The other side of the coin: Yolo Group CEO Maarja Pärt on the rapid rise of crypto gambling

Outside a restaurant overlooking Tallinn Bay in the Estonian capital’s Kakumäe district, a white Tesla spins away on the gravel car park adjacent to the marina. If you had any doubts this was a tech-first city, the car’s number plate appears through the dust: CR7PTO. Fast-emerging from its post-Soviet era, Tallinn has become a hub for innovation. The city, which has a population of around 450,000, gave birth to ride-sharing giant Bolt and money transfer firm Wise. It is also home to Yolo Group – one of the largest crypto-first gambling operators in the world.

Co-founded by charismatic Australian Tim Heath and launched in 2014, the company is headed up by Heath’s protégée Maarja Pärt. Her office, situated on the fourth floor of a new office building that is already bursting at the seams after successive years of growth, offers panoramic views of the bay area through its floor-to-ceiling windows. 

Upon meeting Pärt, she is dressed in green, providing a spark of colour in a role typically associated with grey, white and black. The Estonian, one of the few female bosses in the industry, wants to be anything but a traditional CEO, she wants to be authentic. Yet there is evidence of her new position in her words and actions. She tells EGR she needs to see the “spark in the eyes” of her colleagues. Engagements over a week-long event in Estonia to bring together Yolo Group’s partners will see her reel off countless speeches and press palms at a rate of knots. 

Still, there is a rawness, yet unbuffered. Was the journey to the top job plain sailing? “Hell no,” she replies before a burst of laughter gives way to 70 minutes of the former customer support agent lifting the lid on her career, company, crypto and future legacy.   

Learning on the job                

Having stepped up to replace Heath in September 2020 when Yolo Group was still known as Coingaming Group, Pärt has had to deal with a litany of obstacles. The Covid-19 pandemic was still in full swing at the time of her ascension, while a crypto crash that spooked retail investors, the rapid rise and fall of non-fungible tokens, and the knock-on impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent inflation soaring in Estonia, have all been challenging. Yet Pärt puts her decade-plus experience of working at the company, from a fledgling startup to a multi-national beast, to helping keep her feet firmly on the ground. She says: “It has helped me understand the industry and how the customer’s mind works. I’d say that understanding their psychology and putting yourself in their shoes is one of the keys to building these brands that last.”

Pärt describes herself as an “adrenaline junkie with an indescribable self-drive”. These are characteristics that have seen her become a CEO in her early 30s. She has also well and truly bought into Yolo, and heaps praise on its early roots and her mentor Heath as guiding her to this point. She is also incredibly bullish about the business.

She says: “We are trying to keep up with very fierce competition. Overnight, during the crypto boom, everyone felt they were crypto specialists, advisors or entrepreneurs. We had the ‘[crypto] winter’ and where are they now? The industry that we operate in from the gambling side as well as the crypto space is volatile. It is in our DNA. There will be ups and downs but that is the beauty and the pain of our sector.”

With a combination of fresh faces and in-house-nurtured talent such as COO Anita Brinke and industry veterans including former William Hill head Joe McCallum, who was recently promoted to MD, Yolo Group could also be described as a melting pot. With nearly 1,000 employees spread across the globe and the company’s growth moving in tandem with the crypto boom, it has also come with challenges.

Pärt touches on the difficulties of maintaining a core culture, adding that she is “nostalgic” for the old days when the company was made up of a handful of staff. “It’s about creating a balanced team with a diverse set of backgrounds. Sometimes it’s very hard to keep up with the pace and it’s certainly easy to burn out,” she adds.

For Pärt, rising through the company has left its mark on her. She says the line between her and Yolo has become blurred and that she now embodies the company. “If you lack the passion, then it’s questionable whether you’ll survive at Yolo,” she remarks.

Breakneck speed is the name of the game, with online casino Bitcasino.io launching in 2014, Sportsbet.io following in 2016, before the launch of the latest brand, Slots.io, in 2019. The growth of the business, coupled with spiking prices and popularity of crypto, has been impressive. New offices in Tallinn, opened in 2020, are already in need of expansion, with the group also running offices in Ukraine, Malta, Australia, Brazil, Argentina and Malaysia.

