Yeva Avagyan: “Women leaders in iGaming throw gender stereotypes through the window”

Yeva Avagyan is Head of Commercials at AffPapa, a company that focuses on helping affiliates and operators strike meaningful and impactful relationships. She started at a time when AffPapa was still a relatively small organizaiton, with the company growing exponentially over the past years and launching exceptional events such as the iGaming Club which has become a much-looked-forward gathering for affiliate companies looking to continue networking.

AffPapa is presently focusing on bringing more networking events to the fore with AIA and IGC coming next. The company’s sales team has also been restructured to reflect on AffPapa’s much broader reach today. Here is how AffPapa and Yeva have achieved this.

Q:Yeva, much has happened since the last time we spoke. AffPapa established the iGaming Club as a fixture on the B2B industry calendar. The company has grown with dozens of new partners, but our first question today is – where do you come in all of this? Can you start by telling us about yourself, your role in the company, and how it has changed since you joined AffPapa’s team?

Thank you for having me as a part of your interview series. I’d love to give you more insight into my journey with AffPapa.

Currently, I’m proudly holding the position of Head of Commercials at AffPapa. I started off three years ago when AffPapa has just launched and was about to embark on a long and eventful journey of which I wasn’t aware yet, haha! I always believed in our mission.

Our road map was precise and by following it to the T (ofc with many obstacles in between) we are where we are now. AP’s team was very small at that time and luckily, we were able to manage everything on an exceptional level. But since we’re rapidly growing now, we need more hands to help us carry out our plans on a much grander scale.

Q: Head of Commercial is a position that means AffPapa trusts you completely to run a core component of the company’s business. Has the climb to this position been a steep one and have the main challenges been?

HOC’s role indeed puts a huge responsibility on me. There’s this notion that if the product is top-notch then it sells itself. But I think a lot of detail goes into sales in general. Market research, product/pricing development, client identification, – all of these go under, what I like to call the "Sales Umbrella". My journey wasn’t smooth, nobody’s to be fair. But I was and still am fully dedicated to our project and will continuously strive to help it grow and flourish.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about women in iGaming and whether, in your experience, women professionals are well-represented in different levels of the industry as a whole?

My experience as a woman in the iGaming industry has been an interesting one. I can confidentially say that over time it got better. Huge factors were people normalizing women being in the industry, taking charge of big roles/projects, and of course learning and finding the best way to navigate in the industry through my own experience and challenges.

It’s also about changing the narrative, writing our own rules and being unapologetic about who we are. At the end of the day, gender shouldn’t be a deciding factor in any aspect of our lives, it’s not the year 1900 anymore. #itscomplicated

Q: iGaming Club was one of the events that you felt passionate about – a passion that perhaps culminated in London when the meeting exceeded expectations and became a focal point of companies seeking to network and expand their pull in the affiliate side of the gambling business.

Is this the final format of the event, or do you have more planned about it? Is it just a matter of scaling up this point or innovating as well?

We’re still experimenting with the format of IGC as well as working on scaling it up. Our last event in London was a huge success and I want to thank you once again for being a part of it. IGC is a global event which is going to take the industry by storm.

As you might know, the 3rd iGaming Club Event will take place in Malta, in June within our partnership with iGamingNext.

We’ll also hold our AffPapa iGaming Awards ceremony there, where we’ll announce the winners of this year’s awards and celebrate each other in true AffPapa spirit. I always referred to AffPapa as a community, as a Family that truly describes our company.

Q: What are your immediate plans for AffPapa in 2023? Will your position within the company change or evolve?

Our immediate plans are AIA in Malta, followed by IGC which will be followed by more networking events with the mission to gather the industry under one roof and be a steady pillar for establishing trustworthy connections. My position is and will be continuously evolving, for we are switching from a compact sales team to an expanding multiproduct commercial crew where every member is taking care of their dedicated product. With a great sales team on our sleeve, we’ll be able to smoothly grow and accordingly scale up overall monetization.

Image credit: Casino Guru