Getting a brand live in a new market is complicated enough. Getting the language, content and customer experience right presents a different set of challenges, some of which can be surprisingly easy to overlook.
Expanding into a new regulated market involves a considerable amount of work. Licensing, payments, platform integrations, commercial partnerships and customer acquisition all compete for attention, often against a fairly unforgiving launch schedule.
Localisation is another part of that process, although it doesn’t always receive the same attention or budget. In some cases, the assumption is that content already performing well in one market can be translated, adapted where necessary and rolled out somewhere else.
There are obvious attractions to this approach, particularly for operators managing several launches or working with tight deadlines. There are also some fairly predictable problems.
Research published by RWS in 2023, based on a survey of 6,500 consumers across 13 countries, found that 89% believed they should have the option of dealing with companies online in their preferred language. The same study found that 58% considered a localised online presence as trustworthy as a physical one.
For operators entering regulated markets, there is an additional complication. Localisation affects the presentation of the brand, the customer experience, and potentially, compliance. A promotion that works in one market might be inappropriate in another, while terminology that looks perfectly acceptable to an English-speaking marketing team could create problems with a local regulator.
At All-in Global, we’ve seen every possible angle of new market launches, and the following are eight areas worth examining intently before launching, along with a few practical ways to address them.
1. Treating a Language as a Market
It’s tempting to look at a localisation plan and see Spanish, Portuguese, German and French as four fairly straightforward requirements. The reality is a little more complicated.
Take Portuguese. In Portugal, a football goalkeeper is a guarda-redes, playing on the relvado for his equipa. In Brazil, that’s a goleiro, on the gramado, representing his time.
The meaning is the same, but the language is recognisably different. These distinctions matter in any coverage, promotional copy and other content intended for a particular audience.
Spanish presents similar issues. Terminology that feels natural in Spain may sound unusual or inappropriate to players in Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America.
Belgium provides another useful example. With Dutch, French and German as official languages, and regional differences in usage, treating Belgium as a single-language market would be a questionable starting point.
Of course, none of this is particularly surprising to experienced localisation teams, but these aren’t always the people making decisions under pressure for a big launch. Problems tend to emerge when content is commissioned against broad language requirements without sufficient thought about where it will actually be used, or how it will bring customers closer.
Briefing suppliers by locale, rather than language alone, is an important first step. Working with linguists familiar with the intended market is equally valuable, particularly where the content involves sport, gambling terminology or cultural references.
2. Supposing Existing Content Will Work Elsewhere
Understandably, want to make use of content they’ve already invested in. If an email campaign, landing page or promotion has performed well in one market, translating it for another can seem like an efficient use of resources.Sometimes it is. Other times, the original concept needs more work than the translation itself.
A Boxing Day football promotion that makes sense to a British audience is unlikely to have quite the same appeal in Finland. A Swedish Midsummer campaign would need rather more than a language change to become relevant to Spanish players.
There are also subtler differences involving humour, tone, sporting preferences and attitudes towards particular promotional messages.
It’s a consideration that increasingly extends to game development itself.
In a June 2026 interview with iGB, Greentube’s Markus Antl explained that the company considers local market demand during development rather than adapting every game afterwards. He estimated that around 15–20% of Greentube’s portfolio consisted of localised content, with differences extending beyond language and graphics to game mathematics and mechanics.
For operators, the principle is similar. It’s worth reviewing the original content before commissioning the translation. Is the offer relevant? Does the sporting reference make sense? Would the message feel natural coming from a local brand? Is it even permitted under local advertising rules?
Some content will translate well with relatively minor adjustments. Other material will benefit from transcreation, while certain campaigns are better developed specifically for the market.
A useful market brief that will help linguists and content professionals do their best work should cover local sporting interests, the promotional calendar, preferred terminology, tone and any regulatory restrictions. It gives translators and copywriters something more substantial to work with than a spreadsheet of English source copy and a deadline.
3. Assuming translated equals compliant
A perfect translation can still be a compliance violation. Every regulated market sets its own rules on responsible-gambling wording, bonus terms and advertising, and those rules are written in the local language, not in English.
Germany offers a particularly relevant example. Gambling regulations place restrictions on how certain products can be described and advertised, including the use of casino-related terminology in connection with online slots.
Sweden has similarly strict rules governing bonuses. Licensed operators face restrictions on when bonuses can be offered, and promotional claims have attracted enforcement action.
