Exclusive: Alea Founder Alexandre Tomic on Aggregation’s Biggest Unsolved Problem

In an exclusive iGaming News Today interview, the Alea founder makes an unusual choice for a conference week, putting API security, not growth, at the centre of the aggregation conversation.

Most post-event interviews run on momentum: bigger markets, new verticals, the next wave. Alea founder Alexandre Tomic gave iGaming News Today a different answer. Asked what’s unresolved in casino aggregation, he didn’t reach for a trend. He said security. For an industry that moves real money through a chain of providers, operators and aggregators, that’s a more useful headline than it first looks.

Q1. As iGaming continues to expand across markets and technologies, where do you believe the industry is getting its priorities wrong, and what should business leaders be paying closer attention to?

Alexandre Tomic:

I wouldn’t necessarily say the industry is getting its priorities wrong. But sweepstakes is definitely an area that deserves more attention.

We’ve spent the past two years analysing the behaviour of around 1.5 million sweepstakes players through Alea, and they’re very different from traditional casino ones. What they play, how they play, what keeps them coming back. And the more we study this market, the more we realise how much there is still to learn.

Then you have prediction markets, collectible card games, AI live dealers, P2P skill games and pari-mutuel slots. Some are still at a very early stage, but they could change the way people play. And I think that’s where the industry should be paying attention.

Q2. Alea received the SBC Award for Employer of the Year (Supplier). In a highly competitive industry, what do you believe makes a company culture strong enough to attract and retain the right people?

Alexandre Tomic:

I believe a company is a tribe. And I use that word very deliberately. A tribe is built on meritocracy, trust, and people who genuinely care about each other. You need people who are good at what they do, but also good to the people around them. I’ve always said that you can teach someone almost anything, but you can’t teach them to be a good person.

But it has to work both ways. We spend at least eight hours a day together, and if we expect people to give their best, we also have a responsibility to take care of them. That’s why we’ve invested so much in wellbeing at Alea. And we see the results. People start exercising, sleeping better, taking better care of themselves. It makes a difference in their lives and in the energy they bring to work.

Q3. Casino aggregation has become an established part of the iGaming infrastructure. From Alea’s experience building and managing integrations at scale, what do you see as the biggest unresolved problem in how the industry approaches aggregation today?

Alexandre Tomic:

Security.

There are still game providers entering the market with APIs that don’t have proper authentication. We’re talking about real-money transactions, and I’ve seen firsthand what happens when security isn’t taken seriously. Operators can lose millions without even realising it.

That’s why we enforce reverse integration. Providers integrate into our API and follow our security standards, not the other way around.

Q4. Having worked across affiliate marketing, operations, aggregation and platform development, you have seen iGaming from several sides of the business. Which disconnect between these parts of the ecosystem do you think is costing companies the most today?

Alexandre Tomic:

Probably the biggest disconnect is that companies don’t always understand what happens beyond their own part of the business.

You can build excellent technology, but if you don’t understand how a casino actually operates and what it needs, you can end up costing your customers time, money, and players.

At the end of the chain, there’s a player who just wants to enjoy a game. They don’t care whether a problem comes from the operator, the aggregator, or the game provider. They just want everything to work. And when it doesn’t, it’s the operator who has to deal with the consequences.

Q5. You have built businesses across different parts of iGaming. When deciding what to build next, what signals tell you that an opportunity is worth pursuing rather than simply being another trend?

Alexandre Tomic:

The first question is whether there’s a real market for it. You can have a great idea, but if nobody needs it or is willing to pay for it, you don’t have a business.

Experience plays a big role too. After more than 20 years in this industry, you develop an instinct for recognising opportunities and understanding where the market is going.

But you can’t predict everything. At some point, you have to make a decision, choose your battles and take a risk. That’s part of being an entrepreneur.

What Alea’s approach signals for operators

The security answer is the one to sit with. Tomic has built Alea so that providers meet his standards rather than the other way round, which protects operators from the weak link they can’t see. It’s a deliberate trade: tighter control over who gets in, in exchange for a safer chain for everyone downstream. In a market where a single weak API can cost an operator quietly, that’s a trade a lot of operators will be glad someone is making, and a sign of where the aggregation conversation is heading next.