How does true expertise emerge in iGaming, and why is a legal and consulting mindset becoming the key to business growth? Which misconceptions still hold the market back, especially when it comes to licensing and regulation? A separate focus is given to practical questions. These include how to select markets, when to turn down expansion, what takes priority (entering or holding on after regulatory crackdowns), and how to structure a team in a niche, rapidly shifting industry. A special emphasis is given to the future of iGaming. The main driver of change there is no longer technology, but the global trend toward legalization and control. All this and a bit more can be found in the iGaming Heroes interview on 3S.INFO featuring Ilya Machavariani, CEO and Senior Partner at 4H Agency.

- You started at Dentons, the largest law firm in the world. At what point did you realize you wanted to build something of your own, and why gambling specifically?

Generally speaking, I've always wanted to build something of my own. I understood that when I graduated from university, I simply didn't have enough experience or knowledge to just jump in and start my own business or company right away.

So throughout my whole career as an employee, I was on this vibe of gaining experience, expertise, knowledge, and connections. All so that one day I could build something that was truly mine.

But it's really important to mention that before gambling, I was doing pretty boring work in legal consulting and law. I was focused on Russian real estate, land law, and property purchase and sale deals.

Sure, these were big, exciting deals for great properties. But at the end of the day, it wasn't exactly super sexy, if you will.

Gambling coming into my life was like a secret ingredient. It brought together absolutely everything I had done before into one whole.

Gambling entered my life completely by chance. A good colleague and friend of mine, someone I'm still close with today, came to me and asked for help with one of her clients. I agreed to assist her with a small project the firm was handling.

It turned out the client was in gambling. Specifically, one of the largest poker companies in the world, a poker room.

I started working on this project, and I really enjoyed engaging with the industry from a consulting and legal perspective. It turned out to be a very multifaceted and complex field, and the key thing was that absolutely nobody understood any of it. There were no specialists who already had experience in this area.

So just to be clear, there were maybe three people in Moscow who formally stated on their websites or in some articles that they worked with the gambling industry. But realistically, these people didn't even understand the difference between a casino and a bookmaking business, for example.

It was more like a formal claim that they had once seen a part of a client from this industry somewhere, and now they go around telling everyone they are experts.

I saw an opportunity to become an expert in a pretty narrow niche. It looks narrow from the outside, but as we all know, and as your readers fully understand, the industry is actually massive. There are countless different intricacies, all kinds of people, companies, and businesses, and so much that you simply cannot see when you're looking in from the outside. So I got into gambling, and over time it first grew into my own practice within Dentons, and later into a standalone company.

- What is the biggest misconception iGaming companies have about licensing?

That's an interesting question. The biggest misconception is that iGaming companies think they don't need licensing at all.

By and large, if you look at the online segment specifically, it was born and began to develop as a separate industry in the early 2000s, maybe in the late 90s, but the more realistic timeframe is the early 2000s.

Both at the time I entered the industry and today, one must recognize that online gambling is an exceptionally young industry. Consequently, it lacks an understanding of certain broader dynamics, namely how industries evolve, how businesses develop, and how regulation matures. This is neither good nor bad, merely an observation, and absolutely every industry goes through this.

And naturally, like any young industry, online gambling is confident that "we are the first," "we know better how things truly operate."

But unfortunately or fortunately, that's not the case. You have to understand that licensing and the overall cleaning up, the whitening of the industry, if that's okay to say in an interview, is inevitable. You can hope all you want, work from offshore, walk around sure you've caught God by the beard and that you'll work under a license from some, sorry, no offense to anyone, no-name island, and that everything will be just great.

But I believe that if absolutely every person reading this interview asks themselves an honest question, and you don't need to share the answer with me, just answer it internally, do you think this industry will be the same twenty years from now as it is today? I am confident that every single person will say: certainly not.

