Recently we sat down with Yaniv Sherman, senior vice president for business development at 888.com. The following are some outtakes from our conversation.
How is your sponsorship of the New York Jets doing and will we see similar partnerships in the near future?
It’s been going great. It’s the second year. We’ve been growing that as well. There’s a great match there between two organizations that are innovators in blue-chip brands that are interconnected. We were the first and only pure digital operator that partnered with an NFL team. We’re sort of a case study there and it’s been going great. We are now heading into Monday Night Football. [The game, held Oct. 21, was a wipeout, with the New England Patriots crushing the Jets 33-0.]
This Monday, 888 will be the official game sponsor. So we’ll be in the pre- and postgame shows, and we’re also visible through the games. We’ve 
been very focused on using the assets and creating a lot of online presence around this partnership. It’s an important step. It also gave us a great invitation to the U.S. sports organizations, the NFL being the leading one. About 60 percent of all sports bets are NFL bets, so it’s important at several levels and we’re definitely looking to additional sponsorships. The fact that we partnered with the Jets put us on the radar for almost every sports organization you can think of and we’re in almost constant contact with a variety of them, and as the business grows we will be seeing additional deals. We are unique in that space because we are looking to monetize these assets and not just spray or slap our name on various sponsorship deals. We are looking for a return on these deals so we very much want to tie our brand our operations to leading brands and the Jets are a great example of that.
What additional U.S. states do you hope to penetrate?
That’s a great question. For the first time in a long while we have a lot of choice in the U.S. I would say the qualifying parameters we are looking at are the state’s size, the game competition or how many products will be 
available, and then the tax and regulatory requirements. There are a few interesting states out there. I think that Indiana, Colorado, I think Tennessee are already interested or in the process of regulating online gaming. Other states that are interesting are Michigan, which is going through its processes, depending on the eventual framework, and the other one is Iowa, that’s live. We’re monitoring them very closely. It’s looking good so we may put that on the work plan. These states have a comfortable size and commercial perspective, putting aside bigger states that are currently sort of in flux. In not sure when they’ll eventually go online but New York and the bigger states are a natural interest.
As 888 expands, how are you able to maintain your community-involvement mission?
888 is a global organization. We’ve been around for 20 years, so we’re very much involved in the community. It’s part of the corporate culture. To stay connected we have seven global sites in dozens of markets. It’s only creating that local footprint and flavor, and also getting involved in true community involvement. Also, understanding the market that we’re operating in is very important for us, to stay connected at that level.
How do you carry out your social-responsibility mission statement?
Social responsibility and responsible gaming are at the core of the company. We’ve always put them very high on our priority list. Two years ago we actually reorganized the company to reflect that. We created a customer-risk and responsible-gaming division, headed by a senior vice president reporting to the CFO. Making sure that responsible gaming and social responsibility is part of our every day, both in technical development and operations. It’s no longer an option today, in the states that we live in, as a regulated company and one’s that been around over 20 years we understand it’s important to make sure it’s adequately resourced and prioritized. So that’s a big, big part of our everyday and strategic thinking.
How do you enjoy yourself outside of work?
[Laughs] We relocated to the U.S. about a year and two months ago, so I’ve been traveling with the family, and hunting and training. These fill up my time between work, family and a day that’s pretty much a 24-hour gig. That’s that.
