ADVERTISING AND MARKETING
Regulating influencer marketing in gaming and gambling INFLUENCER MARKETING IS BECOMING AN INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT PART OF THE MIX FOR THE INDUSTRY MAKING SMART REGULATION ESSENTIAL FINDS PHIL SAVAGE
Influencer marketing is also projected to be one of the fastest growing aspects of affiliate marketing with more than half (59 percent) planning to dedicate a quarter or more of their affiliate budget to influencer marketing partnerships in the next year. This equates to a 14-percentage point net change according to a 2025 report from impact.com. 2 Influencer marketing is not new. A report entitled The State of Influencer Marketing 2020: Benchmark Report was quoting an industry worth US$9.7 billion five years ago. 3 Many in the industry, including regulators, have taken a while to realise that this kind of advertising is not just confined to makeup brands and restaurants, but this is set to change if it hasn’t already.
Introduction The idea of vacuous, self-absorbed individuals commanding attention and sizeable sums of money may grind our gears, but influencer marketing is here to stay, and it affects the gaming and gambling industry. A 2024 study into social media marketing by four leading U.S. gambling brands – BetMGM, FanDuel Sportsbook, ESPN Bet, and DraftKings Sportsbook – found that over 81 percent of the ads sampled were organic, as opposed to paid. Of these, half were considered content marketing, that is, marketing that focuses on engaging, shareable content, without explicitly advertising a brand product or service. 1 This finding is consistent with others which indicate the growing use of influencer marketing by gaming and gambling operators.
In recent months, there have been a string of announcements
1 https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/business-school/documents/Bristol_SM_Research_Report.pdf 2 https://impact.com/research-reports/state-of-affiliate-marketing 3 https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report-2020
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IMGL MAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2025
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