As I pace along cobblestone streets, fending off the advances of a furious downpour with a struggling umbrella, underlying is a mixture of excitement and nervous anticipation – as I am in Lisbon for one of the biggest industry conferences of the year. This feeling is a familiar one echoed by iGP CEO, Jovana Popovic Canaki, as we discuss what turned out to also be her first major industry meetup with the company.
How fortuitous, then, that immediately as I step into the conference hall I am swept into the first stand on my right – iGP. Indeed, this would go on to be the very first stand encounter of a now countless number of interview interactions at industry conferences across the continent – and for that reason, one I would remember for the rest of my life.
Little did I know that in the very next room, Canaki and her iGP team were celebrating the decision to expand into lottery, a crucial move that came early in her CEO tenure – and one she now reflects upon as “one of the key things I’m proud of during my time here. We feel it has taken iGP to the next level.”
Marinating on the serendipitous nature of our ‘almost’ encounter, Canaki expresses a sense of pride around the rebrand that followed has propelled iGP into the lottery landscape: “Rebranding can be scary. Lottery opened up a lot of opportunities for us beyond B2B because it’s a B2G (business to government) product which, despite being an opportunity we recognised, was a brand new space for us. For me, when it comes to rebranding, there is no in-between. You either do it right or you or you fail. We succeeded and that makes me very proud.”
Working ‘undercover’
Much like any good restructuring, the minerals necessary to effectively oversee a major business rebrand as head of a company are not acquired overnight. Born originally in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, Canaki spent the majority of her educative years in the Ukrainian city of Odessa as a self-proclaimed bookworm. She tells Global Gaming Insider: “Growing up, all my best friends were books. At the time I studied much more than I socialised, partly because I simply loved the literature. I read American and British fiction and non-fiction – as well as French, German, Russian and Ukrainian. My parents were always very supportive of my love of literature, they gave me a whole part of the library to fill in with my favourite novels, and I used to spend all of my pocket money on books.”
After completing her undergraduate studies in Odessa, Canaki briefly lifted her head from the page to conclude that she was not quite done with education, leaving her library behind for the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana to pursue her MBA. Little did she know at the time, but the city was where she would spend the next 14 years of her life, settling into the social side of university where she would eventually find her long-term balance – “I discovered I was just an undercover extrovert all along!” Canaki names Mikhail Bulgakov’s acclaimed The Master and Margarita as her favourite book. “I’ve read it in three languages,” she proclaims, “it’s amazing how Bulgakov managed to capture the political situation at that time of censorship. But I would also say close behind is my second favourite is Erich Maria Remarque’s Three Comrades. I wanted to bring up this book because it’s about relationships, friendships, love and all these wonderful human emotions. I really hope that reading these kinds of books through my youth gave me a wider insight into people and the world around me – which is something that is critical to my management style.
“I also believe I gained something similar from all the travel, I’ve left part of my heart and soul in every country I’ve lived in and have equally taken something, too; friendships, connections and the lessons you learn from being somewhere new.”
The happiest of accidents
Speaking to Canaki, it is easy to see how and why she has made a success of her first 18 months as iGP CEO. Reflecting on her early memories, she decisively dissects only the positives as she sifts through the metaphorically sunniest times of her life. Literally, however, one would have to imagine the sunniest times come at present, as Canaki moved to Malta with her family over four years ago. Informally, Canaki began her working life early, tutoring students and translating contracts for her father in Ukraine from the age of 15, before going on to freelance in sports journalism as she moved into young adulthood. This endeavour, she tells me, was largely fuelled by a love of basketball. Yet, following the conclusion of her postgraduate education, Canaki’s first formal employ came from the gaming industry. “My first job was customer support agent at a casino company.