One Swedish case involved advertising a SEK 2,000 bonus and 100 free spins subject to wagering requirements. The case resulted in a conditional fine of SEK 15 million, illustrating the potential consequences of promotional wording that doesn’t meet the applicable requirements.
In the Netherlands, advertising restrictions also extend to the use of role models, including indirect references. The regulator has addressed campaigns using wordplay and imagery associated with well-known sporting figures, even where the individual wasn’t explicitly named.
For operators and their suppliers, maintaining market-specific terminology guidance is a sensible precaution. This might include approved product descriptions, mandatory responsible-gambling wording, restrictions on promotional claims and terms requiring additional review.
The important consideration is where compliance checks sit within the process. Leaving them until after content has been translated, designed and prepared for publication creates avoidable rework.
Regulatory requirements can also change, so approved terminology needs an owner and a review process rather than being treated as a document that’s finished once the market launches.
4. Giving the Lobby More Attention Than the Customer Experience
Game titles, promotional banners and landing pages are usually among the first localisation priorities. They are highly visible, commercially important and often need updating regularly. Usually, the pages that decide whether a player trusts the brand get the leftovers, which are cashier, KYC prompts, payment methods, withdrawal messages, T&Cs and support macros.
There are other parts of the customer experience that deserve just as much scrutiny.
An operator might have excellent localised marketing content while still presenting players with unfamiliar payment terminology, awkward KYC instructions or withdrawal messages that feel as though they’ve been translated without much context.
Even relatively minor details can make a difference. Payment methods such as iDEAL in the Netherlands and Bizum in Spain need to be presented appropriately, while currency formats, dates and numerical conventions should reflect local expectations.
The language used in sensitive communications matters too. A request for identity documents needs to be unambiguous and reassuring. Withdrawal-related messaging should explain what is happening, what the player needs to do and what they can reasonably expect next.
For a customer with high expectations, a poorly worded message at either stage can generate unnecessary support enquiries and create doubts about an unfamiliar operator. Nobody wants to think they won’t get paid out in the case of a win.
Customer support needs the same attention. A player contacting support about a missing withdrawal, verification problem or disputed promotion should receive a response that’s clear, consistent with the published terms and appropriate for the market.
Having support available in the local language is useful, although the quality and accuracy of the response matter just as much.
The full transaction process deserves a place in any pre-launch language review, particularly the parts that players might encounter when they’re already concerned about their money. This ‘boring’ content is some of the most important to localise and it should mirror the high standards set by marketing copy.
5. Reusing the Same CRM Approach in Every Market
CRM is an area where operators already have considerable expertise, although that experience doesn’t automatically transfer from one market to another.
A campaign that’s effective with British customers may be less successful elsewhere, even when the messaging has been accurately localised.
Preferences around communication channels, frequency, promotional messaging and timing can vary considerably.
GetResponse’s 2024 email marketing benchmark report, based on 4.4 billion emails, offers some interesting comparisons.
For example, Polish recipients clicked on 14.1% of the emails they opened, compared with 5.9% in Germany. Reported unsubscribe rates also varied, with Germany at 0.38% and Spain at 0.20%.
Among Spanish-speaking audiences, open rates ranged from 41% in Spain to 27% in Peru, while click-to-open rates also differed between Mexico and Colombia.
While these are general email marketing figures rather than gambling-specific benchmarks, they do illustrate why relying on assumptions from an existing market can be misleading.
Channel preferences deserve consideration too. Messaging applications may play a larger role in some markets, although their suitability for gambling-related communications will depend on local regulation, consent requirements and platform policies.
For operators moving into new territories, there’s a good case for treating the existing CRM programme as a starting point, then adapting and testing the channel mix, cadence and messaging against local performance.
This is an ongoing process, and one where localisation teams can contribute useful context beyond the translation of individual campaigns.
6. Launching without a terminology base
A gambling operator might work with a platform provider, several game studios, marketing agencies, SEO specialists, customer support teams and multiple translation suppliers. That’s quite a few opportunities for the same term to be translated differently.
In some circumstances, those variations are harmless. In others, particularly where bonus mechanics, withdrawal conditions or product descriptions are involved, inconsistency can become a genuine problem.
Consider a promotional condition described one way in an advert, another way in the terms and conditions, and a third way by customer support.
Even where the underlying meaning is technically consistent, the player shouldn’t have to work that out.
The practical solution is well established: market-specific glossaries, style guides and terminology management.
The difficulty is often making sure everyone uses them.
For businesses with multiple suppliers and internal teams, terminology needs to be accessible, current and consistently applied. Approved terms should also flow into AI-assisted translation and content creation workflows where appropriate.
