Insights
The industry’s deadly cocktail: travel, alcohol, pressure, and the habits that break under it
On their own, any one of them is manageable. Together, they’re a deadly cocktail.
Leo Judkins, Founder, The iGaming Leader · September 2026
It’s three things, and they compound each other: the travel, the alcohol, and the commercial pressure. On their own, any one of them is manageable. Together, they’re a deadly cocktail, and this industry runs almost entirely on all three at once.
One of our members, a senior events and commercial leader, put it plainly in a recent conversation: the last few years had been “reaching targets to getting new, completely unrealistic targets, reaching them again,” year after year of growth with, in his words, “no quiet moment.” It took him years to even notice what that pace had cost, because there was never a gap in the calendar long enough to look up.
Why this industry’s version of burnout is different
People outside the industry mean well when they say “just travel less” or “just don’t drink as much.” What they’re missing is the mechanism. Conference drinking isn’t really about the alcohol, it’s a networking tool, because it’s genuinely harder to build the relationships this business runs on cold sober in a loud conference hall. Deals and introductions happen at the after-party, not the panel session. The pressure to be everywhere, every event, every after-hours conversation, isn’t vanity. For years it’s how the business actually got built.
The problem is what happens once that pattern outlives its usefulness. What started as “a couple of beers to make networking easier” becomes a habit that runs constantly rather than just at events, becomes worse sleep, becomes visibly worsening health, becomes a lifestyle that’s technically still hitting targets while quietly grinding the person underneath it down. As one member put it, becoming afraid to even slow down, because slowing down felt like it threatened the results, when in reality the results were already showing the strain.
The uncomfortable realisation
The honest version of this conversation isn’t “stop drinking, stop travelling, everything will be fine.” It’s slower and less satisfying than that. It’s recognising that performance might genuinely dip a little if the pace changes, and deciding that’s an acceptable trade rather than a catastrophe. Hitting 95% of an annual target instead of 100%, for the first time in five years, is not the disaster it feels like in the moment. Neither is admitting that the habits that built a career for a decade have quietly stopped being sustainable.
That admission is harder than it sounds, because it isn’t a willpower problem, and treating it like one just adds guilt on top of exhaustion. The issue was never a lack of discipline. Anyone doing dozens of calls and hundreds of messages a day, hitting targets that double year on year, clearly has discipline. The issue is that nobody is holding that discipline accountable in the gaps between events, the way a personal trainer holds you accountable in a single session but nobody holds you accountable for the six days in between.
What actually helps
Small, consistent changes tend to do more than dramatic ones. Moving away from the epicentre of constant industry socialising, even geographically, can matter more than any single new habit. So can something as simple as starting the day with a walk instead of a laptop and a coffee before the inbox opens.
But the structural fix, the one that actually holds under pressure rather than lasting three weeks after a good conference season, is the same one that shows up everywhere else in this industry’s isolation problem: having people who understand the specific pressures of this exact world, who can hold you to the goal you set for yourself, and who notice when you’ve quietly slipped back into the old pattern. Not a generic wellness plan. A peer group that’s lived the same “reaching Rio jet-lagged with everyone doing shots of caipirinha at the airport” reality, and who can say, honestly, I’ve been exactly there too.
Where this changes
The accountability that holds is the kind that comes from people who have stood in the same airport bar and made the same trade-offs. That’s what the room is for on the six days between the sessions with the trainer.
See how the Inner Circles workQuestions this usually raises
Why is burnout different in the iGaming industry specifically?
Because it’s driven by a combination unique to this world: constant international travel, an events and networking culture built around alcohol, and relentless commercial pressure, all reinforcing each other rather than showing up separately.
Is the answer to just travel less and drink less?
That’s part of it, but the more useful shift is building consistent accountability and small sustainable habits, rather than trying to eliminate the industry’s social and travel demands entirely, which usually isn’t realistic for someone still actively building a business.
What actually helps senior executives build sustainable habits here?
Consistency, small changes rather than dramatic ones, and accountability from people who understand the specific pressures of this industry, since generic outside advice tends to underestimate how deeply travel and events culture are wired into how the business actually works.
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