SPARK 2026 Recap: SEO vs AI Search, and the Affiliate Question Nobody Answered

The same question came from the floor at SPARK 2026 again and again: with the new rules from regulators and lawmakers, how can a streamer, a blogger or a gambling site owner work with brands and affiliate programs legally in Europe? After 2 days and 13 sessions, nobody on stage had a ready answer.

SPARK (Software, Payments, Affiliates, Revenue Kickoff) was the first edition of Eventus International's summit, held on October 19-20, 2026, at Hotel Marinela in Sofia. Below: what each day covered, the SEO argument that ran through day 2, the affiliate question, what Bulgarian law actually says about it (I read the text), and why "wait until January" is more honest advice than it sounds.

SPARK 2026 at a glance

A small, Bulgaria-focused summit with a programme tilted toward regulation. Operators, affiliates, payment specialists, lawyers and tech vendors met for 2 days of panels, roundtables and keynotes, with a networking evening after day 1.

• Dates and venue: October 19-20, 2026, Hotel Marinela Sofia, Bulgaria
• Organiser: Eventus International, the company behind the SPiCE events
• Day 1, October 19: Product, Payments & Acquisition, 6 sessions
• Day 2, October 20: Scaling with Confidence, 7 sessions
• Chairperson: Robert Brassai (Sense4Gaming) opened both days

Day 1: crypto rules, retention and the EU AI Act

Day 1 was the operator's view of the market. Here's the programme as the organiser's recap lists it:

For an affiliate, the retention roundtable was the one to note. The question on stage was whether the industry is moving from chasing new players to keeping the ones it has. If operators really move budget from acquisition to retention, that's budget that used to pay for CPA. The rest of day 1 was legal and operational: crypto payments under MiCA, AI in marketing under the EU AI Act, land-based retail and a licence pitch from the Nevis regulator.

Day 2: the affiliate day

Day 2 was the one built for us, at least by its titles. SEO, affiliate partnerships and Bulgarian regulation all landed on October 20:

SEO after AI search: did anything really change?

The SEO argument ran through the whole of day 2. It started with the keynote on the "zero-click player" and continued in a panel literally called Post-SEO Acquisition Strategies. Underneath it was 1 question: is it true that SEO techniques haven't changed much since AI search arrived?

The "nothing much changed" side has Google on it. Google's own guide for site owners says: "The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode)." And then, in bold: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."

The other side says the techniques may be the same, but the prize isn't. Temelko Dechev put it this way after the Post-SEO panel:

And then there's the side that games it. Kalin Karakehayov of Seo.Domains runs GigaLinks, a service that, as he put it on the panel, "floods our network of 30,000 websites" with mentions of a client's brand. In his view, the authority classic SEO is built on barely counts in AI answers:

His example: 1 client got Google's AI Overview for "best cyber security consultant in Bulgaria" to recommend 7 companies, with all 7 sources pointing to the client's own website, where he wrote about his competitors. Earlier on the panel, Kalin noted that "there are no penalties for the moment for trying to get into LLM answers using brute force". His conclusion after the example: "Probably there will be some limitations in the future, but for now it's the wild west."

I think all of them are right for now, and that's the uncomfortable part for affiliates. The work Google asks for is the same: crawlable pages, useful content, links, a site people trust. The shortcut is new: mentions in volume, which AI answers trust more than they should until those limitations arrive. And either way, what changed is who gets the click. An AI answer can use your casino review and send the player straight to the brand, and an affiliate paid per player earns nothing from a mention without a click. The techniques survived AI search; the affiliate business model is what's being tested. So the pages worth building now are the ones a player still has to open: fresh bonus terms, tested withdrawal times, payment method checks, the details a summary flattens.

The question from the floor: how do affiliates work legally?

The sharpest question at SPARK didn't come from the stage. It came from the audience, and it came back in session after session: with the new rules from regulators and lawmakers, how can streamers, bloggers and gambling site owners legally work with brands and affiliate programs in Europe?

