Build First, Shout Later: How PRace Wants to End Gaming's Sales vs. Marketing War

November 2, 2026

Launched in stealth in 2024 by ex-BetGames COO Aiste Garneviciene and Nick Brown, B2B agency PRace now serves 18 gaming suppliers with a pitch built on measurable sales pipeline, not press clippings.

Most marketing agencies launch with a splash. PRace did the opposite. When the B2B marketing and PR agency entered the gaming sector in 2024, its founders spent the first year in complete stealth: no announcements, no self-promotion, and invitations to industry events turned down. Two years on, the London–Vilnius agency employs nearly 20 people across 18 client accounts, and its pitch is a direct challenge to how gaming suppliers have traditionally bought PR: show the sales pipeline, not just the press clippings.

"Build first, shout about it after"

Staying invisible is an unusual choice for a business whose job is to win attention. Brown says it was deliberate. "We knew we were sitting on valuable IP that no-one had brought to the industry before," he said, describing a philosophy the founders link to their shared Lithuanian background: "Build first, succeed and shout about it after. [In those] first 12 months – zero marketing, zero announcements, zero mentions."

When PRace finally broke cover at NEXT.io Valletta in May 2025, it already had 11 active clients and a 13-person team. The agency has stayed self-financed by choice, aiming to grow without outside capital.

Ending the war between sales and marketing

The agency's core argument is that gaming suppliers waste money on PR that cannot be linked to revenue. Rather than selling only to marketing departments, PRace pitched to both chief marketing officers and chief commercial officers from the start, promising "exact ROI on spend".

"It's like a constant war between sales and marketing across the industry," said Garneviciene. "Sales blames marketing for not creating enough leads, and marketing blames sales for dropping the ball on follow-up."

Her view comes from experience on the client side. Before PRace she spent more than a decade at live dealer studio BetGames, as a founding team member and chief operating officer, helping to grow it from a Vilnius start-up into a brand live on four continents. When her commercial team once proposed hiring a traditional PR agency on a monthly retainer, she questioned the value: "A few interviews and a weekly recap email of published links? As an executive, I needed to see how that spend was translating into sales pipeline, booked meetings and commercial deals."

Brown arrived from enterprise technology marketing at the global agency Metia, where he worked on accounts such as BMW and Intel. He argues that gaming now needs the same discipline. "Back in the day, it was just about making noise and spending endless budgets," he said. "Today, escalating compliance and regulatory overheads, as well as tighter operator margins means every line item is scrutinised."

Establish, Engage, Convert

PRace's offer is built on a three-stage model designed by Garneviciene. It starts with broad market positioning, moves on to tightly segmented retargeting of operator prospects, and ends by handing already "warmed-up" decision-makers to the client's sales team to close.

LinkedIn is the main tool, used as a targeted acquisition channel rather than a noticeboard. In a regulated sector it offers direct access to operator executives, but Garneviciene warns that badly run campaigns burn money: "If you aren't micro-segmenting your target operator accounts and running structured retargeting funnels, you are just burning budget on vanity traffic."

The trade show trap

Both founders are critical of how suppliers spend on exhibitions. "Brands spend enormous budgets building beautiful stands for a three-day show, expecting footfall to convert into revenue automatically," said Garneviciene. In her view, companies neglect the lead generation before the event and the follow-up afterwards.

Brown offered an example: ahead of one major show, a three-month targeted campaign for a top-tier platform client booked 73 operator meetings before the client's commercial team had even arrived on the exhibition floor.

On artificial intelligence, the agency is more cautious than much of the industry. PRace uses automation for back-office tasks such as data collation and market mapping, but Garneviciene argues that heavy reliance on AI-written copy has produced a flood of near-identical trade marketing, making human-led strategy and authentic executive positioning more valuable.

Built on a shared Baltic bond

Garneviciene has spent her executive career in Vilnius, and Brown lived in the Lithuanian capital from 2005 to 2011, a connection that predates their partnership. "Nick's years living in Vilnius meant we shared that exact same cultural shorthand and relentless work ethic from day one," she said. The agency avoids expensive central London offices, recruiting specialist and multilingual talent across Europe instead.

With compliance costs rising across Europe and suppliers eyeing expensive expansions into Latin America and North America, Brown expects demand for measurable marketing to keep growing. "Marketing channels evolve, but our core thesis never changes," he said. "We integrate directly into a client's commercial engine, we generate qualified pipeline and we deliver measurable ROI on money spent."

Why the pitch resonates with suppliers

PRace's message lands at a time when gaming suppliers are under pressure to justify every euro they spend. Regulation is tightening across Europe, operators are squeezing supplier margins, and many B2B companies are trying to expand into Latin America and North America at the same time. In that climate, a marketing budget that produces coverage but cannot be tied to new contracts is an easy target for cuts.

The agency's growth suggests that at least part of the market agrees. A self-funded firm reaching 18 clients in about two years, including well-known platform and content providers, is a sign that suppliers are willing to pay for an approach that treats marketing as part of the sales process rather than a separate activity.

The bigger test will come as PRace grows. Promising measurable returns is easier with a small, hand-picked client list than across dozens of accounts in different markets. For now, though, its founders have turned their own story into a case study: they stayed silent until they had results, and only then started talking.