But for a company moving at such blistering speed, Pärt is reluctant to relinquish its Estonian roots. The Baltic nation is forward-thinking beyond its peers in Eastern Europe. In 2012, Estonia’s government became the first in the world to use blockchain technology, the immutable, decentralised, public ledger, and while the government recently clamped down on “suspicious” crypto firms, which saw 200 companies withdraw Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) licences, Yolo Group insists that Estonia is the place to be.

Investment from the company across Tallinn has not gone unnoticed by local residents as areas are regenerated. A 20% corporate tax rate compared to 25% in the UK and France also makes life easier. Boasting a population of around 1.3 million, Estonia has the most unicorns per capita in Europe. In fact, it can take as little as 15 minutes to register a new business online there.

Pärt acknowledges the ease of doing business in her home country, while also reflecting on the emotional ties. “Everything works,” she tells EGR. “From a business perspective it’s a very practical decision. It’s close to everywhere you need to be but we don’t have to be at the centre of everything. We are happy being slightly removed. There’s certainly the emotional part, too; Estonia is our home.”               

Insert coin                        

Operating in the crypto betting space is a different beast. Via its Bitcasino.io, Sportsbet.io and Slots.io brands, Yolo Group has carved out a strong position in the space in what Pärt describes as “finding the niche”. She lists Brazil, Japan and India as the group’s leading markets. Interestingly, all three are grey. Yet combined, they account for around 18% of the world’s population.

Making a concerted push before regulation has allowed Yolo to cement itself as a go-to brand, coupled with the fact the three markets populaces’ use of cryptocurrencies far outweighs that of Western Europe or the US. Breaking through in saturated markets is difficult. The UK is a slog, the US is dominated by a trio of operators, and regulatory headwinds throughout Europe puts growth firmly in the TBC bracket.

In theory, moving into these ‘niche’ spaces is the secret sauce for growth. These are tapped into via Sportsbet.io’s partnerships with Premier League clubs, including in recent years Arsenal, Southampton, Newcastle and Watford. The global audience of the product far outstrips any UK performance, if indeed anything of note. A white-label agreement with Isle of Man-based TGP Europe allows the brand access to the UK market and the associated visibility this presents, but the real money is made elsewhere.

Pärt says: “We are excited about finding the niche. We are not great at huge, mass operations. We’ve always been at the forefront of building out a very personalised service – that’s what you simply can’t achieve in markets that are very saturated and regulated.”

While not disclosing financial details as the company is privately owned, and with plans to keep it that way (Pärt dismisses the suggestion an IPO could be in the offing), the CEO notes the pandemic led to “huge growth”. This was in part driven not just by an increase in customers due to international lockdowns but also by the huge stakes that high rollers typically associated with crypto betting bring to the company.

While Pärt is coy, suggesting the customer base is “very diverse, with lots of layers”, she does argue in favour of VIP programmes which have been a target for gambling reformists. The UK has already seen a huge clampdown on the practice, with the Gambling Commission having introduced strict guidance in September 2020 that has since seen VIP schemes largely vanish. 

For Yolo and its operations outside of crowded online gambling markets, VIP schemes are still a huge business driver. Pärt says VIP schemes recognise the “real person” behind the account, retracing her comments regarding personalisation. She continues: “Our purpose has been to operate at the highest standard to retain our customers. If you put your customer at the centre of the universe, whether they are VIP or regular, then you know what they want. The main focus is building out those relationships and offering them an experience. I’m uncertain about the current approaches to responsible gambling and if they will end up achieving what they are supposed to for customers.”

Away from the world of VIPs, Yolo Group looks to be following the same line many publicly listed operators have been touting of transitioning to a technology company first, betting company second. In this regard, Pärt says there is a commitment to growing the group’s B2B division including its Hub88 aggregator and Bombay Live casino offering. The boss notes Yolo used to be “fairly reliant” on its B2C operations, but there has been a shift in the makeup of revenue, with the supplier side of the business beginning to come to the fore. In the last few months, B2B has made up 50% of group revenue, according to Pärt.