I heard 3 kinds of answers, and none of them was complete:

• Gambling brands steered the conversation to licensing their own brands. They were careful: they said they give bloggers the freedom to sort out their legal status themselves. They're also ready to take traffic from streams and blogs.
• Marketing and SEO agencies prefer to work with gambling brands as clients, not on affiliate terms, and the messy regulation is part of the reason.
• The regulator's side of the room advised waiting: for the elections and for January 2027. Aleksandar Popov, the former Director of Supervision of Gambling Activities at Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency, said that even the government doesn't know yet how the affiliate rules will work in practice.

The brands are waiting too, and they say so. Asked from the floor whether efbet would drop affiliates and influencers for deals with big platforms, Nicolo Valchev said that in Greece, where efbet is also licensed, "a few of the biggest" sports commentators already promote the brand. Bulgaria is a different story:

So the honest answer from SPARK is "nobody knows yet". But some of it can be known, because Bulgaria, the host country and the market most people in the room work with, has a law in force and a draft to replace it. I read both.

What Bulgarian law says, and what the draft would change

Bulgaria has had an affiliate licence since August 1, 2026, and a draft that would cancel it on January 1, 2027. Side by side:

The 10% is withheld by the operator, not paid by you. Under Art. 30a of the Gambling Act, the operator that accrues your commission keeps 10% of it and pays it to the National Revenue Agency (NRA) every month, by the 15th of the following month. The EUR 6,000 is yours to pay, by March 31 each year, or before you get the certificate if you're licensed later in the year.

The 10% replaces income tax on that commission. The same article says commission income on which the 10% has been paid isn't taxed again under the corporate or personal income tax acts, and the costs linked to it can't be deducted. In practice it's EUR 6,000 a year plus a flat 10% of gross commission.

A fake fixed fee is charged at 20%. If a sham deal hides a performance-linked commission, the variable part of the fee goes up from 10% to 20%. That's the line the agencies at SPARK walk: a real fee for a real service is outside the affiliate regime, a "fixed fee" that's really CPA or RevShare isn't.

Why "wait until January" is honest advice

On stage it sounded like a dodge. On paper it's the calendar. Here's where things stand on November 5:

• The elections are over. Bulgaria voted for a president on October 25, with a run-off on November 1.
• The draft hasn't moved in public. The Ministry of Finance's consultation closed on October 23 with 59 comments. The page still shows only the September version of the draft and no summary of the comments.
• Brussels asked the same question as the SPARK audience. On October 15, the European Commission asked Bulgaria whether the advertising ban in § 8 would apply to online services established in other EU countries and to online platforms under the Digital Services Act, and asked for a reply by October 28.
• January 1 is the date everything hangs on. If the draft passes as published, affiliate licences end that day, before the next EUR 6,000 annual fee falls due on March 31.

So an affiliate licensed in August paid EUR 6,000 for a licence that, under the draft, would live 5 months. Nobody at SPARK could promise the draft will change, and nobody could promise it won't. That's why Aleksandar Popov told the room to wait.

Payments and lawyers are looking past Bulgaria

The service side of the room was already thinking regionally. Law firms and payment consultants at SPARK were actively expanding into the Balkans and Bulgaria's neighbours: Romania, Greece, Hungary and Moldova. Companies from further away came to look too: a payment provider from Vietnam and a gambling brand from Venezuela were in Sofia to scout the Bulgarian market.

Greece is the neighbour Bulgarian brands already know. efbet opened its Greek site about 2 years ago and its affiliate program there 6-7 months ago, according to Nicolo Valchev. His read on the market:

For an affiliate, that region isn't 1 market. It's 5 rulebooks with 5 regulators, and if your Bulgarian plans freeze in January, the neighbours are the obvious next step. Check each GEO separately before you follow the payment providers in.

The venue: a session hall, a networking hall and peacocks

Eventus picked the location well. There was a comfortable hall for the sessions and a separate hall for networking, so conversations didn't have to compete with the panels. That suited the format the organisers were going for:

The best room, though, was outside. Next to the halls is a beautiful Japanese restaurant and garden. The hotel says the garden was modelled on the 400-year-old Japanese garden of Hotel New Otani in Tokyo. There's a lake with swans, geese and ducks, and peacocks walking around like they own the place. All of it sits on the grounds of the casino hotel, in the middle of Sofia. If you have to explain your chargeback rate to a payment provider, a pond with black swans is a softer backdrop than an expo floor.