Alec Gehlot on Building Player Relationships That Last

For years, the iGaming industry has treated engagement as both an objective and evidence of success. More deposits, longer sessions and greater frequency have become familiar measures of a healthy player relationship. Yet iGaming has to contend with something most other digital entertainment industries do not because in the industry engagement cannot be judged by volume alone. The quality and sustainability of the player experience matter just as much. 

That makes the next phase of player experience considerably more demanding. Operators must understand not only what encourages a player to continue, but when to reduce stimulation, change the pace or step back altogether. Personalisation is only valuable if it improves the relationship; technology is only effective if the player experiences something better as a result.

Ahead of the Player Experience Academy at the SBC Summit powered by Soft2Bet, we spoke with Alec Gehlot, CEO and Co-Founder of PlaySignal, about where player experience has gone wrong, why trust is becoming one of iGaming’s strongest advantages, and whether the operators that learn when not to engage will ultimately build the most valuable relationships.

Q: We’ve spent years talking about player experience as a way to increase engagement and retention. Do you think the industry now needs to redefine player experience around the quality of the relationship with the player, rather than simply the amount of time or money they spend?

Alec Gehlot: Every player is on a journey. But how do they feel about that journey? Are they enjoying it? Are they frustrated?

If that journey is focused on quality, think first class rather than economy, then naturally the player is more likely to have a better experience. And if you get the quality of that relationship right, time and money tend to follow.

At the end of the day, people are willing to spend more when an experience feels better. That’s why people pay more for first class than economy. The difficult part is figuring out what “first class” actually means for that player in the first place.

Q: There’s an obvious evolution at the heart of gamification: the mechanics that make an experience more compelling can also make risky behaviour more persistent. Where do you think the industry has historically drawn that line incorrectly?

Alec Gehlot: Here’s where I think it starts to go wrong. Operators are really good at getting players to do more. Play more, deposit more, bet more.

But when it comes to helping someone slow down, the tools are probably five years behind. And the reason is that most of the systems we use to encourage play are one directional.

It’s like having a car with no reverse gear. It can go forward really well, but what happens when you need to slow down, change direction or avoid a collision? 

Gamification today basically says, “That’s not my problem. I was built to go forward as quickly as possible.” And you might say, “Well, obviously. Operators want people to spend more money.” For me, gamification is an opportunity to create a better and more balanced player experience.

Q: If you stripped away the buzzwords around AI, personalisation and gamification, what do you think is the single biggest thing operators still fundamentally misunderstand about their players?

Alec Gehlot:I think we overcomplicate why people gamble. People want an experience. That’s true in gambling, but it’s also true in restaurants, e-commerce, supplements, pretty much any industry. 

People do things because they want to feel something or get something out of the experience. AI, personalisation, gamification, all of that can help. But those things are only useful if they make the experience better. They can’t become the experience itself.

If I get amazing customer service, I don’t really care whether it came from a human or AI. I just care that it was good. And I think that’s what we sometimes get wrong. We assume players care about AI, gamification or whatever the latest technology is. They don’t. They care about whether the experience is good for them.

Everything else is just a mechanism for getting there. “We’re an AI casino!” Great. But what does that actually improve for the player?

That’s the bit that matters.

Q: The best consumer technology companies increasingly design experiences around individual behaviour rather than demographics. Why has iGaming been slower to move from ‘segmenting players’ to genuinely understanding individual player motivations?

Alec Gehlot: I’d actually say iGaming is pretty far ahead when it comes to designing experiences around behaviour.

But moving from segmentation to individual player motivations? That’s extremely hard. And that’s probably why we don’t see it as often as we might expect. You’re starting to see companies like Netflix and Uber move towards more individualised journeys, with AI playing a big role in that.

Really, it’s about understanding the behaviours and characteristics of each player, then adapting every interaction around that understanding. That’s where we’re heading next. But it’s a really hard problem. And I mean super, super hard.

Take a tiny casino with 1,000 players. In theory, that’s 1,000 different journeys. But journeys across what? Email? SMS? Push notifications? 

And don't forget… Offers? Timing? Content?

Once you start combining all of those decisions, it becomes impossible to manage without an army of AI agents that you can actually trust to produce quality work. Right now, there’s still a huge amount of value operators haven’t even unlocked from segmentation yet.

Q: We’re seeing mechanics like missions, achievements, progression systems and seasonal content move from social and video gaming into betting. Which of those mechanics do you think genuinely improve the player experience, and which are mostly commercial theatre?

Alec Gehlot: I think any operator can answer this with a pretty simple question: Does it do what you wanted it to do?

If not, it’s probably just commercial theatre.  There’s already a playbook out there. Look at Duolingo. Look at Fortnite. So really, it comes down to this: can you prove the feature is making the experience better?

Go run some tests and find out. 