“I took the job initially to fill some time, because four months later I was scheduled to move to Budapest, where I got a job that I had wanted in college – and I did not want to sit around drinking coffee all day. My ambitions were always in business and, at that time, finance. In Budapest, I was supposed to be overseeing a finance department at one of the biggest pipe producers in Europe – clearly quite different from gaming! As things often are, for Canaki, the pipe business was not meant to be. She details how these anecdotes centre around the year 2007, a year that is perhaps most well-remembered worldwide for one of the worst economic crises in human history. “That company was hit really hard by the crisis, so I stayed at my job in the casino business.”
As is the case with many executives, Canaki knew little about gaming when she entered the industry, but it wasn’t long before she started to receive back-to-back promotions within the operational side of the business. “One day, I got an offer to join a start-up. This was, of course, very exciting at the time. During what had become nearly four years of B2C casino experience, I had done shift management, telemarketing, VIP management, risk payment, fraud; I was a cashier, I did customer support and basically volunteered myself for anything I could. However, among all of that I never touched marketing or CRM at all. Because of that, saying yes to this start-up was definitely something of a leap of faith. But I did say yes, and I’m very happy I made that decision – that little start-up went on to become Bragg Gaming.”
B2C, B2B & back again…
Transitioning into the gaming world is a process we have all been through – and doing so either from education or alternative professional industries is no mean feat. For Canaki, she notes it was her natural curiosity that sent her tumbling down the rabbit hole. It’s an experience she looks back on nostalgically: “It happened very naturally. I fell in love with the industry. I fell in love with the idea, the dynamics and the mechanics of everything. It sparked a tidal wave of interest in me, and I wanted to learn more. “I dedicated all my free time into reading everything I could find online. Over time, the more I learned and the more I experienced, I became increasingly reaffirmed that I was where I was supposed to be. Gaming also fit well with my aspiration to be in business and to do so at C-level. Ultimately business is business, whichever industry it is in. I suppose I found a lot of common ground with the industry – over the years you begin to meet so many different people and it all becomes very exciting.”
Starting out as one of a handful of people in a business now 500+ employees strong, Canaki’s inquisitive nature paid off as she helped shape Bragg Gaming into the powerhouse it is today. After spending eight years as an operations manager, she eventually ended her time with the company as Director of Business, iGaming platform and services. Steering such a sizeable ship within an industry that was, at the time, growing at incomprehensible speed – let alone guiding it through a global pandemic – is an effort that could only be described as gargantuan. Canaki, however, doesn’t see it that way: “Obviously, there was a lot of hard work. But they were nine very happy years, and happiness breeds success – which is something that, in the end, we enjoyed a lot of. Especially in those last years after we went public, we started to grow very quickly; and it was a truly lovely and memorable time – but I wanted more.”
The spirit of adventure is something that is increasingly evident in Canaki as our conversation continues. After being with Bragg from the start, Canaki decided it was time to pivot back to another B2C venture – and another start-up. “It’s funny, my whole career I’ve spent jumping between B2B and B2C one after another.”
It’s at this point in the conversation that my suspicions of a Maltese harbourside backdrop are confirmed as Canaki informs me this was the point she relocated to Sliema – proudly giving me a closer view of the sun-drenched coastal scene on the other side of her office window. Settling back from my much-needed virtual serotonin boost, Canaki reflects on revelling in the B2C challenge – especially as it had been so different to what had become a large-scale B2B position at Bragg. She does, however, admit a slight preference for the latter: “We started completely from scratch again, there was no office, nothing. It was a fantastic challenge and I enjoyed the experience but, when another opportunity came along, I followed by heart back towards the B2B side of things.
“That’s when I joined Aspire Global, just before the NeoGames acquisition and after the sale of the B2C business. Because of that transaction, my primary goal at the company was to make sure they shifted mindset from a B2C company to a B2B company.”
When it comes to rebranding, there is no in-between. You either do it right or you fail
Counting experiences, not years
When casting an eye back over her career, Canaki also explains how she has found it helpful to ignore the constraints of time as a concept as much as possible: “I suppose I spent around two years with Aspire – which later became NeoGames Global. But I honestly can never say exactly how much time I spent in any role or company because I prefer not to count in years, months or days; but rather in experiences.” If it was experience Canaki was looking for, she certainly found it within this role. Having seen Aspire Global turn into NeoGames Global, Canaki went on to oversee a second transaction when Aristocrat came in to acquire NeoGames in 2024 for $1.2bn. “Then, iGP came along.”