And the industry will definitely move down the same path that absolutely every industry has taken, agriculture, banking, IT, it doesn't matter. It all starts with a fairly young industry that outpaces regulation, outpaces the government, and does whatever it wants. But inevitably, one way or another, the moment comes when the government catches up. And since the government clearly has far more power than any single industry, it will naturally shape that industry into whatever form it wants.

And so, coming back to the beginning of my answer, the biggest misconception is that licensing isn't necessary.

I would really like the market, the industry, and my colleagues to understand that if not tomorrow or the day after, then within five years, to operate in practically any country in the world, you will need to obtain a separate license within that country and comply with the regulations that exist there.

That understanding is still largely absent. However, on a positive note, compared to where the industry was ten years ago, awareness has grown significantly. Back then, when I explained that licenses do exist, people wouldn't exactly laugh in my face, but they treated it with irony.

Now things are finally evolving, and that's genuinely encouraging.

  • 4H Agency is an international consulting firm focused on the gambling and iGaming industry. It offers a full range of services, from market analytics and licensing to regulatory matters and the setup of banking and payment infrastructure tailored to the industry's specific needs. Founded in 2020, the company has built solid international expertise in a relatively short time. Today, 4H Agency supports projects at every stage, from market assessment and regulatory strategy development to the implementation of payment solutions and product launches.

- What is harder in practice: entering a market or staying in it after regulations tighten?

I think these are slightly different challenges, as they depend on different sets of variables.

If we are talking about entering a market, then what matters is understanding the economic feasibility, whether this market is interesting to a particular brand, whether they already have traffic from that market, and whether they are ready to meet the regulatory requirements that exist there, assuming we are talking about a licensed entry. And the task of market entry is, so to speak, one-off and finite in nature.

So basically, all you have to do to enter a new market is come to me, Ilya Machavariani, at 4H Agency, tell us which market you want, pay the fee, and after that, one way or another, you'll get in. You'll get your license, you'll operate there, you'll figure out all the requirements, and so forth.

And then at some point, I myself will come to you, dear future client, and say, "We've done our job. You're already in the market. And from here on, you don't really need us anymore." Because after that, it's just day to day operations, where my expertise as an expert in expansion and global gambling markets isn't needed.

You need local people who understand the local specifics and with whom you can build long term partnerships. Of course, I can suggest such people and stay within the project structure, but fundamentally, I never try to be where our involvement doesn't make sense. So, that process has an end point.

Staying in a new market after regulations get tougher, on the other hand, is far from a one time task. It's a continuous process of making business decisions. How much have the requirements changed? How much has the pressure grown? How do these changes impact the financial models of the business?

Thus, following that logic, this year we launched our own new product: an updatable online gambling database called OnlyFacts. It helps companies check country specific requirements, evaluate regulatory risks, and monitor changes as they happen. The challenge today isn't just obtaining a license one time. It is continuously understanding what is shifting in the market and how those shifts impact your business model.

And then the question becomes: what is cheaper? To exit the market and lock in profits or losses, or to stay and plan to increase your market share.

So to repeat, these are different tasks. Comparing them directly isn't quite correct, since different people handle them, and the logic behind decisions is different.

For instance, if a brand has entered, say, Brazil and is in the top three, then a regulatory crackdown would make an exit very painful. Leaving a market where they hold such a high position and large share might be something the company is not prepared for.

On the flip side, take a company that has entered a market and gotten a license, but hasn't yet directed money to marketing or ramped up operations. They haven't taken any meaningful share. In that case, it's often much cheaper to just cut their losses, walk away, and focus on other jurisdictions where things are easier and less expensive.

- Has there ever been a time when you advised a client not to enter a market, but they went ahead anyway? How did it end?

Let me put it this way. Has there ever been a time when I advised a client not to enter a market? Yes, that has happened. But that the client then went ahead anyway, I can't recall that ever happening.

It's not because I'm that great. Of course, I am great. I know everything earlier than everyone else, and I understand everything much deeper than everyone else.

But in reality, I think the process of entering a new market is rather a linear task in the sense that it has fairly clear inputs on the basis of which a business decision can be made.

