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In this article, Ivan Kalashniuk, CEO at Dominator Play, explores how shifting from a product-focused sales approach to a consultant-led strategy can solve operator pain points and bridge the value gap to close more high-impact iGaming deals.
You watch your leads keep ghosting. Demos sent. Follow-ups sent again. “Looks interesting” lands in chat and dies there.
Meanwhile, your product is solid, with sharp math and art on point. It seems like something in your sales processes fails to create relevance, clarity, and urgency. A new title doesn’t enter an empty space waiting for it. Instead, it enters a queue.
That’s because in the iGaming business development, distribution behaves like gravity. If an operator doesn’t see an immediate commercial pull, a deal fails.
Before anyone cares about game features, they care about revenue things. Like whether you understand why their top provider suddenly stopped performing in Brazil last quarter, or why their crash segment is underexposed in Tier-2 GEOs.
That’s where smart sales actually start inside an iGaming partner deal.
Why deals don’t happen and how to fix this
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Because you don’t ask the right questions
More than half of deals aren’t completed because a sales manager doesn’t put themselves in potential partners’ shoes.
There is a difference between asking: “What games are you looking for?” and
“What changed in your traffic mix in the last 60-90 days that made you reconsider your current providers?”
“The volume of games in your portfolio doesn’t define the number of partners,” says Ivan Kalashniuk, CEO at Dominator Play, “you can boast hundreds of titles but still have a moderate number of partnerships. The reason is that you don’t ask potential clients questions. You don’t sell, you offer a solution for a specific problem like a consultant.”
Asking questions isn’t a polite conversation starter; it’s a tool to wrap up the deal. Operators trust providers who can think in questions more than providers who can talk in answers.
“On the first call, I dig into what’s actually going on with the partner: what doesn’t work, why they look for new games, how their current portfolio is performing, and where the problem is.
Then I connect the dots: how Dominator Play can actually fix those gaps. Instead of pitching, I choose building the right formula together, so we land on something that actually works for their business,” adds Ivan Kalashniuk.
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Address the silent kill list in iGaming deals
Here’s why deals can fall under the “zero closure” category:
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Value explanation gap
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Provider struggles to clearly explain why this beats what they already have
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Decision inertia in large teams
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Too many stakeholders, no one empowered to finalize
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ROI proof demand escalation
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Operator raises the bar for proof with every call
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Next-step ambiguity
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Calls end without clear next steps or commitment
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Feature fixation trap
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Conversation stuck on product details instead of the commercial agreement
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Insufficient post-integration promo roadmap
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No clear long-term value
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“Send more info” cycle
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Repeated requests for decks/data used as a delay tactic
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Deal with an operator’s pain points
A big misconception happens with iGaming sales managers when they think operators look for new games. In fact, they look for products/tools to solve their pain points.
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Revenue. Providers win when they’re tied to an operator’s revenue KPI. It means treating their profit as much as (or even more than) their own. A pitch that saves a provider from being optional sounds close to: “You take our games and get higher GGR per game, increased bet volume per player, stronger ARPDAU, and 10x growth in revenue performance.”
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Rising player acquisition & retention costs. Traffic is expensive, and casino operators compete in a system where a player has already seen 12 casino ads today, been retargeted 6 times, compared 4 bonuses, and is emotionally numb to your “Welcome Offer.”
Position content as retention infrastructure, as a way to increase LTV on users whom an operator has already paid too much to acquire.
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Lack of flexibility. A non-flexible RTP and volatility – a “one-size-fits-all” math becoming a segmentation blocker. High-value players don’t get differentiated experiences. Low-value users behave the same economically as VIPs. Sell the ability to price games differently for different player types.
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Don’t pitch blindly
“Before I get on a call with a partner, I do my homework. I review their site and lobby, check which providers they work with, what RTP and volatility they run, which genres and game settings they lean into, which GEOs they target, where their traffic comes from, their platform setup, any recent news about their iGaming partnerships, etc. It builds a solid foundation for understanding how their business runs and where Dominator Play can be helpful,” comments Ivan Kalashniuk.
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Don’t approach partnerships as “sell games and disappear”
Strategic partnerships in iGaming are far from “close and ghost.” You stay in the ecosystem, sit in the data, and watch what happens after launch. Because here’s the uncomfortable part most game studios avoid: the deal isn’t the win. The performance after the deal is the win. Everything before that is just entry paperwork.
At the end of the day, the real question isn’t “can you close?” It’s whether a partner actually wants to keep you around after you do.