Guest: Gary Connolly, former Head of Key Accounts, Gambling.com
Host: Jack Crabtree, Head of Sales, Gamecheck
Gary Connolly spent nearly six years at Gambling.com managing its biggest affiliate accounts, and he joins Jack to explain how a 60% rev share deal can shrink to 5% once fees are taken into account.
Every affiliate deal ends somewhere with a player typing "best casino UK" into Google, reading a list, and having no idea there is a commercial relationship behind it.
Gary Connolly spent nearly six years at Gambling.com, most recently as Head of Key Accounts, sitting between operators and affiliates on exactly these deals. He joins host Jack to talk about what account management actually involves once the dinners and spreadsheets are stripped away.
The conversation covers why most broken affiliate deals come down to mismatched expectations rather than poor performance, how a 60% rev share can become 5% once admin and platform fees are applied, the gap between a brand's public image and its customer service at 2am, and what Gary thinks the industry still gets wrong on player protection.
Gary describes account management as acting as a translator between two parties who often want different things from the same deal. An operator wants sustainable, long term traffic. An affiliate wants a commercial return that reflects the value of that traffic. Gary's job at Gambling.com was to sit between the two and keep both sides honest about what a deal could realistically deliver.
He argues that transparency does most of the heavy lifting in these relationships. When operators and affiliates are upfront about numbers, expectations, and limitations from the outset, deals tend to hold. When either side oversells what they can offer, the relationship breaks down later.
According to Gary, roughly nine out of ten broken affiliate deals come down to expectations, not performance. An affiliate might expect a certain volume of players or a certain pay-out structure, and when the reality does not match, trust erodes even if the underlying numbers are reasonable.
He also discusses the tension between short term greed and the long game, on both sides of the table. Operators chasing quick growth and affiliates chasing quick pay-outs can both damage relationships that would otherwise deliver steady, long term value. Gary is candid that this dynamic is partly why affiliates attract both loyalty and criticism in equal measure.
Gary breaks down why a rev share deal advertised at 60% rarely means what it appears to mean. Admin fees and platform fees are deducted before an affiliate sees their share, and by the time those costs are applied, the effective return can fall as low as 5%. This is not necessarily dishonest on the operator's side, but it is rarely explained clearly upfront, and affiliates who do not ask the right questions can be caught out.
He also points out that experienced affiliates look well beyond the headline commission figure. Payment reliability, reporting quality, and how an operator treats players after sign up all factor into whether a deal is actually worth taking.
Gary is direct about the gap between how operators present themselves publicly and how they behave when a player actually needs help, particularly late at night when support resources are thinnest. He also flags sign up offers that bury key terms in the small print as a persistent problem that undermines trust across the industry.
Looking ahead, Gary talks about whether iGaming is genuinely becoming more player first or simply talking about it more. He also discusses what comes next in his own career, why the substance of a role matters more to him than the job title attached to it, and how quickly AI is changing account management and the wider industry.
0:00 Meet Gary Connolly, ex gambling.com
0:42 What account management really involves
1:39 Why transparency does the heavy lifting
2:17 Where deals break: expectations, not performance
3:10 Short term greed versus the long game
3:41 Why affiliates attract both love and criticism
4:41 Operator greed and affiliate greed
5:47 Are 50 to 60% rev share deals too good to be true
6:47 Admin fees, platform fees, and the real number
7:16 What affiliates look at beyond commission
8:07 The player who does not know the industry exists
9:56 Is iGaming genuinely becoming player first
10:40 The thing the industry still gets wrong
12:18 What comes next for Gary
13:10 Why the job title matters less than the spec
13:58 AI and how fast the ground is moving.
Revenue share refers to a gross percentage before deductions. Admin and platform fees are taken out before the affiliate receives their share, which can bring the effective return down to a fraction of the advertised figure.
Gary says it is rarely about performance. Most broken deals come down to expectations that were not properly aligned between the operator and the affiliate from the start.
No. Affiliates also look at payment reliability, the quality of reporting, and how an operator treats players after they sign up, since these affect whether a deal is worth sustaining over time.
The Gamecheck SEAL is a trust badge that online casino operators display to show that Gamecheck has checked a sample of their games in collaboration with the original providers and found them to be real. The SEAL includes a domain-linked QR code that players can scan using the Gamecheck App to check its authenticity. Copied seals are blocked and flagged simultaneously.
The Gamecheck App, Search Tool, and Chrome Extension are all free to download and use. Visit Gamecheck.com to check any online casino before you play.
Gamecheck Insider is the official podcast from Gamecheck, the independent game integrity platform for online casino players and operators. Each episode features candid conversations with industry figures, player protection advocates, and the Gamecheck team on the subjects that matter most: fake games, fair play, and the realities of the online casino world. New episodes are available on YouTube.
