Richard Skelhorn: From £400 to £40m

British born entrepreneur Richard Skelhorn has been involved in iGaming affiliate marketing since 2001.

He started his first casino affiliate site with just £400 on his credit card and no outside investment. Almost two decades later, the affiliate business he founded, Atemi Group, was acquired by Better Collective for up to £40 million.

Between those two points, Skelhorn built multiple casino affiliate businesses, moved into online gambling and eventually returned to affiliate marketing with a business built around paid media and customer acquisition.

Starting with £400

Skelhorn entered affiliate marketing in 2001, launching his first casino affiliate site with £400 on his credit card.

That business developed into CasinoChoice, a casino affiliate portal that grew into a substantial operation. By 2010, CasinoChoice was reported to have 20 employees.

Skelhorn’s businesses subsequently expanded beyond affiliate marketing.

He and business partner Alex Holt moved into online gambling, with BGO established in 2012. Their earlier businesses included Mandalay Media, an online bingo operator that was later sold to Intertain Group.

The experience gave Skelhorn exposure to both sides of the iGaming industry, from acquiring customers as an affiliate to operating gambling businesses.

Building Atemi Group

In 2015, Skelhorn founded Atemi Group.

Atemi focused on iGaming lead generation through paid media and social media advertising, using channels including Google, Microsoft Bing, Facebook and Instagram.

The company also developed its own tracking and attribution platform to measure its paid media activity.

The approach differed from the traditional affiliate model that relied heavily on organic search.

Atemi could purchase traffic, track the resulting customer journeys and scale campaigns based on their performance.

The model proved highly successful.

€33m in revenue

By 2019, Atemi had generated €33 million in revenue, representing organic growth of 70% compared with the previous year.

The company was forecasting further growth in 2020, targeting more than €40 million in revenue and approximately €8 million in operational earnings.

It was also expected to deliver more than 180,000 new depositing customers to its operator partners during the year.

Atemi’s scale was reflected in its advertising activity.

In 2020, the company said it planned to spend more than $50 million marketing its gaming comparison sites over the following year, including a $19 million campaign for its BetCompare brand.

By this point, Atemi was operating as a large-scale paid-media affiliate business, with customer acquisition at the centre of its model.

The £40m acquisition

In October 2020, Better Collective completed its acquisition of Atemi Group for up to £40 million, approximately €44 million.

The deal included £32.5 million payable at closing, comprising £27.8 million in cash and £4.7 million in Better Collective shares. A further £7.5 million was scheduled to be paid through deferred payments until the end of 2021.

Better Collective saw Atemi’s paid-media capabilities as complementary to its existing affiliate business.

The acquisition brought additional expertise in paid search and social media, along with Atemi’s tracking and attribution technology.

It also gave Better Collective access to new traffic acquisition channels and the opportunity to expand paid-media activity into additional markets.

The combined businesses were expected to generate more than 600,000 new depositing customers annually for online gambling operators.

Skelhorn described Atemi as a “very successful gaming affiliate business”, crediting the company’s team for its success.

From £400 to £40m

Richard Skelhorn’s affiliate career began with a £400 investment in a casino website.

Nineteen years later, the affiliate business he founded had generated €33 million in annual revenue and was being acquired by Better Collective for up to £40 million.

The journey from a small casino affiliate site to a multi-million-pound acquisition illustrates how far an affiliate business can develop when customer acquisition, technology and scale become the focus.

For Skelhorn, affiliate marketing was the starting point.

For Atemi, it became a substantial business in its own right.