In the latest episode of iGaming Accent, host Vakho Mdivani welcomes Mikolaj Cymerman, Chief Commercial Officer at Entain CEE, for a conversation about the Central and Eastern European market – why M&A beat organic entry, what makes local brands worth buying, how acquisitions survive integration, and where growth comes from in markets that are already crowded.
Mikolaj’s route into the industry began, as it so often does, somewhere adjacent to it. He moved to London around 2013 to study sports management, driven by a lifelong obsession: “I used to play tennis as a junior, so I was always super sports-obsessed, a huge football fan. I couldn’t imagine my life and doing anything professionally not involving sports.”
A boutique sponsorship agency led to IMG, and IMG’s launch of IMG Arena gave him his first exposure to betting. When GVC came calling, he hesitated: “I was very skeptical to join full-time this industry… I still had some preconceived notions.” He took it anyway — and the ambivalence did not survive contact: “I fell in love with the industry.”
It is an arc he recognises in others: “I don’t think there’s a lot of people that dream about working in the gambling industry… They kind of ran into it by chance, but once you get hooked, you can’t get out of it.”
Much of the episode turns on why Entain chose acquisition over building from scratch — and here Mikolaj lays out the structural logic of the region. CEE operators, he argues, share a common DNA: “Typically, companies that used to have a very strong retail presence, so they developed a brand within the market. They’ve developed trust with the customers. And then once the market liberalized online gaming, they had a very successful transition. Even technology was not a huge pillar — it was the brand that was already established.”
That makes greenfield entry prohibitive: “For any new market entrant, developing a new retail estate from scratch is super capital-intensive… There was absolutely no chance for an operator like Entain to say, ‘All right, we’re gonna enter a new market with 300, 500 new shops.'” And pure digital, in most of these markets, “wasn’t enough.” Hence a clear playbook: “Let’s buy one of the leading brands in the countries, preferably podium position, with very strong brand identity, very strong brand awareness.”
The second half of that playbook is the part he considers most important — and most often underestimated. Western templates, he warns, simply do not port: “You cannot go into those markets with the playbook of a UK bookie. Because you’re gonna fail miserably. It’s just not translatable.” The answer was to retain the people who knew the terrain: EMMA Capital stayed on board with SuperSport, the Jurášek family with STS. “It was all about keeping them on board, giving them some skin in the game — creating this kind of JV where they would support Entain in navigating the landscape of those different countries.”
He suggests the eventual sale of Entain CEE back to EMMA Capital proves the point rather than undermining it: “This just shows how massively important this local aspect is and understanding those local markets.”
He is also candid about what a listed multinational can learn from a local champion. The answer is agility: “One of the great things about Central Eastern European businesses is how agile they are. They’re not overblown… Very often they came from this founder-CEO mindset, where the guy wanted to keep it lean, as efficient as possible.”
They also discussed the real benefits of being acquired, why commercial growth in mature markets always starts with product rather than bonuses and gamification, Poland as an especially unforgiving case, the case for owning your own technology, and many more.
He also answered a question from Sanja Isakov, General Manager of Rizk.rs (Betsson Serbia), and posed one of his own to the next guest.
To hear the full conversation and gain deeper insights, listen to the complete iGaming Accent podcast episode.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our Telegram channel!
