhance that factor by making it very clear to the customer that you run multiple brands, so if they are not enjoying one or like features from another, they can move freely between them. But you can play on the fact you are still a single ecosystem offering lots of different products and more choice to the customer.
EGR: Are the brands skins of a single proprietary product or is there more to it?
SB: The underlying [functions like the] PAM, game integrations, payment methods and so on are more or less the same. Some brands have different payments and are targeting different types of players, others have different game layer features, such as a daily cashback model. Others will have no wagering requirements. Some will have levelling up.
It’s all about how we engage the player with relevant reward value, as that’s the key differentiation between products. And, of course, some are now sports and casino versus just casino. At the core, it’s the same technology and user interface, and we’re very proud of how fast and simple [to use] our products are. So, we like to keep the best parts of our products consistent.
EGR: What would you deem to be Wildz Group’s main markets today?
SB: We’re regulated in Germany, which is still one of our main markets. The others are predominantly the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) markets that are trending towards regulation, so New Zealand is one, Canada is another, and then there’s Finland. The long view of the company is to tread towards as much regulated revenue as possible. Within a couple of years, we’ll be close to fully regulated as a business.
EGR: Wildz Group pulled out on Ontario last year. Was that a difficult decision?
SB: No. It’s always difficult to admit defeat, but at the same time it’s an incredibly challenging market for a company like ours with our tactics and investment profile. So, what we were prepared to invest to acquire players in that market in a sensible fashion just doesn’t stand up against these crazy, highly funded US guys with seemingly unlimited access to capital. They can just steamroll you out of the market. At some point you need to accept that you can’t compete with those big guys.
We tried to find our niche, so we tried different digital channels and approaches over a couple of years. In the initial entry phase to the market, we ended up having to switch off for four or five months [while waiting for regulatory approval] and we kind of lost our [player] database. We were having to start from scratch and face some of these huge US guys spending hundreds of millions of dollars on television [adverts], which makes no sense to a sane man.
If you have access to unlimited capital, you can keep bleeding for five years. They weren’t present in the dotcom markets because of their US licences, so Ontario was their ‘first mover’. The investment strategies were, frankly, batshit crazy. It’s tough to admit defeat but it was the smartest thing – there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
EGR: What sort of CPAs are we talking in Ontario? Similar to US online casino states?
SB: I’ve not operated in the US myself, but I’m told they are remarkably similar. The player values are strong. The problem is the volatility of the CPAs. We would operate PPC strategies over several months for C$300 or C$400, but if we tried to scale that into anything else it just spiralled out of control and we’d be at CPAs of C$1,200, C$1,300 or C$1,400.
That’s in the very scientific side of digital marketing, so you can imagine the non-scientific side with some of the brand marketing and trying to attribute all these different channels. It was just very difficult to stabilise a CPA that made sense when you’re paying all the other costs of being in that market.
EGR: You mentioned Finland, a market transitioning from its monopoly model with state-owned Veikkaus to an open commercial set up. Has Wildz Group applied for a licence there?
SB: We have. We applied on the day the applications opened.
EGR: And your thoughts so far on the regulatory framework?
SB: The commercial conditions are there to allow for a good competitive market, [but] there are some certain unknowns. What everybody talks about in regulated markets is the ability to channelise players and GGR. We still don’t know what the player-facing restrictions will be like when it comes to limiting deposits and what it looks like in terms of game stakes. Without that information it’s hard to say how successful regulation will be.
As it stands today, it’s reasonable. They’ve listened to different corners of the market. By being late to [adopt] a European kind of competitive framework means they’ve had an opportunity to see what’s been good and not so good around Europe. What’s not so good is some of the marketing rules are a bit old fashioned and, in my view, don’t necessarily lend themselves to the most intelligent ways to protect vulnerable people online.
These days, the more scientific approach to marketing is far better way for a conscious organisation to ensure no young people are seeing your product. So, [they are] not allowing billboards outside primary schools, but there’s not going to be much demand from companies to have a gambling billboard outside a school – it’s relatively dumb marketing.
What we should be able to do is use online profiling tools and blacklisting to ensure the right marketing gets to the right players. Focusing on traditional local media is not where the smart money is going to be in the future generally […] you needlessly expose people to gaming advertising with those broadbrush channels.
EGR: Is a ban on affiliate marketing a shortsighted move?
SB: Most of the dotcom industry has had some exposure to Finland despite the monopoly situation, but what they haven’t done is big advertising. A corner of the internet, affiliation, has thrived in those conditions. Affiliates have made lots of money marketing the dotcom side of the industry, so I think blocking affiliation is an attempt to punish those guys for the current situation. Again, it’s not smart because these are intelligent marketers and business people who have built a significant presence with their online brands. I don’t think those guys will just disappear from the market because of the local regulation.
We would rather have seen regulation that included affiliates and forced them to sign up to a set of rules. They could then continue to make money in the market by sending highly targeted traffic. What inevitably will happen is the operators going for licences won’t be able to use affiliates, and so the crypto casinos and sites you see in every market but shouldn’t be there will fill that void. Any of these blanket approaches to shutting things out of the regulated market are opportunities for the black market. Any time you add restrictions and lock very obvious parts of the industry you create an opportunity for someone you don’t want to be there to explore.
EGR: Despite a modest population of around 5.5 million people, in your experience how does Finland compare to other markets from an igaming perspective?
SB: Any market with a high internet take-up, modern banking infrastructure and an appetite to gamble is going to suit online casino. Is it going to be the biggest market in Europe? Absolutely not. It’s not a huge market. It’s not a huge population; but it will be an interesting market. The Finns like to play, and you can see that from Veikkaus’ data. It all depends on how saturated it becomes […] it will be a good market, and the licensing conditions are quite fair.
EGR: Around 50 companies are expected to end up licensed in Finland. Does that sound about right to you?
SB: If you do a basic search online, 50 would represent about 10% of what’s currently available. Whether or not 50 is a big or small number relative to population, there are definitely more than 500 brands operating in Finland today, so to go down to 50 I think is a significant step in the right direction.
EGR: You’ve spent around two decades in this industry, on both the operator and supplier sides. How would you characterise the sector today?
SB: The way I would describe it today is it’s becoming clearly divided into three areas: the US, regulated everywhere else, and the unregulated. What we will see over time is less and less people able to survive across a blend of these. You’re already seeing people highly target one of those areas. It’s a case of pick your battle. Do you do regulated North America? Do you do regulated anywhere else in the world? Or do you go for the dark arts?
If you look at the big companies, Flutter has delisted from London and moved everything across to the US. They are licensed in many parts of the world, but they have become very US-focused – the same with MGM, DraftKings and so on. Then there will the guys like us and others who pick a selection of locally regulated markets. And the crypto guys will always exist. When I began in the industry you could serve your products anywhere, but obviously many barriers have gone up around the world since then.
When it comes to the products and the people, it’s still a young, exciting and fast-paced industry. As I mentioned earlier, you’re fighting for shorter attention spans, so products are adapting to digital snacking. There have been a few innovations over the years that add excitement and diversify betting opportunities but, at the core, it’s still the same industry it was 20 years ago.
The post Run wild: CEO Sam Brown on Wildz Group’s pivot to regulated markets and unleashing the ‘Beazt’ first appeared on EGR Intel.
The industry veteran talks to EGR about the rationale for intensifying the multi-brand strategy and why “batshit crazy” spending by well-capitalised rivals forced the company to “admit defeat” and exit Ontario last year
The post Run wild: CEO Sam Brown on Wildz Group’s pivot to regulated markets and unleashing the ‘Beazt’ first appeared on EGR Intel.