Insights
What we learned running a NED event for 40 iGaming leaders
Board-seat pathways in iGaming operate like a black box. We tried to open it up.
Leo Judkins, Founder, The iGaming Leader
Half the senior leaders I speak to in iGaming want a board seat one day. Most of them don't know how to actually get one.
That's not because they're not qualified. A lot of them would be brilliant at it.
The problem is the whole thing operates like a black box. There's no job posting. No application form. No clear path. You just sort of hope someone taps you on the shoulder one day.
The people who've landed their first NED role rarely explain how they did it. So everyone else guesses, waits, and assumes it'll sort itself out eventually.
That's the gap we tried to address with a private event in London, limited to 40 people, specifically on how to land a first non-executive directorship in iGaming — run in partnership with Odgers Berndtson, whose gaming practice is the only global executive search team with a dedicated focus on senior gaming and gambling appointments.
What the day covered
- A keynote Q&A with Richard Flint — Interim CEO of Hargreaves Lansdown, and for over a decade CEO of Sky Betting & Gaming, where he built one of the UK's most successful gambling businesses before its sale to The Stars Group. Since stepping out of the operator seat he's taken NED roles at Flutter and LADbible and chair roles at Butternut Box, Seat Unique and RYDE Studios. He talked through the real CEO-to-NED journey.
- A fireside chat with Andrew Bulloss, Partner at Odgers Berndtson, who runs the firm's global gaming practice and leads board, C-suite and NED searches across listed operators, private equity portfolios and regulated suppliers. I interviewed him on how NED shortlists actually get built, and why strong operators get passed over.
- A panel of three sitting NEDs: Mark Blandford, founder of Sportingbet and one of the genuine pioneers of online gambling — he sold his betting chain to Tote Bookmakers in 1997, founded Sportingbet in 1998, and grew it past a £2bn market cap before stepping out in 2007; Britt Boeskov, who spent 17 years at Kindred Group rising to Chief Experience Officer before moving fully into board work, now NED at MAG Interactive, Mindway AI, Gaming1 and Racecourse Media Group; and Louise Nylén, board member at Betsson AB and CCO at TG3, who rose through LeoVegas to Deputy CEO with full commercial responsibility for the group and P&L of Royal Panda. Each walked through the exact steps they took to land their first board seat.
- And an open room, deliberately unstructured, for the conversations that don't happen at conferences.
Why the room ran under Chatham House rule
Nothing said on the day is attributed to anyone by name. That was deliberate, and so was the cap at 40 seats — small enough that the conversations actually work. Under that rule, the room talks the way it can't on LinkedIn or on a stage: people said things about their own board ambitions, and their own doubts about being ready for one, that they wouldn't put their name to anywhere else.
Why it mattered
The real value wasn't any single session. It was giving forty senior people permission to ask the question they don't usually say out loud: who's actually helping me get there?
How first NED roles actually get won in iGaming
A few patterns from the day, for anyone working towards a first board seat:
- There is no formal route. No job posting, no application form, no clear path — and hoping someone taps you on the shoulder is the default plan for most qualified people.
- Board searches run on patterns. The people who place NEDs for a living know what organisations actually look for in a candidate — and which patterns win seats versus which don't.
- First seats are won through deliberate steps. The panellists who landed theirs walked through exactly what they did: the mistakes, the surprises, and the conversations that actually got them on the board.
On the day
Sessions like this run periodically for the iGaming Leader community — rooms built around exactly this kind of senior-level, non-transactional conversation. Membership gives you access to more of them, along with the weekly Inner Circle sessions that make up the core of the mastermind.