Having walked through her entire career journey up to her current position, Canaki stops to consider the experience of taking a trip down memory lane, “it makes me feel proud, nostalgic, appreciative and incredibly happy. Every single person that I met on this journey and every company I worked for brought me to where I am today. It’s almost as difficult to condense the story as it is to condense the emotions telling it evokes – but all those emotions are definitely good ones.” Lessons and are an important theme Canaki carries in her life. As an extension, there appears to be a direct bridge that ties together the gap between personal and professional experiences,intertwining in what she views as a balance that could either be viewed as perfect, or scarcely existent in the short term.
“What I mean is I’m not sure I believe in a short-term balance between work and life, or personal and professional,” Canaki explains. “I do believe in a work-life balance, but over a much longer period of time. This is something I personally came to terms with when I realised it’s a lot more of a choice than a balance. You choose what to do at a given point of time based on whatever parameters are relevant for the situation. This mindset is freeing because it stops you from thinking about the bigger picture so much, allowing you to focus on what is right in front of you.
“Professionally, when I joined iGP, I had a whole company in front of me. With that in mind I made the choice to dedicate the first six months to getting to know the people, then the products, then the clients and slowly after that diving in a little deeper to learn how to lead these sectors within the business. Following that, it then became a process of learning how to dictate the direction and feeling for where the company needed to go. Once you’re at that point, you’re then able to wrap all the people, products and client expertise around everything to pull that vision together. In a nutshell, that was my first six months.”
One thing at a time is a key and evidently effective approach for Canaki, something she equates to her love of golf outside work: “It’s always only about the next shot. You have a goal. You see the flag. And the only tactics that are relevant are the ones for the next shot. You need to forget about what came before and what might be ahead of you… because if you carry that mindset, you’re going to fail, and it’s the same in business. This is what we’ve been doing with iGP. One ball at a time. Much like golf, business is one of those sports you play against yourself. You don’t play against anyone else. This require a tremendous amount of discipline and psychological stamina, which I also think is extremely important in any business, to be successful.”
Nothing to fear
Looking back over the most important days in a lifetime, wedding days and birthdays spring to mind amid a swirl of New Years Eve, Christmas and related celebratory memories. Within this calibre of importance – if not personally, then certainly professionally – sits the day of one’s graduation. Be it school or college, the day you leave education is a big one. Terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure, graduation days truly represent the first lease of a new life stretching ahead.
It’s natural, then, for a conversation centred around professional life to eventually land on the memory of Canaki’s college graduation. She recalls it as she notes that just days before our interview, she had been watching Roger Federer give his now famous Commencement Address at the Dartmouth 2024 college graduation ceremony. Federer notes that throughout his career, he only won 54% of the points he played – a lower-than-expected percentage for what many consider to be the greatest male player in the history of tennis.
This statistic is the centrepiece of Federer’s moving speech, used to emphasise the normality of frequent failure – and the importance of focusing on one thing at a time. This sentiment echoes Canaki’s own previously noted disposition, as she details that fear of failure is a mindset that has no part to play in any success story: “If I could speak to myself at my graduation, I would love to tell myself to be less afraid. I graduated from university at the age of 21. When you’re that young, you don’t have the confidence that comes with time and experience; you harbour a lot more fear, more so of the unknown than the fear of failure, specifically.”
This lesson, Canaki explains, is something that has become important to her position as a leader, especially one who has had to steer a company like iGP through such transformative recent change, with big plans on the horizon. She is, though, quick to note that she could by no means do it alone: “Over the past two years the whole team has been incredible. We have all put in so much effort across so many vital campaigns, and these are the key things that make iGP what it is today. For one, in that time we’ve invested into rewriting our platform completely, changing it to a totally different system that brings scalability and speed. Honestly, the whole team – God bless their souls – have shown such amazing dedication.” It is not just the team Canaki notes as a key driver to iGP’s overall vision, however, “it’s also the clients – they cannot be ignored.
