James Costantini on Time to GGR, the Most Underrated KPI in B2B iGaming | Exclusive Interview with iGaming News Today
James Costantini started in gaming around 13 years ago and has since held commercial leadership roles at Light & Wonder and Games Global. He is now looking at consultancy.
In an exclusive interview with iGaming News Today, he named a number most B2B commercial teams do not track, and made a case for where AI is already earning its place in acquisition and retention.
The KPI he says B2B keeps ignoring
Costantini told iGaming News Today that signing the deal is the easy half. “Commercial success today is not just about signing deals; it is about ensuring those opportunities are executed efficiently.”
The measure he attaches to that is blunt and quotable: “Time to GGR is probably the most underrated KPI in B2B.”
He sees AI helping there directly, using it to identify bottlenecks, predict delays and support better time-to-market decisions, so that a signed contract turns into revenue sooner rather than sitting in an integration queue.
Where AI already works on acquisition and retention
On the operator side, Costantini said AI is already helping businesses “predict player behaviour, improve retention, optimise acquisition strategies, and better understand lifetime value”. That is four of the numbers a marketing team is judged on, in one sentence.
On the B2B side he pointed at the commercial stack itself: “lead scoring, sales pipeline management, CRM optimisation, and resource allocation”, helping teams work out which opportunities actually deserve the attention.
He thinks the impact will be large. AI has the potential to be “one of the biggest disruptions our industry will experience over the next twenty years”, he told iGaming News Today. But he drew the same line most of the leaders we have interviewed draw: “its greatest value lies in enabling people to make better decisions rather than replacing human judgement altogether”.
Why the job description changed
Costantini traced the shift back to the move from grey markets towards regulated ones. Earlier in his career, he said, the focus was “heavily centred around building pipelines and driving GGR”. Now commercial leadership means understanding where a product fits competitively, navigating compliance, and tying commercial decisions to long-term objectives.
His word for what that demands of a leader: “successful leaders need to be chameleonic”.
What else Costantini covers in the exclusive interview
- Which emerging markets he thinks offer the most opportunity right now, and why
- Why he believes rising taxation in Europe risks pushing players towards unregulated alternatives
- What he says newly regulating markets should learn from the ones that went first
- The quality he puts at the foundation of every high-performing commercial team
- Why he still advocates hybrid working for commercial teams specifically
- What he is planning next after stepping back from full-time commercial leadership
The full exclusive interview with James Costantini is published on iGaming News Today.
