Oyindamola Michaels: Most Betting Investors Establishing Businesses for Wrong Reasons

Oyindamola Michaels, Country Manager of PariMatch International, is well respected among his peers. GAMING WEEK recently set out to uncover what makes him tick

Please, tell us how you got into sports betting.

I stumbled on sports betting. I was working with Jumia. I felt the need to switch jobs because I didn’t really see where e-commerce was going. A friend of mine had an interview with a sports betting company, BetBonanza, at that time. So he took up the interview but wasn’t really serious about it. They told him to do some designs and all that, so he wasn’t up to it. He asked me if I was interested. I was like, “Why? It is sports betting. I bet. Let’s see how it goes.” I reached out to the recruiter or the MD then, and he told me to do some stuff. I know how to use Photoshop and the like. I did some social media designs for him, and an interview was scheduled, and that was it. I got my first role as a customer service representative, the only customer service representative of the company at that time in Nigeria. I was head of product for BetBonanza. It was going well. We were expanding, opening shops in Mushin, Oshodi, Ikeja, and all that. Later, I got into LuckyBet through a friend of mine and became head of products for LuckyBet. I was in charge of their product catalogue, and they were also trying to do retail. 

Then, I got headhunted by CloudBet. I was at CloudBet for about a year plus. CloudBet was awesome because that was where I was given the free will to express myself. 

After CloudBet, where did you go next?

Then there came Paripesa. I was in Paripesa for a short while. I had gotten to a point in my career where I could choose the job I want to do if I’m not comfortable doing the job. It was more of trying to look for better opportunities. Paripesa came, and it was good while it lasted. They were a great company. They are still a great company, and I still have friends there. I was the Country Manager for Paripesa. General Bet came, and I got referred to them by the owner of CloudBet. I was general manager for General Bet, and then PariMatch came calling, an international brand and big presence; official partners for Chelsea, Newcastle, Leicester and all that. That’s how we are here today.

What are some landmark career moments for you? 

First up was opening the Bodija branch of CloudBet. It was great. It was serene. It was bringing something for the Ibadan people. I still have videos of the opening ceremony. I remember the interview, and I felt kind of fulfilled that we embarked on these projects. That kind of opened a lot of doors in terms of breakthroughs or developing more stuff. USSD betting came through. We had a partnership with MTN to fund wallets via airtime. We tried to do it with Airtel and Etisalat to replicate the same method across the board. It was good to hear customers calling in. I thought there was even a limit to airtime people could recharge because I was getting people funding wallets with N100,000 and N50,000, and it was great. Also, getting the award for ‘Most Influential Personality’ in the industry (2022 ) was like the icing on the cake for years of hard work and recognition from my peers. 

How will you describe the sports betting industry? And how do you plan to put PariMatch on a level to compete to win? 

The idea is that this industry is very volatile. A lot of people want quick money, quick returns on their investments. So, you hear industry operators packing up or selling licences or trying to move out of the country. For me, any advice I’ll give PariMatch or any other operator is, to have a plan. Have a five-year business plan. It is what I give every business. Have a five-year plan. Know how you do your investments or your marketing budget. Have a five-year plan to break even, if you do well and focus on your products… I call it the five steps. Have a UI/UX, have a great product, make your registration seamless, and make it extremely seamless, right? Once that is done, have great customer service. Perfect customer service. Let your payouts be instant and stress-free for your customers. If you have all these five ingredients, trust me, you are good to go in this space in Nigeria, even though our regulators, sometimes, are not really about the growth of operators, they rather focus on whatever it is they can get back in terms of levies and fees, If not, operators won’t just come and say to everyone, ‘Oh, everybody leaves’. Or, ‘We’re packing out. We only have a five-year licence’, or you want to take traffic away from Nigeria without having somebody here monitoring the affairs. 

So the industry is not just about the operators. It’s about the punters, that is, the people that are staking their bets. That’s my passion. It is not just, ‘Oh, I am working with XYZ Bet. I am working with PariMatch’. What about the customers? Are they satisfied? Are they okay? Who is protecting and watching after them? That’s it. If you go through my profile, I double as head of operations for a non-governmental organisation, Gamble Alert, where we try to protect people addicted to gambling. People that are coming in to stake their bets. They need to be protected. It’s an ecosystem. 

The gambling addiction programme that has been set up, would you say it’s successfuland can you just walk us through the processes, how does it work?