As a reasonable player in this market and a consultant with years of experience, I rarely base my recommendations to clients on some kind of gut feeling or intuition.

If I advise against entering a market, you can be sure I have a reason for it. And it won't be just a gut feeling. It could be, for instance, that the current tax structure doesn't make sense and makes normal operations impossible. Or that the market is effectively a hidden monopoly, and the incumbent player won't let an outside brand in. Or that the market is extremely volatile, with constant sudden regulatory shifts over the last few years. In other words, it's super volatile, so you can't rely on things looking calm right now.

Thus, these are arguments that both the client and I can look at and understand together. And typically, the client ends up seeing the logic behind whatever recommendation I make, and then they make their own decision based on that.

- 4H works with 30+ jurisdictions. Is there a market where you messed up, where you entered with the wrong assessment, and it cost you reputation or money? What did you learn from it?

I wouldn't say it's about any specific market.

There have been cases where we picked the wrong partners on the ground. Because obviously, whenever we work in a jurisdiction, we rely on local people and companies. They either act as our local presence when it comes to getting a license, or they help with client work when necessary, especially in very tough jurisdictions.

We made mistakes with partners. That's natural, it happens to everyone all the time.

What conclusions do we draw? Again, they are quite straightforward. Any smart person tries to learn from their own mistakes, not from someone else’s. You can learn from others too, but learning from your own is far more effective.

So, for many years we have been building, and will continue to build (it's a never ending process) a network of partners we can trust, believe in, and rely on. And it's not just us relying on them. Our clients must be able to rely on them too, and that is far more important.

- 4H is an agency you built from scratch. What was the hardest moment when you realized you couldn't do it alone anymore and needed a team? How did you handle it?

I can honestly say there was never a single day when I thought I could do it all alone. From the very beginning, it was clear to me that without a team, without people around me, nothing would work. I'm not a superhero, and whether that's unfortunate or fortunate, I only have two hands.

That’s why, from the start, I put a huge focus on building a good team around me and bringing together people I could rely on. People who would allow this business to keep growing while they, so to speak, watched my back.

- You're a lawyer by background, someone used to working alone with documents and logic. How did you learn to trust people with tasks you used to do yourself?

That's a very common misconception, that lawyers are people who work alone with documents.

Because there is this thing called an in-house lawyer. That's when you work as, say, a legal director at a factory or at some company, just handling the legal function for that business. And maybe there it is like that, you work alone with your documents, and once a month some living person walks into your legal cave. You don't even believe they're real, so you try to touch them just to check they're not a hallucination. Maybe that's how it works somewhere. I've never worked in-house, so I don't know. But in consulting, it's absolutely nothing like that.

Consulting is a never ending carousel of clients, people, and colleagues that you're constantly engaging with. There is a massive amount of communication with the outside world, and that becomes unavoidable once you reach a certain level in your professional development.

You have to talk to clients, bring them in, and communicate with colleagues in your firm. Without that, you just won't get any projects.

Therefore, the idea that lawyers work alone is a misconception. I never had to reinvent myself. The way I handled client relationships, built my reputation, generated business, and grew a practice at Dentons is exactly what I kept doing when I launched 4H.

- iGaming consulting is a very narrow niche. Where do you find people? Do you hire ready-made experts from the market or grow them internally, and which approach actually works better?

Thank you so much for asking this question, because I have a little know-how that I'm very proud of. I'm really glad that over the years of working in iGaming consulting, we have arrived at this.

That's an excellent question. You've really captured the dichotomy and the tension between two ideas: should you bring in ready-made experts, or should you grow them from the ground up?

Let me complicate and deepen this dichotomy even further. The truth is, there are no ready-made iGaming consulting specialists on the market today. And if there is anyone out there, they're someone who used to work for me. I'm not counting European law firm representatives, because law firms are a different thing entirely from the raw, exposed iGaming consulting that we practice.

This is one of the many reasons I left Dentons and decided to start my own company. Because working inside a law firm comes with certain restrictions that make it impossible to fully serve the gambling industry.