She says: “Our aim has always been to build up our B2B vertical so it is self-sustainable and autonomous from B2C. We are heading in that direction. There hasn’t been a drop in overall revenue either, it is just that B2B has increased its share very significantly.”

The expansion away from B2C also includes Yolo Group’s correlation to its sister VC firm, Yolo Investments, headed up by Heath. Pärt praises the relationship between the two entities, allowing the operator to cherry-pick tech to boost its offering. She singles out fintech as an exciting branch the group is focused on developing, facilitating faster and more secure crypto payments. Yolo Investments has more than 75 companies in its portfolio with assets close to €500m.

It is a nice pool to pick from, but Pärt stops short of enacting a full-blown M&A pipeline. Acquisitions is something the firm has traditionally shied away from, with the Estonian leaning back on her culture-forward focus. She explains: “Our aim has always been to work together with the founders. If you acquire them in full, then the culture and DNA very often changes. It loses the character of the asset. We are always looking for synergies; we can’t keep up trying to do everything by ourselves. All these businesses have so much potential.”

After the crypto winter, which began in late 2022 and saw the value of digital assets plummet (Bitcoin lost more than half its value and finished the year trading around $17,000), it would have spooked retail investors and those dipping their toes into crypto speculation. However, Pärt says that the wildly fluctuating prices of crypto has little relation to how much customers bet with the firm, and she is insistent on calling the recent downturns a “correction” rather than a crash.

“The market correction was necessary,” she says. “It removed all the background noise. We can’t jump to conclusions based on a 12-month trendline; we have to look at the bigger picture. Crypto is not going anywhere. It’s a groundbreaking technology. When the internet first came, it seemed like a sort of voodoo. Years ago, everyone was used to riding a horse and cart; could you imagine not having cars on the street? I think it’s the natural curve of adoption with anything groundbreaking.”   

A dicey situation               

Crypto gambling sites have been around for pretty much as long as Bitcoin has existed. One of the first was SatoshiDice, a blockchain betting game named after the pseudonym for Bitcoin’s mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, that was sold in 2013 for BTC126,315, around $11.5m at the time. That would be worth approximately $3.6bn today. Bitcoin’s bull run around 2013 led to other rudimentary but ‘provably fair’ and decentralised dice games sprouting up to offer early adopters of the cryptocurrency – who you could say were comfortable with gambling if they were buying and selling digital coins – a chance to ‘spend’ them.

“If you are getting involved with crypto then you need to have an appetite for risk – it’s obviously extremely volatile,” says David Bartram, owner of Crypto Gambling News. Soon, sportsbooks like Nitrogen Sports and Cloudbet as well as a whole host of online casinos accepting crypto deposits arrived on the scene, with Yolo Group’s Bitcasino.io among that first wave of igaming sites to capitalise on crypto’s nouveau riche.

It was in 2013 that Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani launched crypto dice game Primedice off the back of crypto’s first boom, with the pair eventually going on to unleash casino-led gambling platform Stake.com in 2017. Partly through streaming casino games on Twitch and partly through savvy marketing and celebrity endorsements, including linking up with rap royalty in the shape of Drake and becoming Everton’s front-of-shirt sponsor (Stake also has a white-label arrangement with TGP Europe to access the UK market), Stake quickly ballooned to become the world’s largest crypto gambling site. The remarkable rise turned twentysomething Craven, another Australian, into the country’s youngest billionaire who, according to press reports, splashed out an eye-popping $80m for a derelict mansion in Melbourne in 2022.

Back in February, Regulus Partners suggested Curaçao-licensed Stake is seventh on the list of billion-dollar online operators, sandwiched between the Hong Kong Jockey Club and DraftKings, and the analyst firm surmised that “light grey” Canada is the brand’s largest market. The scale of Stake’s operation was all but confirmed a month later, when the normally publicity-shy Craven gave an interview with the FT in which the business newspaper reported how accounts showed the operator’s GGR had rocketed from $105m in 2020 to $2.6bn in 2022.

