To me, they’re great businesses. They have a strong brand identity. But brand? The thing that makes someone feel like they belong to something? The thing that makes them say “this is MY brand” instead of “this is a brand I use”?
That’s where things fall apart.
The 60,000 Person Reality Check
Through Blask, we surveyed 60,000 people about their gambling behaviour and brand perceptions. The results were uncomfortable.
Everyone could recognise Bet365’s brand identity. The logo. The green. The Ray Winstone ads. Same with Stake—the distinctive aesthetic, the Drake association, the crypto-native positioning.
But when we dug deeper, what does the brand mean to you? What does it stand for? Do you feel any connection to it beyond the product itself?
Blank stares. Shrugs. Nothing.
Players use these products. They deposit, they bet, they withdraw. But there’s no emotional residue. No sense of belonging. No story they tell themselves about why they’re a Bet365 customer versus a Betway customer beyond odds and bonuses.
These are commodities with excellent packaging.
The Identity-Essence Gap
Here’s the distinction most operators miss entirely.
Brand identity is what people recognise. Logos, colours, fonts, ambassadors, the assets you plaster everywhere. It’s the what.
Brand essence is what people feel. The intangible sense of belonging, the values they associate with you, the reason they’d wear your merchandise even though you sell bets, not fashion. It’s the why.
Nike doesn’t sell shoes. They sell the spirit of competition, of winning, of challenging yourself. When someone puts on Nike gear, they’re not just wearing fabric.
They’re embracing an identity. They’re telling the world something about who they are.
Apple doesn’t sell computers. They sell creative empowerment, elegant simplicity, membership in a tribe of people who “think different.”
Now ask yourself: what is someone saying about themselves when they bet on Bet365?
Nothing. They’re just placing a bet. The brand is invisible to their identity.
This is the gap. And it’s worth billions.
The Rare Exceptions
There are two gambling companies, I think, that have done this best.
Paddy Power built something genuine. A distinctive tone of voice that’s genuinely funny, not corporate-funny. A willingness to be controversial. A community that shares its content because it entertains, not because it advertises. When Paddy Power tweets, people engage because they enjoy it, not because they’re customers looking for odds.
PokerStars created the spirit of poker itself. In their prime, they weren’t just a place to play cards. They were the home of the dream. The amateur who could become a champion. The community of players who saw themselves as part of something bigger than a gambling site. When people wore PokerStars patches, they meant it.
What did these brands do differently?
They started with intangible attributes: personality, values, a point of view on the world… and let the product serve the brand, not the other way around. They asked “what do we want people to feel?” before “what do we want people to recognise?”
Most operators do the opposite. They build a product, slap a logo on it, hire some ambassadors, and call it branding.
That’s decoration, not brand-building.
The Mathematical Approach
I look at brand-building like a mathematician, not a mystic. It’s not some untouchable, intangible essence that you either have or you don’t.
It’s a set of attributes, deliberately chosen and consistently reinforced.
Start here: What do you want people to feel when they interact with your brand? Not recognise. Feel.
Then work backwards. Every touchpoint, every piece of content, every customer service interaction should reinforce those feelings. If you want to be seen as bold and edgy, your error messages better not sound like they were written by a compliance lawyer.
The brands that create belonging don’t do it by accident. They deconstruct the psychological needs of their audience, identify the emotional gaps that competitors leave unfilled, and systematically build experiences that fill them.
It’s deliberate. It’s measurable. And it’s rare.
So What?
If you’re an operator reading this, the question is simple: could you sell merchandise?
Not as a promotional gimmick. Not as a loyalty reward. Could you genuinely sell branded products that people would pay for because they want to associate themselves with what you represent?
That was always the first question we asked when choosing a brand name for Menace.
So if the answer is no (and for 99% of operators it is) you don’t have a brand. You have a logo attached to a product.
That’s fine if you want to compete on odds, bonuses, and acquisition costs forever. It’s a race to the bottom, but it’s a race you can run.
But if you want to build something defensible, something that commands premium pricing and genuine loyalty, something that survives the inevitable commoditisation of product features, then you need to close the identity-essence gap.
Stop asking “will they recognise us?”
Start asking “will they belong to us?”