Gamble Alert is growing, and it has been very impactful. What we did was, we started with underaged gambling. We have gone on advocacy tours around schools in Lagos, Osun, and Oyo State. We spoke with the children, did a debate competition, gave them an amount of money and spoke to them at length about the vices of underaged gambling and what it can lead to, what it might cause, and what it might turn them into. You’d be amazed how many children are already playing this thing. “What is your forecast for Man U and Arsenal?” and a lot of people were shouting over 1.5. These students are not meant to even have a betting account. So what did they do with it? It is beyond ticking a box and saying that you are above 18. You get card fraud. People steal their parents’ cards and use them to play a bet. I have collected the money and we have refunded it. This sensitisation needs, or has started at that point, from the grassroots. We are taking it up from there. A constant reminder to people. Give them hotlines to call. 

Our office is in Ibadan, you can come in, can talk to a specialist, we have professors from UCH Ibadan, psychologists that can speak to you. We have lawyers if you want to press cases. We are trying to partner with regulators, but they are frustrating us. We even tried to set up meetings with them so we can partner with them, and ensure that every operator is registered with Gamble Alert. If you go to a foreign operator, you would see Gamble Aware underneath their footer, which means that there is an association that is responsible to ensure that this operator is Gamble Aware Compliant. We have nothing of such in this country, and that is what Gamble Alert stands for. 

In the same way, if you want to get the national licence and you’re a member of the Association of Nigeria Bookmakers, you get the discount, right? They give you a discount for getting a national licence. Once you register with us, you get a discount also from NLRC, so that everybody is keyed into the focus or the goals of Gamble Alert, and ensure that we have some measures in place for these operators, self-exclusion for example, time frame pop-up if you’re browsing the site for X amount of minutes, something pops up and tells you “The gamble stops when gaming is no longer fun.” Something that just shows or pops up to you. Having card limits on amounts you can deposit. We even have a proper KYC verification method, to ensure that the person that is even registering is even 18 years old in the first place. So it’s just basic things like that that can help sensitize people about it. It is beyond saying or putting ‘Above 18’ stickers in shops. You can just stroll to Mushin, enter any betting shop, and you will be amazed. 

Are you not concerned that operators might not keep to some laws of responsible gambling to make huge profits? 

They would have no choice… so the idea is, ignorance is not an excuse for the law. For example, we know that when a customer wins, you need to pay the person his money completely, right? And you, for one, don’t have money, you pay someone 30 per cent of their money. In that same vein, if the NLRC or the regulators, as the case may be, mandates every operator to be Gamble Alert compliant or to be responsible gaming compliant, now, there is going to be a department that checks compliance, every company or operator should have a compliance department. Either it is under operations, or it is under legal. There is a legal compliance section that ensures that there is a step. 

Professional or regular audits can be done to check and confirm whether the laid down process of Gamble Alert or any responsible gaming association is followed. Just the same way NDPR’s data protection audit is done every year to check whether you’re protecting your customers’ data. It can also be done with the way you file your FIRS tax. We can also check whether the customers click the self-exclusion button, is it working after they have clicked the self-exclusion or are they still able to access the site? 

Recently, it was in the news that from 2026 to 2027, sports betting companies will be banned as shirt sponsors. 

We are not a shirt sponsor. We are just official betting partners, okay? So there’s a difference. They might allow the sleeve; they might allow the advert board. PariMatch is an official partner for Chelsea, but we are nowhere near the jersey of Chelsea. But they are in every official communication. Maybe Matchday magazine, or Matchday squad, or the advert board on the stadium. 

Is there a chance of PMI partnering Nigerian football clubs? 

If Nigerian football clubs, the Nigerian Football Federation probably does its homework and ensures that the essence of partnership with football clubs is that there is a proper viewing, right? I don’t think that there is proper viewing for the Nigerian football leagues. Nothing is cast in stone. Well, let’s be sincere, Bet9ja tried it and pulled out, and BetKing tried it and pulled out. Nigerian football is not even shown on DSTV. You have Kenyan football shown on DSTV. So, it is a big problem in the Nigerian football league. It needs to be sorted out. 

I believe you are mostly an online betting platform.

Yes. 

Do you have a national licence? 

Yes. 

As well as the state, local licence? 

No. No Lagos licence. 

They don’t bother you for that? 

We belong to an association and our association had said that there’s no need to do this licence, to get a double licence. The case is in court. It is a litigation case, we are not even meant to speak about it. It is ongoing between the national and states, but until that is solved, nobody can disturb anybody. But the idea is, we all know… that is exactly our issue. These are part of the things that we face. This thing only happens in Nigeria. There is no issue of double licencing anywhere else in Africa. South Africa is the only other country that has a regional lottery board. But if you get for one region, you can operate under any other region. Their own overall gaming authority doesn’t issue a licence. You go to your region or any region to get your licence, but you must register your licence under the supreme one. But every other person in Africa has one lottery board. It is one Lottery Commission that issues licences, why in Nigeria? So because I want to run a retail shop in 36 states, I will get 36 licences? That’s exactly what we are saying. And I will pay taxes across these 36 states, in terms of Good Cause money? And the federal will still collect licence fees, is that not double taxation?  