While much of Stake’s hockey-stick growth was fuelled by VIPs in grey markets, Craven, who co-founded streaming site Kick as a rival to Twitch, has even suggested that Stake is plotting a “large acquisition” in the US. That sure would be quite the bold play for the Australia-headquartered operator if it were to materialise. 

With Craven’s Stake making waves, it means Pärt has been joined by another young leader in the crypto betting space. And she is clearly a fan. While Pärt is quick to point out the differences between the businesses, with Stake set to tackle mass markets while Yolo remains in the niche, she argues that a rising tide lifts all boats.

The CEO says: “I like Stake. There’s a beauty about having strong competition because there are synergies you can start exploring. We know them well and we are pleased to see them.” Pärt adds she has been a fan of the operator’s extensive marketing efforts, which has seen it delve into almost any sport imaginable.

Crypto casinos have hit headlines in recent months, though, with Twitch adding two more firms to its ‘blacklist’, which already included Stake, Roobet, Duelbits and Rollbit, also licensed in Curaçao. Concerns have been raised around the proclivity of crypto betting streaming, but Pärt argues that explosive growth in the sector will ruffle a few feathers.

She elaborates: “When you are operating in an environment where the approach is slightly different, you are already on the radar. If you do something different that catches the eye then it becomes easy to label. I wouldn’t draw any harsh conclusions.” Pärt also suggests the sector will continue to grow, with more crypto-first operators emerging rather than traditional gambling firms testing the waters first.

She adds: “I’m sure [fiat operators] will at some point but there is probably enough to focus on their own respective roadmaps already.”

On that point, Bartram of Crypto Gambling News says: “Could we see bet365 in the UK accepting crypto deposits? I could see it happening in a few years. Most countries are moving towards stronger, more sustainable regulatory frameworks for crypto payments, so I wouldn’t be surprised if crypto were to become a payment method within regulated markets.”

There is a lingering thought that, like Bitcoin, crypto gambling is in for a series of peaks and troughs. Regulations will come into effect, for example in Brazil where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave his signature to regulate sports betting. Finding the niche may become a bit tougher in years to come but Pärt is confident she will navigate any potential potholes. “The industry has always changed at a fast pace,” she says.

“The pressure has always been there. Further regulations will come into play, but it’s more about exploring the opportunities that would match Yolo’s principles. We will always find the relevant niche market for us rather than do what everyone else is doing.”

With the crypto winter having thawed and Yolo seemingly in a position to push on, Pärt recognises the challenges of crypto, let alone the meshing together with gambling. There is yet to be that eureka moment for mass adoption, at least in Western Europe, where traditional banking reigns supreme. Yolo has launched an online education tool around crypto, which Pärt says has seen “booming” traffic in recent months.

But this will remain a small pool to fish from. The large koi carp VIPs will help the cogs keep turning ahead of popular, everyday breakthrough. Pärt admits: “There will be many more ups and downs. It’s always tough to push boundaries. If you’re new to the space, there’s always going to be challenges. It’s normal to have suspicions. When we started out, we were lone wolves and people thought we were nuts.

“You can’t know the timeline [for mass adoption]; this is a decentralised system. In a way, it is living its own life. It depends on the users and adoption. I’d also like to know the answer.” Still only in her early 30s, Pärt and her counterpart Craven will be at the forefront of this journey. The success garnered so far from what Pärt herself calls niche, begs the question as to how this could extrapolate in the future.

But the CEO wants to stress it isn’t just about the bottom line. As the sun shines in through the tall windows of her office and a cruise ship lulls in the bay, Pärt moves to reject the term traditional, pushing herself away from the stereotype. There is the sheen of the CEO that is undercut with someone who has worked at the coal face.

She says: “You don’t have to do it the way everyone expects you to. You don’t have to be traditional. For me, it’s not about statistics or revenue, it’s about authenticity. Behind the CEO of Yolo Group title is Maarja Pärt and behind every username is a person who wants a really good experience.”

It is a personable outlook in two fields intertwined with anonymity. The face of crypto betting in a faceless world. It’s some podium to be stood upon little more than a decade since being a customer support agent, and after being handpicked by Heath and supported by a combination of experience and youthful tech-forward exuberance. She will surely play a part for years to come.