Nigerian iGaming sector has undergone a seismic shift over the past eighteen months following the Supreme Court’s late-2024 ruling that decentralised the industry and secured state-level regulatory authority. In this interview with Yusuf Lawal, Helabet representative Olajay discusses how the company is handling the regulatory chaos, shares a few internal user-growth figures, outlines plans for advertising strategy changes, and even explores the possibility of sponsoring a Nigerian football club.
Your company has been in Nigeria for a while now. How big is Helabet in 2026?
By our internal figures, we had 2.5 million active users by the third quarter of 2025. That’s a hard number from our player database audit — [shows a smartphone screenshot of the dashboard to showcase the number and the relevant description that proves it, but concealing the rest of the data] — but it is not for publishing; I can only share it like that, sorry.
We have probably added a few hundred thousand since then. But I won’t make assumptions a couple of months before the upcoming annual audit. And besides, raw numbers don’t matter that much to us. We are even pivoting our advertising strategy towards spending less. And this has already attracted more players than during our usual marketing campaigns.
A bold statement, considering Nigeria is one of Africa’s most competitive betting markets and other operators are fighting tooth and nail for every bit of visibility. Care to explain?
Visibility still matters, yes. Not going to pretend ads do nothing; they bring impressions and let Nigerian players know Helabet exists.
But the economy is not the same as six or even two years ago. Just an example that dozens of millions of my compatriots can relate to: in September 2019, $1 was ₦360. In September 2026, $1 costs around ₦1,325. The exchange rate has dropped by 3.7 times. And while today the local player wagers more in naira than in 2019, in $ the growth does not compensate for this drop. But a lot of CAC operations [Customer Acquisition Cost, total expenses needed to attract a new customer] are tied to the $.
Marketing costs more in $ in 2026 than in post-COVID-19 2021, when we were just starting in Nigeria. Some channels became too expensive due to increasing competition or rising compliance costs. Others became irrelevant due to legal changes and, again, compliance.
You do not even need to dig into staff and digital infrastructure support costs to see that burning money in the budget race is an unsustainable strategy, even short-term.
When these changes were only looming, we asked ourselves a simple question: what does advertising actually buy?
It brings a player to Helabet once. How long they stay depends on the product, payouts, rewards and support. A positive gaming experience, paying winners on time and solving their problems builds our brand reputation and reduces churn [percentage of players who stop depositing and betting over a specific time period, usually measured in periods between 7 and 90 days]. Fail their trust — and funds invested in CAC are gone with your reputation.
Helabet is all about building trust by giving players exactly what we promised during sign-up. This is the policy we have entered the Nigerian iGaming market with. Or any other African market we operate in.
But in the new circumstances, we chose to double down on this policy. And redirected even more money from marketing into customer experience assets: bonuses, localisation, our team, payouts…
Oh yes, Nigerian bettors have some very public arguments about not getting their winnings. How are you going to tackle this growing lack of trust towards sportsbooks?
This might sound new to some, but often sportsbooks withhold payments because they lack sufficient operational balance to suddenly pay out a large single win or a volume of winning bets placed on a high-odds event. And they fail to notice that even a single complaint going viral over tens of thousands on social media from a customer denied their legitimate funds will destroy their previous marketing investments. And trust.
So continuing to build and protect trust with our players by paying out winnings on time is our best bet, pun intended. That is why part of our funds went into operational balance. So any bettor at Helabet could be assured that if they legitimately win a large sum, they will promptly receive their money upon request.
But paying winners is a bookmaker’s basic obligation. Should that really be counted as a competitive advantage?
It should be basic. But reality bites. The local betting industry is at a stage where players compare sportsbooks based on whether they trust the payout to happen or not.
Open any betting discussion on social media, and it is all complaints about delayed and missing payments, frozen accounts. There is even an ongoing case of ₦900 million in unpaid winnings. I will not call names because everyone already knows who you are.
The best Helabet can do is lead by example, showing everyone that giving more value back to players is a better way of doing things than giving them more ads to watch. For example, thanks to the budget redistribution, we are planning to get player attention with a new 305% Helabet welcome bonus package.