What’s your agenda to attain a remarkable tenure as a country manager? 

I think I am leaving a remarkable one already. My footprints speak for themselves. When I first joined PMI, it was an international company. The platform wasn’t what we wanted. 

What do you mean by that? 

This is Africa. This is Nigeria. There’s a certain way your platform should look like. There are certain things that your audience are already used to. You won’t bring the Japanese platform for example, and how the audience is in Japan, and say, ‘Oh, this model works there, so it will work here’. Nigeria is a very different market. First of all, what we did was, we went into the product mode, we went into bugging and debugging and trying to develop the product from scratch. In short, we did it from scratch. Like the basic elements, the colours, the fonts, how everything is, we released what we call an MVP, a Minimum Viable Product out that can at least stake bets, then we start reducing sprint by sprint, release by release to what you have today. Across that journey, we’ve seen the audience grow, the complaints reduced: ‘Oh, you guys don’t have this’. ‘Now we have it, it is going to be released in the next phase’. 

Since it is a product revamp, you can’t have everything loaded up at once. But right now, the site is good, deposits are coming in, withdrawals are coming, and everything is going on as it should be. So like I said, PariMatch is going to surprise a lot of people, so let’s wait and see. If you have the basic five things going well, you do your marketing, everything goes well. 

Going by your five-year plan, where do you see PariMatch in five years? 

This is my own five-year plan. I don’t know whether the owners or the investors have a five-year plan. I’m just saying that if I am going on board with anyone, I feel the investors should have a five-year plan because this is a volatile industry, and people raise people’s hopes. Before the investors might come in, they will tell them, “Oh, you will make your money in one year. In six months in Nigeria, you will break even.” It’s not like that. It is hardly like that because it is a saturated market. We are all recycling the same users. It is not a regulated industry where they say that from 17 downwards, they have not started betting. They are. And that’s why a lot of people jump processes because they feel if they are compliant, and this other person is not compliant. The customer will leave and go to this person that is not compliant, hence why we need the regulators to key into what I was saying earlier. So the five-year plan is only for me. If you have a lot of money, you can do it in three years. But how many investors have that patience? Bet9ja took a while before they broke even because there was 1960. Then, there was NairaBet. 

How many countries is PMI in? 

Off the top of my head, I can mention about seven or eight: Ukraine, Cyprus, Brazil, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Ghana. They have pulled out of Russia and Belarus because of the war. Bangladesh, India. The company is originally from Ukraine. They pulled out of Russia because they feel Russia are the invader. So there is no point doing business in a country where the country is the one invading yours.  

Any challenges? 

It’s just basic online challenges. Maybe bugs, deposits not going through. For example, when the whole bank issues were happening, it affected the operators. People were not able to get their money for two days. It affected every P2P, too. 

Since it is an online platform, how would you define success at PMI? 

Success is a target met. If the target is given by the investors or the directors, if you make it, it is a success for them. If you overdo it, it is a success for them. If you don’t do it based on certain issues, you will have to tell them. In sports betting, DGR is not cast in stone because we don’t know the outcome of each result, but you can only compensate for it in terms of the acquisition of active players. That’s what we try to do, we try to acquire more customers and make them active. This means that they are playing, so you have to have tools that segment all your customers and give them the right communication. For the ones that have not deposited, the communication they get is, “Deposit now and get ‘XYZ’ bonus.” For the ones that are playing, “Play ‘XYZ’ games and get a thousand per cent on your accumulator bonus.” For your VIP customers, you are calling them to ask if they don’t have any problems. Dedicating a special person for them to act as a VIP manager with contacts to reach them at any time. 

So, for every customer segment, you have a specific value for them. Make everyone feel important. Promote them accordingly as they grow. The customer that is depositing now, after a month and you see that he is constant, move him to another level. After a specific amount of money, move him to VIP. Treat them as per segment. 

You always seem to be coming back to the gaming industry, even after your stint with the e-commerce sector. Why is that? 

I have not left. I only thought of changing jobs once. I like the industry. If I have been moving around in different industries, I will never be an expert in any. I can boldly say I am an expert in the gaming industry. You won’t mention many names without probably calling my name. 

So that made you want to stay? 

Nothing really. But to build a career. Man is not getting any younger. You need to have a stable life and career path. Not even a stable job, just a career path. Let people know you with, “This is what he does. This is what he knows.” And I think I know what I know, and I am constantly seeking ways to improve it. Improve my knowledge, and improve the knowledge of the industry. Try to grab new trends and put them up into mine, hopefully, one day, with the right investors, I hope to start mine. Own a betting company. At least then, all my innovations, all my ideas, everything can be well placed on the table and nobody would say, “This is not a good idea. Are you sure it is going to work?” it’s been probably years of research and seeing that these are the pinpoints of customers, and being a customer myself, I am not just sitting on a chair and cracking my head on how a company will get better, I am also cracking my head as a customer on how to make money. I played a bet too, and I should have seen a lot of things from the customer’s angle that if certain things are done a certain way.

