How African Player Expectations Shape iGaming Experiences – A Podcast with Wilfrid Olemba
Africa’s iGaming market cannot be understood through a single player profile, and neither can the products built for it. Speaking to iGaming AFRIKA’s Victoria Abiodun in Episode 16 of the iGaming AFRIKA Podcast, Wilfrid Olemba, Affiliate Manager at WinWin Bet, said operators need to pay attention to how players use their platforms, what they expect, what frustrates them and where the experience falls short.
Wilfrid’s iGaming journey began in customer support in 2022, where direct interaction with players gave him firsthand insight into their behaviour, expectations and frustrations. He later moved into VIP management which gave him a deeper understanding of the importance of bonuses and odds, before becoming an Affiliate Manager in 2024. These roles, he says, gave him a broader perspective on what players want and how to attract and engage them across different platforms.
“I started in 2022 as a customer support representative for another brand, where I started to understand player behavior. Since they were talking directly to me, I was able to see what they really wanted to see on the platform. In 2023 and 2024, I was working as a VIP Manager for VIP clients, where I was giving bonuses.
“I also realised that they cared a lot about bonuses and odds. I started working as an Affiliate Manager in 2024 as well, and that has been a real game changer. From my previous experiences, I knew what players wanted, and I learned how to bring more clients to different platforms. So, that is my whole experience, and I now know pretty much everything in the iGaming industry,” he said.
That experience now shapes how he approaches product at WinWin Bet. He said the team looks at how players use the platform, including the features they return to and those they barely touch. That behaviour helps the team decide what to prioritise, improve or remove, instead of adding features simply because they are available.
“Understanding players’ behaviors and expectancy is different from just building a general product for the same and just a general audience,” he said. “At WinWin, we try to adapt our products to each user. We see how, in general, they move on the platform, what they do, what they like, and what they do not like, including which features they completely ignore. We adapt based on these numbers so that the experience becomes easier for users.
The data, however, does not always capture everything a player experiences. Wilfrid pointed specifically to internet speed, which can vary significantly between markets and have an immediate effect on live betting. A report might show how long a player took to complete an action, but it does not necessarily reveal whether that delay came from the platform itself, the connection being used, or the conditions surrounding the player at that moment.
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To solve this, Wilfrid argued that platforms need to be lightweight and reduce the number of steps involved in the player journey. The goal is to make it easier for players to get where they need to go without unnecessary stages along the way. That also means paying attention to the devices they use. In markets where mobile is central to betting, storage limitations and device capabilities can affect whether a player keeps an application installed at all. He noted that if an app is too heavy, players dealing with storage constraints may simply delete it.
Wilfrid also shared that his experience has also shown him that there is no single African player profile. He is from Cameroon and has seen first-hand how player expectations can differ between Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Ghana. Internet conditions, payment methods, peak activity times and sporting preferences all vary from one market to another, and those differences matter when building a product for players in each country.
That country-level approach extends to the first interaction a player has with the platform. He described how WinWin Bet aims to make the opening experience relevant to the market in which the player is located. A user in Kenya, for example, should be able to see content connected to the country’s sporting interests and not receiving exactly the same first screen as someone accessing the platform from another market.
Wilfrid also pointed to deposits and withdrawals as a key part of the player journey and said the process should not require customers to leave the betting application to complete a transaction. On the platform, he said, clicking on deposit takes the player directly to a window where they can enter their payment details and complete the transaction without moving between different applications.
The idea carries through to the rest of the platform. Olemba said some international operators make their products more complicated than they need to be, while many African players want something they can open and use without having to work out how it functions first. “In Africa, players like the simplest possible things,” he said. A lightweight platform, straightforward deposits and withdrawals and a journey that does not require a tutorial can make a significant difference.
His advice to new market entrants is for them to find something that gives the platform its own identity while still responding to the market. “They should not just copy and paste what others are doing. You should try to be different in your own way. Try to find something that differentiates you from others.”