A 305% bonus will definitely get attention from Nigerian players. But how are you planning to fit this into your existing bonus system?
The new 305% welcome bonus is just our first handshake with the player; we’ve just made it twice as powerful as the previous one and are currently in the TOP 3 in Nigeria by welcome bonus size. The aim is to help the player get into the game and give them more chances. But our system is more than that and features a 25% daily bonus on top of the first deposit of the day, a weekly rebate and another new feature, the Promo Code store, where players can exchange bonus points for single and accumulator bets.
And remember I mentioned us shifting more to localisation as well? We also have a very local bonus just for Nigeria: free internet data for MTN and Glo users. A noticeable part of our current and potential player base is on metered mobile data packages, and the cost of the package affects their player experience. So Helabet designed this bonus around the unique Nigerian reality; we do not have such a bonus in other African countries where we operate.
Where else does Helabet operate? And how is Nigeria that different from the other markets?
I am in touch with local Helabet teams operating in English-speaking Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. This is our philosophy — local execution everywhere. Local offices, local employees. I strongly believe that you cannot run an ambitious company in any African country from another continent. The payment systems, regulatory framework, average bet size, preferred leagues and sports — I can confirm that the true experience of managing all this in a single product comes from living and working here.
My homeland is potentially the largest betting market in Africa, with 240 million people. And things here can get very chaotic very fast. At the end of 2024, the iGaming regulation was decentralised, and the states received authority over it. This raised an issue for us of how to remain compliant everywhere in Nigeria, when there was no more unified licence to obtain.
Luckily, the establishment of FSGRN [the Federation of State Gaming Regulators of Nigeria] spared us the hassle of obtaining 37 licences, one for each state and a separate one for FCA. Helabet obtained a URC [Universal Reciprocity Certificate], acting as a unified licence valid across all 22 member states.
There was also a strong year-long pushback and related uncertainty via an attempt to pass the Central Gaming Bill 2025, until our president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, decided not to assent to it in December 2025.
No way a non-Nigerian remote team could handle this the proper way we did, and it makes me proud. But currently, we are adjusting to the recent Nigeria Tax Act 2025. This game never ends.
Kind of a headache to navigate this every day with due diligence, especially when some of your competitors are known to be “cutting corners”?
Staying compliant requires diligence, absolutely. But Helabet won’t compromise on its compliance policy. And as a Nigerian, I fully support this. If you want to call yourself a local Nigerian betting brand, you must be a responsible participant in the Nigerian economy, not a revenue extractor. This means working with state regulators and paying your taxes.
Even if offshore brands outpace you in revenue in the short term, the iGaming sector will get more and more regulated each year; this is a global trend. So a better strategy is to embrace it and contribute to the local economy instead of “cutting corners” and taking the risks. And as a Nigerian, I would add that if you want Nigerian players but none of the Nigerian obligations, I don’t think you can seriously call yourself a local brand.
If you are putting down local roots, what is Helabet ultimate endgame in the Nigerian market?
We want to be the sportsbook Nigerians recommend to their friends because they are genuinely happy with odds, event selection, bonuses and withdrawal of winnings. Become the most trusted operator on the market.
And since my team is all-Nigerian, we are extra-driven to achieve this not just for the sake of Helabet, but also to improve our iGaming sector and country as a whole.
This is a bit of an insider reveal, but we are considering becoming a sponsor of a Nigerian football club. We already have a shortlist of local clubs and will open negotiations in due time. Personally, I think this is a very responsible move — to contribute to local sports, rather than just profit from the public passion for it.
Thank you for the interview. Any words of conclusion?
Just a message to the Nigerian iGaming industry as a whole. Go local. Obtain a licence if you haven’t already. Hire and train Nigerians motivated to change the industry for the better. Build digital expertise. Pay taxes that apply to you. Invest in local sports. The sportsbooks that will successfully survive into the next decade will be all about that.
Official sites:
helabet.ng
helabet.com
The post “Advertising Brings a Player Once, Actually Paying Winners Brings Them Back” — Helabet Representative Says appeared first on Vanguard News.