This isn’t the most glamorous part of international expansion, although avoiding disputes over inconsistent promotional language is a reasonable incentive to get it organised.
7. Choosing between human and AI instead of designing the workflow
There has been plenty of discussion about whether AI can replace human translators, and rather less attention paid to how businesses should use the technology within their existing processes.
For operators managing regular game releases, promotional updates, CRM campaigns and product content across several languages, the attraction is understandable.
There’s a substantial amount of work to get through, and much of it arrives with demanding turnaround times.
AI translation has become a useful option for handling volume, although the quality and suitability of the output depend on the tools, source material, terminology, language pair and level of review involved.
Recent research suggests that greater use of AI doesn’t necessarily make the wider content process more efficient. In April 2026, RWS published a survey of 200 senior enterprise content leaders in which 86% said AI had accelerated content creation, while 65% reported that localisation had become slower. Respondents also reported spending 21% of their localisation budgets on rework.
Raw output from a generic AI model might look fluent and confident, and that is the problem. It flattens brand voice into the same neutral register for every operator, invents terms when it lacks one, and has no idea which phrases a regulator mandates in which market. Besides, human-only workflows have the opposite weakness: they cannot keep pace with the volume of promotions, game updates and bonus-term changes a live market generates every week.
The operators that scale well design the workflow instead: industry-specific AI for speed and volume, specialist linguists for sign-off on anything customer-facing or regulated. Tools such as All-in Global’s CRAIG are one example of this approach, letting operators localise content at scale while keeping terminology and tone consistent across every market.
The practical step is deciding which content needs a human signature and which does not, then building the pipeline around that line rather than around a single tool.
8. Reviewing Translation Files Without Reviewing the Live Product
Even a well-run localisation project might go wrong after going live. Content reaches the site through various formats, promotion tools and third-party widgets, and often nobody reads the published result the way a player would.
Sometimes the problems are obvious: untranslated interface elements, pages that switch language halfway through or strings that don’t fit their intended space. However, other issues are harder to identify without someone familiar with the market.
A product term might be technically correct but unusual in context. An error message may be confusing. A payment instruction could be missing information that was present in the original source.
These problems are particularly frustrating when an operator is already spending heavily on acquisition.
The value of a final review goes beyond checking the wording in isolation. It should include the actual player experience, ideally across the devices, browsers and customer journeys likely to be used in that market.
That means looking at registration, verification, payments, promotions, account management and support, as well as the more visible marketing pages.
Localisation quality assurance should also continue after launch. New games, updated offers, revised regulations and changes to the underlying product all create opportunities for inconsistencies to appear.
A periodic review of the live product is generally more useful than assuming the job was completed when the initial batch of translations was approved.
8 Questions to Answer Before Going Live
- Have we defined the market properly? Are language variants, local terminology and cultural expectations covered in the brief?
- Does our existing content make sense locally? Which campaigns should be translated, adapted or developed from scratch?
- Has compliance reviewed the language? Are restricted terms, promotional rules and mandatory wording documented?
- Have we checked the full customer experience? Including registration, KYC, payments, withdrawals and support.
- Is the CRM programme appropriate for this audience? Have we reviewed channel preferences, messaging and local benchmarks?
- Are our teams using the same terminology? Do internal teams, external suppliers and AI tools have access to current guidelines?
- Is the translation workflow appropriate for the content? Where is specialist human review required, and where can automation help?
- Has somebody checked the live product? Are we reviewing the experience players will actually encounter, rather than relying exclusively on source files?
Getting Localisation Involved Earlier
Market entry is an expensive undertaking, and operators have plenty of competing priorities before launch. It’s understandable that localisation sometimes becomes a question of how quickly the necessary content can be delivered, particularly where licensing schedules or commercial commitments are involved.
In our experience, it’s worth having the language discussion earlier.
A relatively modest amount of planning around terminology, market-specific content, compliance and the customer experience can help avoid considerably more expensive changes further down the line.
It also gives operators a better understanding of which content can be reused, where local expertise is needed and how AI and human linguists can be combined sensibly.
Getting licensed provides the opportunity to enter a market. Making that market work commercially requires attention to rather more detail, and the language players encounter throughout the product deserves its share.
About the Author
Barb Tasci is CEO of All-in Global, a localisation agency specialising in iGaming and other regulated industries. With two decades of industry experience, All-in Global provides multilingual content, translation and AI-assisted localisation services to operators, suppliers and affiliates internationally.