What are some of the biggest opportunities and challenges in the industry? 

First of all, one of the biggest opportunities in the industry is that there is still a lot of space to explore. A lot of things to be done. And not just in Nigeria, even across the continent. For example, in Senegal, there are just about three or four betting companies. Some countries in Africa don’t even have any, not because of laws, not because of religion or anything, there are just none. The Benin Republic has just one or two. They are trying to do the Nigerian IP. Normally, those things are supposed to be geolocated, but the Beninese are not meant to be playing Bet9ja. You need to have your own in your own country. So it is like Nigeria is taking traffic from another country. 

So if you look at it, it is untapped. But I feel most people are coming for the wrong reasons; most investors springing up and opening are doing so for the wrong reasons. They are not really coming to invest. They are coming to make profits, which is good. But if you do it for the right reasons, you should be able to expand across. So, if you look at the people that have done it well. BetKing has expanded. They have offices in the UK and South Africa, there is now BetKing Kenya, and there is BetKing Ghana. That is expansion. Go to these countries, get licences, and operate. Replicate what you have in Nigeria. If you can’t replicate it, learn their way and do it. Likewise, the ones that are there in Kenya, Palms Bet, right? Grow a group of companies, basically. There are so many untapped resources.

So, what are the right reasons?

The right reason is entertainment. You want to entertain them because you want to sell something to them. You do a good CSR. Get people jobs. Open retail shops if you can do that. It can help alleviate poverty, not in terms of the physical exchange of money because of gaming. I am talking in terms of opportunities and jobs. I was watching the news, and they said that Nigeria is climbing to 51 or so per cent of the population will be unemployed. Imagine a company comes in and employs a lot of people. And you can do this across the board if you open retail shops across the nation. 

Challenges: The regulators. I need to start from the very top. Regulators are a big challenge, because, what is your job as a regulator? It is to ensure that laws, processes and procedures as laid down in the Constitution, or your policies, are followed to the letter. You are a regulator not just for the operators; you are a regulator for both the operators and the users. But what are we regulating? At every conference, we come and talk about this with them and tell them how they can come and help us. It feels like, after the conference every year, they just close the doors, and nobody does anything about it. But you will get reminders to pay your tax. You will get reminders to do this and that. Regulators in other countries organise symposiums, and some people bring stakeholders in the industry together to do conferences, but there is none. What you get is regulators sponsoring foreign conferences, trying to exhibit in ICE London as regulators, but what have you done in your own state or country that you are regulating in terms o symposiums, in terms of bringing industry leaders together, or the industry at large together, none. 

So that’s why I am saying that regulators first need to regulate, they need to do the right thing. Take cues from foreign regulators and see how things are being done, and properly replicate them. 

Why do you think regulators’ work culture or attitude is that way in Nigeria?  

I do not know. I don’t have their work culture. I can’t say it is a Nigerian thing. I just think it is this lackadaisical. I don’t know what to call it, but… the DG is trying, but he is not the only person that we will call the regulator. Ideas and innovation should be embraced. They should do yearly symposiums and workshops, and give us the latest trends, and training. That’s why you are a regulator. Call your operators together and give them regular training. Appoint DCOs and give regular training to your operators, whether it is compliance, or maybe there is a new payment provider and you need them to integrate. 

The last time I was in Abuja for the NLRC Stakeholder meeting, they were telling us about integrating a KYC system, that was the course of the meeting, and after the meeting, they said everybody should go into their rooms and take a letter to know the amount they owe the government. 

Are there other challenges? 

Yes. We also need to develop African products like African games online. Maybe our own Aviator can be a ‘Maruwa’. Products that are solely African for the African market. There is ayo (a local game). There is ludo. There is stuff that can be integrated into these systems. But the idea is, would your operators agree with African products? I feel it is always worth the try, so let’s try and do it. All these games, Spin the Wheel, are not our products. But if you have African developers develop African games that can be integrated, it is worth the try. I think we should always embrace what is our own, create our territory, create our terrain, and let it know that as Europe is a territory, Africa is also a territory, and these are African games. These are Nigerian games, you will see that the bettors will warm up to it because this is something that they know or that they are used to. 

QUOTE

Regulators are a big challenge, because, what is your job as a regulator? It is to ensure that laws, processes and procedures as laid down in the Constitution, or your policies, are followed to the letter. You are a regulator not just for the operators, you are a regulator for both the operators and the users. But what are we regulating?