Q: Could the next competitive advantage in iGaming actually be knowing when not to engage a player, using data and behavioural signals to deliberately reduce stimulation rather than increase it?

Alec Gehlot: I’m probably one of the strongest advocates for the idea that sometimes the best thing an operator can do is not engage a player. I think it’s too simplistic to say, “Just keep pushing. Keep messaging. Keep them engaged.”

Great experiences don’t work like that. They have push and pull. They have changes in pace. Think about a great film. The hero doesn’t just win for two hours straight. There are setbacks, tension, changes in momentum. That’s what keeps you engaged.

Games providers actually understand this really well. Marketing often doesn’t. Most marketing technology is still built in one direction: do more, send more, push more. And I think the operator that figures out how to balance that, when to push and when to pull back, is going to stand out.

Because if the whole industry just keeps pushing players harder and harder, it becomes a competition of who can shove more things down a players throat, before they choke. 

Probably don’t need me to say that it doesn't end well for the players or the operators. 

Q: Responsible gambling is often treated as something that sits alongside the commercial player journey. Do you think the industry needs to get to a point where player protection is actually embedded into the experience design itself?

Alec Gehlot: Yes, it has to be embedded into the experience. What we need are systems that understand the player from the beginning and can recognise when things are starting to move too far, before it gets to the point of restriction or exclusion.

And I understand why that’s difficult. Regulated operators are under huge pressure. You’ve got increasing regulation, tighter margins, and then you’ve got others competing for the same players without necessarily operating under the same constraints.

So when we say, “Operators need to be more responsible,” we also have to recognise the environment they’re competing in. But I actually think that creates an opportunity.

Trust might be one of the strongest competitive advantages a regulated operator has left. So rather than seeing responsible gambling as something that holds the business back, I think the smartest operators will use it as part of what makes players choose them in the first place.

Q: Personalisation is usually presented as a positive: the right content, offer or experience for the right player. But at what point does personalisation become too effective, particularly when the system knows exactly which behavioural triggers are most likely to drive someone to continue playing?

Alec Gehlot: I think personalisation becomes “too effective” when it starts damaging the player relationship. Knowing the player better isn’t the problem. The problem is what you do with that knowledge.

If you understand exactly what makes someone engage, and you use that to create a better, more relevant experience, great. But if you use that same understanding to keep pushing someone until they reach a point where they need to be restricted or excluded, then you’ve gone too far.

It all depends on what you are aiming for.

Q: Looking outside gambling, industries such as gaming, streaming and fintech have become extremely sophisticated at creating long-term engagement. Which lessons from those industries do you think iGaming should adopt,  and which ones should it deliberately leave behind?

Alec Gehlot: A lot of industries have taken things from iGaming, and in some cases implemented them more smoothly. 

But iGaming has a unique problem. We’re probably one of the only industries where there’s such a thing as too much engagement.

Take Netflix. Nobody’s stepping in and says, “Alec watched too much Netflix this week. We need to restrict his account.” In regulated iGaming, that upper limit exists. Most industries can keep optimising for more. 

We can’t.

For regulated operators, there’s a point you don’t want the player to cross. So the challenge isn’t simply maximising engagement. It’s maximising safe engagement.

Q: As operators expand across multiple jurisdictions, how do you build a consistent player experience when the regulatory definition of what constitutes an acceptable experience can differ dramatically from one market to another?

Alec Gehlot: The fundamentals don’t really change. That’s why it's not a surprise that almost all casinos and sportsbooks look the same.

Yes, every market has its own nuances.  But fundamentally, are players enjoying the experience?

If you can answer that question well in one market, you can probably answer it pretty well in another.The bigger issue comes when operators lose the identity that made them successful in the first place.

What worked in one market often came from a really clear sense of who they were, what their players wanted and what made them special. 

But as they expand quickly, that identity can start to get diluted. So the challenge isn’t just adapting to new markets. It’s doing that without losing the thing that made people care about the brand in the first place.

Q: If we fast-forward five years, what do you think will distinguish the operators with genuinely strong player experience from those that simply have more features, more promotions and better technology?

Alec Gehlot: In the end, we’ll still be talking about the operators that consistently deliver a great experience. And the ones that don’t? We might not be talking about them at all in five years.

Q: The Player Experience Academy brings together technology, product, regulation, behavioural science and commercial strategy. If every industry CEO made one practical change after the Academy, what should it be?

Alec Gehlot: Every CEO should decide how player experience will be measured and then experience the product personally. Use the app. Make a deposit. Contact customer service. Try to withdraw. Dashboards can tell you what players do, but they do not always tell you how the experience feels. 

If CEOs want to understand the quality of the journey, they should begin by taking it themselves.

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Alec Gehlot is CEO and co-founder of PlaySignal, a research lab that validates innovative concepts for operators, enabling them to make data-driven investments in profitable, high-impact solutions. He will be hosting the Player Experience Academy during the SBC Summit on 29 September.

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