“Another project, although not our newest product anymore, was iGP’s iGaming deck. That is something I still enjoy reflecting on and take an enormous amount of pride out of that project. We talk to our partners and see the feedback from our clients on how this product helps them reach their potential, how it helps their business plans, shapes their campaigns… how it makes them re-think their strategies and how much easier it makes all of the above for them compared to the systems they were using before. That’s a massive reward for us. We don’t build products to feed our own ego and have them sit on the shelf. We build products for the users, for the operators and, ultimately, for the players. This process is what makes it all the more rewarding to see us help enable other people’s success.”
Since taking the helm at iGP, Canaki’s array of projects have encompassed a diverse spread of technological and gambling business sectors, with the most recent being the aforementioned foray into lottery, alongside propelling the company into a business-to-government world with which it was previously unfamiliar. The shift sparked something of a rebrand for iGP, which Canaki describes as a “transformational journey,” continuing, “it’s not only about the colours or the logo, but also about the messaging, the narrative and how the internal personnel within the company come to view the business.” The conclusion of this particular project, Canaki explains, led to her most memorable experience with the supplier.
“As a company, iGP has offices all over Europe and one in Venezuela, too. Then, on top, you have people who work remotely. Altogether, the team is now over 200 people. After the conclusion of all these projects I put together a big group call with everyone in the company to say thank you for all the hard work, and to just express my personal gratitude for getting all of this work over the line. During the call, my screen became flooded with positive reactions and emojis and it made me incredibly emotional. It was basically the whole company sending these things through. That was my favourite moment.
“That tremendous support from everyone was worth more to me than anything else and meant more than any award possibly could. I’m a very strong believer that anything is possible, but only if you have the right people around you. And it is the people at iGP that make this company, as well as that moment in particular, so special.”
Here to stay
Of course, one of the most crucial, complex and often under-appreciated facets of a CEOs job is ensuring that a given company remains creative in a compliant manner. With regulations evolving at breakneck speed, especially in the European market, Canaki composed yet pensive response to being asked her opinion on the future of EU regulation is one that breeds yet even more food for thought: “The EU iGaming market will continue to grow, but regulation is set to become even tougher, with stricter rules, higher compliance requirements and increased pressure from national regulators, including changes to taxation regimes. Ideally, we would see greater consolidation at an EU-wide level, but in my view, we are a far way from that.”
Few have the time, drive or attention to commit to more than one ordinary job at a time. Managing a company is a different ballgame, entirely. Yet, between industry conferences, meetings, managing roadmaps and all the many additional facets of her job as iGP CEO, Canaki has found a way to professionalise an alternative passion.
“There are people who ask me how I find the time on top of being iGP CEO, a wife and a mother to take on any more business. I know there is a saying, ‘where there’s a will there’s a way.’ I suppose that is just it, and I have a big passion for skincare – so I work as a Co-Founder of a company that we started three years ago in the skincare industry – completely different to gaming. We produce luxury skincare, mostly within the anti-aging bracket – although but we like to call it ‘well-aging.’ basically. That is a big passion of mine, too.”
Among all this, Canaki’s plans for iGP’s future remain vibrant and alive. When asked what is in the pipeline in the coming months and years, her answer is comically succinct: “a lot!” In that case, no further questions!
Jokes aside, Canaki underlines that she feels the company is now more powerful than ever – and is keen to emphasise that iGP is ready to take on the market in a way it hasn’t attempted before: “I believe we’re here now in 2026 to taken on a portion of the market that we think we deserve. The whole journey of this company over the last decade has led to this moment and I feel very excited. I think we all do. “We have taken all the correct and necessary steps to build a new ecosystem that is designed in a very modular, flexible and scalable way that will be capable of catering to tier one businesses in any jurisdiction – and around any regulations – with ease.
“Long story short, we are confident – and we’re here to stay.”
