iGaming is a tough industry to crack. Rising CPAs, rising regulations and, you guessed it, rising taxes are placing more pressures on operators across regulated markets.
As margins are slashed by these ever increasing threats, focusing on cutting costs or, rather, creating better efficiencies across different functions could be the difference between surviving and thriving in 2026.
One discipline that is perhaps more costly than most is player retention.
Between bonuses and free spins, those promos can add up. And if you don’t retain the right players, those efforts may not even equal real retention and genuine loyalty anyway.
This is something that Solitics has noticed throughout the last few years and is developing solutions to offset those challenges.
As Nissim Barukh, VP of Operations at Solitics told iGaming Expert, it has recently collaborated with Latin American operator Codere to help it to reduce its costs while improving long-term loyalty.
“Big bonuses tend to create high costs without improving long-term retention,” said Barukh. “Codere noticed that there was no correlation between larger bonuses and better retention, and in fact, they saw a negative impact on net revenue.
“Across the industry, the sameness of operator offerings has shifted competition toward ‘bonus races’. When bonuses become the main motivator for player choice, costs quickly inflate – and yet reducing them can risk short-term drops in both acquisition and retention KPIs. It’s a cycle that’s expensive to maintain and difficult to win.”
While bonuses seem like a quick way to keep players on site, they do come with several risks including high costs with low long-term return; commoditised experiences that fail to differentiate the brand; regulatory limitations in many markets and encouraging opportunistic behaviour rather than genuine loyalty.
Barukh said that Codere saw firsthand that heavy bonus reliance reduced margins without improving retention, which pushed them toward more sustainable strategies.
Barukh added: “Bonuses may drive an initial action and short-term retention, but they don’t build loyalty. In the long run, players stay because of the experience, not the size of the offer. Codere found that shifting focus away from promotions and toward content, timing, and relevance delivered far better long-term engagement.”
Personalisation holds the key
Solitics’ hyper-personalisation tools are designed to help operators like Codere to make smarter and more efficient decisions that drive more long-term loyalty than traditional bonusing would.
Codere utilises Solitics hyper-personalisation tools to get deeper insights into its players and offer them more relevant experiences. One aspect of this is gamification.
As Barukh said: “Gamification drives intrinsic motivation. Players engage because the experience is fun and rewarding on its own. Bonuses buy a single action, while gamification builds habits.
“Some forms of gamification are pure fun and entertainment, extending session time and engagement. Others, like missions and challenges, activate motivation on a deeper level – they create a sense of achievement, build habits and drive genuine loyalty over time.”
And those gamified experiences count for nothing if they aren’t uniquely tailored to each individual player, said Barukh.
“Personalisation ensures that gamification isn’t generic. It’s relevant to each player’s behaviour, interests and real-time activity. When messaging, timing and betting amounts align with the player in question, engagement increases dramatically.
“Codere’s success with real-time triggers around major matches showed how impactful timing and personal relevance can be.”
Having a genuine impact for operators
Solitics’ full suite of hyperpersonalisation tools play a pivotal role in driving engagement and making campaigns more interactive and rewarding.
After Codere utilised the solution, it saw impactful results that helped drive loyalty and create more personalised unique experiences for its players.
“Codere experimented with mini-games and surprise boxes and found that their results were comparable to traditional channels like email and SMS, even though they were aimed specifically at churning and short-term inactive players.
“The fact that these playful, data-driven formats performed just as well with a tougher audience highlighted their potential as an effective engagement and reactivation tool.”
The beauty of tools like these is that the more they are used, the more data is collected, which means even more unique experiences can be curated.
Solitics’ AI-driven solutions continually assess real time data, looking at what players click, when they respond and what content drives action to help operators see which mechanics resonate with specific segments or individuals.
“These insights can then be fully automated through Solitics by creating custom fields and embedding them directly into user journeys.
“Codere learned that understanding behaviour and triggering the right content at the right moment was far more effective than guessing or relying on broad segments.
The impact of Solitics’ solutions are clearly marked via the results that Codere saw in various metrics.
Active players among users included in targeted retention journeys were up 38% compared to those not exposed. Meanwhile, high-value player engagement reached a 38.7% CTR via personalised SMS communications, which significantly outperformed those not exposed to similar targeted messaging.