So, the real dichotomy is this. Do you hire someone who knows how to work and understands consulting in the broader sense, who has done it before, but knows absolutely nothing about the industry? Or do you hire someone who knows the industry inside out but has never seen what consulting looks like, someone who doesn't understand what this job demands, what level of quality is required, or what kind of stress it involves?

Over the years, I've found a clear answer, and it's something we've been doing for a long time. You hire people who know how to consult first and foremost, and then you teach them the industry and how everything works here.

And I know some people might disagree with me on this, but in my view, industry knowledge is certainly adjacent to hard skills, and that matters. But the harder skills that we need much more than industry knowledge at the moment are, pardon my directness, the ability to just get the job done.

It's about knowing how to express your thoughts, how to analyze information, how to do it quickly, and most importantly, how to communicate that information to the client and how to work with it to deliver the results the client expects from us. Teaching this second part, the how to work part, is far more difficult and takes much more time than, for example, taking a former Big Three or Big Four consultant who joins our firm and teaching them the specifics of iGaming. Especially considering how many years we've been at this, and the vast amount of different materials, documents, presentations, and what I'll call the intellectual capital of the company that we have built up. All of that can be passed on to our employees to help them get up to speed in the industry as quickly and effectively as possible.

So, to give you the short answer, we hire people who know how to work and then teach them the industry. Not the reverse. Because doing it the other way takes far too long and is usually ineffective.

- When it comes to payment infrastructure for iGaming today, banks are tightening their grip, and crypto is under pressure. Is this a bottleneck for the entire industry or a solvable problem?

Here I think I will invoke both the Fifth Amendment and Article 51 at the same time.

- What changes in iGaming right now seem unnoticeable but could significantly reshape the industry in two to three years?

There are probably many things one could point to here.

Sure, just like in any industry today in 2026, you could talk about AI and say a new age is coming, practically a renaissance, and all that. But I'm not really a skeptic by nature. I'm more someone who likes to talk about things when I see them with my own eyes, especially when it comes to major, fundamental shifts.

So, what I see with my own eyes, what is actually happening and will continue to happen (I already mentioned this above) is of course the continued growth of the trend toward legalization and further regulation of our industry's activities. And every year, there will be more and more of it.

Whoever today thinks this doesn't matter or isn't relevant will, in just two years, be searching for my contact info on LinkedIn and sending me a message saying, "Ilya, could we have a conversation about this?"

But two years from now, my hourly rate will already be twice, maybe even three times as high.

So, reach out today, dear friends.

Is your iGaming project ready to reach the next level? Want to make a bold and powerful statement? Reach out to us, and we'll quickly discuss your goals and find the perfect solution.

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Blitz – 5 Questions in GQ Style

One business rule you never break, even when it would be very profitable to break it.

Being decent pays off.

Was there a person in your career, not a mentor from a book but a real one, who changed the way you manage people?Unfortunately, no.

The most expensive lesson of your career, not in monetary terms but in understanding how the world works. 
I won't go into the lesson itself, but I can tell you the outcome. The understanding I came to is that it is extremely important not to judge people by your own yardstick.

You are a lawyer by education. What annoys you about how people in iGaming approach law and regulation?
My answer follows from what I said earlier.

What annoys me the most, of course, is the careless attitude toward law and regulation. Because such carelessness clearly shows a lack of serious commitment to the business and the industry.

Of course, no one will ever claim that law, regulation, and things of that nature are the "first violin" in the industry. But the fact remains that they form a framework that exists regardless of whether you want it or not. It will always be there around you, especially in an industry like iGaming.

And in my opinion, it is quite foolish to forget that this framework exists, to fail to try to understand it, and to neglect working with it in a way that makes it play on your side rather than against you.

If you could give one piece of advice to yourself on your first day at Dentons, knowing everything you know now, what would it be?

Don't waste time on people and projects that don't align with your long-term goals. To put it more shortly, don't compromise with yourself.