iGaming market intelligence: What the Blask Index reveals about competitive position, market entry, and industry trends

Do your operators know whether their growth is outpacing the market, or lagging behind it? When the data your business generates only shows its own numbers, competitive blind spots are inevitable.

In Episode 17 of Connected with Pragmatic Solutions, CEO Ashley Lang speaks with Max Tesla, CEO and Co-Founder of Blask, about the case for real-time market intelligence in iGaming and how operators are using attention data to make better decisions about performance, market entry, and M&A.

What the Blask Index measures

Blask is a market intelligence platform built specifically for the iGaming industry. It currently tracks more than 5,000 brands across 126 countries, with a proprietary metric at its core: the Blask Index.

The Blask Index measures player attention, functioning as a daily signal that shows which brands are gaining and losing user interest, updated in real time and broken down by market. Max Tesla describes it as analogous to a stock ticker for iGaming brands. The index is a compound measure, drawing on share of search and observed user demand, tracked hour over hour, day over day, and month over month depending on the operator's market footprint.

Alongside the index, Blask operates a games analytics layer built on computer vision, scanning casino operator lobbies daily to track which titles appear, where they sit, and how positioning changes over time. The combination gives game studios and operators a view into content performance across markets that would be impossible to gather manually.

How operators use attention data day to day

For an operator's marketing team, the Blask platform provides a live market view broken down by regulatory status, competitive landscape, and event-driven drivers. A user can open a market, see whether it is in a rising, falling, or flat cycle, and identify the contextual reasons behind the movement, ranging from regulatory changes to sports events to macroeconomic shifts.

Ashley Lang noted during the conversation that operators supported on the Pragmatic Solutions PAM platform consistently ask for reliable competitive benchmarks and market data. The Blask Index addresses exactly that gap: an independent, daily view of where player attention is moving and why.

Within the platform, operators can filter the index to their actual competitive set, benchmarking their position against specific rivals rather than the entire market. This is particularly valuable in markets like Brazil, where the field is large and a brand ranked outside the top ten needs granular data on its nearest competitors to understand where it is gaining or losing ground.

The problem with absolute numbers

One of the central arguments in the conversation is that revenue growth figures, viewed in isolation, are a misleading performance measure. Max uses Tesla and BYD as a case in point: Tesla posted record delivery numbers and year-on-year revenue growth in 2023, while BYD was growing at over 70% in the same period. By full year 2025, BYD had overtaken Tesla as the world's largest battery electric vehicle producer. Nothing in Tesla's own reports indicated the threat.

The same dynamic plays out in iGaming regularly. A brand can be ranked number one in a market in absolute terms while its relative share of total player attention is contracting. The brands that detect this trajectory early change their acquisition strategy. The ones that find out late are already behind.

This is why the most revealing conversations Blask has with clients centre on what Max Tesla calls the shared trajectory, showing operators not just their own index position, but how it moves relative to the total market over time.

Market entry and regulatory intelligence

Blask also functions as a pre-entry intelligence tool. When Brazil moved towards regulation, every major operator faced a fast-moving decision: commit capital, acquire a local brand, or stay out. Flutter moved early, acquiring a 56% stake in NSX Group before the market officially opened. Operators who waited found a consolidating market.

The difference, Max Tesla argues, came down to conviction in the demand signal before licences dropped. The Blask Index answers that question with specifics: the size of the audience already present, which brands are capturing attention, and how saturated the market is. Within the platform, users can also compare locally licensed brands against offshore operators, seeing in real time how regulation shifts the balance between the two.

Germany provides a contrasting case. The data shows that from April 2025, German iGaming demand declined, driven by a combination of regulatory actions, Google Ads policy changes, and the front-loading of sports events. These drivers are catalogued within the platform, giving operators market-level context that no internal dataset can provide.

Due diligence and M&A applications

The conversation covers a less obvious but significant use case: competitive intelligence in M&A transactions. When a deal is on the table, the seller always has a revenue story. The question is whether the market data supports it.

Blask produces what it calls a competitive earnings baseline: a mathematical model of what a brand should be generating based on observable market demand signals. It is independent of what the seller presents. Max Tesla uses the Flutter acquisition of Boyd's remaining 5% stake in FanDuel as an illustration: a transaction implying a $31 billion valuation, where every number in the conversation had to be stress-tested against external data.

If a seller's reported figures are four times their competitive earnings baseline, that gap does not necessarily mean they are misrepresenting performance. But it means the buyer is now having the right conversation, one grounded in market-observable evidence rather than internal projections alone.

Trends the data Is flagging now

Looking ahead, Max Tesla identifies three developments that the Blask data suggests are underappreciated by the industry.

The first is the United States. The US market is larger than many operators account for, with Blask tracking $79.8 billion in total competitive earnings for last year. Online casino remains legal in only seven states, with the bulk of that revenue concentrated in Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Crucially, 77% of the US market is still offshore brands. Once domestic brands reach 70% or more of a state market, Max Tesla argues, offshore share does not recover. Operators not yet positioned in the US are making a timing error they will feel for years.

The second is Africa. Nigeria alone is showing 34% year-on-year growth in user demand. Congo and Cameroon are growing at 66% and 67% respectively. PwC data puts South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya combined at $600 million in gaming revenue two years ago. The structural growth drivers, mobile internet penetration, economic development, and a growing population, suggest this is not a temporary spike.

The third is prediction markets. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket hit nearly $10 billion in combined trading volume in November. DraftKings and FanDuel both launched prediction market products in late 2025. This is a new product category, not a cannibalisation of sports betting, but every operator with a sportsbook needs a considered position on what it means for their product.

5 key takeaways

• Absolute revenue growth is not a reliable performance measure without a market benchmark. The Blask Index provides daily context on whether a brand is gaining or losing relative share.

• Attention data, not just financial data, should inform market entry decisions. Demand conviction before licences drop is what separates operators who move early from those who arrive late.

• Game studios can use lobby tracking data to monitor title visibility across thousands of operator pages, by market, on a daily basis.

• Competitive earnings baselines derived from market-observable signals provide an independent check on seller revenue claims in M&A transactions.

• Three markets deserve more attention from operators in 2026: the United States, where the offshore-to-regulated shift is accelerating; Africa, where structural demand growth is already visible in the data; and prediction markets, a new category being built in real time.

Watch the full episode here.