Year in Review: The best of 2021

As ambitious individuals and teams, professional success is what we strive for. But throughout another incredibly difficult year, the wellbeing of our people and positive impact on our communities often came first.?

Despite its many challenges, 2021 has just flown by. But before we start looking ahead to what’s possible in 2022, there is just time to celebrate the initiatives and memorable moments created by and for the inspiring teams at Catena Media.??

Look our 2021 review feature

February

Valentine’s Day is a chance to show appreciation for the people you value most. We showed ours by giving ‘Grow your own flowers’ packs to everyone at Catena, encouraging them to get growing and also share with us who their work valentine is.?

Appreciation isn’t just for Christmas and Valentine’s, and later in the month we launched ‘Probation Boxes’ to congratulate staff who have passed their probation period and become a full member of the Catena family.??

As most of our staff were working from home, our amazing chefs in Malta put together a digital Catena Cookbook. It’s full of simple but wonderful recipes that remind us how we couldn’t get through the day without the support of our kitchen crew. Thank you for keeping us happy and healthy!

March

It’s vital that we help our people continually evolve, and grow both professionally and personally. To this end, we launched the Gallup Strengths Finder initiative in collaboration with MadeYou, a training, and development consultancy in Malta. The resulting Catena StrengthsFinder programme gave any staff member access to personal assessments, coaching sessions and workshops, all designed to build skills and wellbeing.?

In an industry such as iGaming which is so reliant on regulation, up-to-date knowledge is an essential component of success. With the launch of a new monthly compliance newsletter, all of our staff are now well informed about new regulations, changes in law and best practices.

April

This year, we saw Easter not just as an excuse to satisfy our sweet tooth, but also to celebrate the diversity and cultures that make up our truly global network of teams. Each staff member received an Easter package containing traditional Easter treats from each region where Catena operates.?

May

In 2020, we launched the inaugural ‘Catena Connection Week’, a series of events designed to bring our worldwide teams together. This year, as Catena Media continued to grow and evolve, it was the right moment to give every team member a voice in the discussion on what we stand for as a business. The 2nd Catena Connection Week featured alignment talks, shared experiences which involved everyone in the creation of a new company mission, vision and values. As an organisation, we are now driven by values of Innovation, Accountability, Diversity, Integrity and Expertise.?

In another repeat of a successful previous initiative, we reran Catena Media’s Dragon’s Den, enabling staff to develop their creativity and capabilities. Inspired by the famous TV show, our Dragon’s Den gives anyone the chance to pitch a business-related innovation to a select panel of Dragons. The five most promising ideas were shortlisted, and their creators given support and coaching to develop and present a business case.?

Everyone across the company has been acutely aware of the challenges facing parents during the pandemic, with mums in particular having to balance the needs of young children, home schooling, home working and the health of their families. On Mother’s Day, all mums at Catena received a takeaway voucher as a small token of our appreciation.

As our mission and values evolved, so too did the way we present our communications, with quarterly reports and presentations redesigned to reflect the new brand guidelines and to improve and be more readable.?

June

As Catena Media’s work takes place in the digital world, it is all the more important that we make a difference to our local communities. Our Serbian office supported BELhospice’s ‘Hike and bike4BELhospice’ initiative, promoting outdoor activities such as hiking and biking. Funds raised in this charity action will enable the BELhospice center to offer free services to oncology patients and their family members in Serbia.

Just as we recognised the huge challenges facing mums this year, so too was the contribution of dads, who also received a takeaway voucher on Father’s Day.?

After our recent growth in the North American market, we were proud to see Catena Media’s CEO Michael Daly named by Business Insider as one of the 27 power players behind the US gambling industry.?

July

We took another opportunity to support our community, sponsoring the Royal Malta Yacht Club and RMYC Sailing School with €15,000 going towards six new sets of dinghy sails and a rescue boat.?

Since 2017, our Ask Gambler brand has hosted the annual Ask Gambler Awards. The ceremony gathers players and industry experts from around the globe to celebrate the best of the best in the iGaming industry. This year’s awards raised €65,300 for charity, Thank you everyone!?

August

In another community initiative, Catena Media contributed towards a new 21-foot rigid hull rescue boat for St Johns Corps, Malta.?

September

We launched Catena Media’s Volunteer Days, to give all staff the opportunity to help others through paid volunteer days. The initiative is part of the Catena Cares programme, designed to empower staff who wish to play their part in supporting local communities.

October

Once again we supported Breast Cancer Awareness month and the Pink October initiative with a donut decoration challenge. Everyone at Catena Media received a kit to customise donuts. For every decorated donut, €2 was donated to charities. Together, we decorated 460? donuts and raised €920 for the IARC.

In October we road tested a concept that we hope will be successful for years to come, as our Communication and Cyber Security team collaborated during Security Awareness Month to share knowledge internally and externally via social media that can help us all stay safe online.?

As Catena Media grows, the need for new talent grows as well. Recommendations and referrals from existing staff members has always been a rich source of new talent, and we looked to build on that with our new ‘Hot Jobs’ email, now a monthly email designed to encourage staff to refer outstanding candidates for vital vacant roles.??

This year our talent team has hired 200 high-calibre new recruits to support our expansion in every region, particularly in North America, and we cannot wait for the next phase of growth in 2022.

November

When a new Instagram trend took the world by storm, we could not miss the chance to have some fun and do some good. Millions of Instagram users shared photos of their pets in exchange for planting a tree. Yet no one knew who would be planting the trees, or where they would be planted. Enter Catena Media! For every pet pic shared by a staff member, we would donate to the More:Trees organisation, ensuring that five trees were planted. Thanks to our love of our pets, we have ensured that 410 trees have now been planted by More:Trees In Madagascar, Haiti & Kenya.

We love Movember, and this year our team members received a kit featuring a selection of mustaches stickers. For every selfie, Catena Media would donate $5. Thanks to the hairy efforts of our staff, we raised a total of $1610 for the Movember campaign to raise awareness around men’s health.

December

Despite Covid-19 and the uncertainty around restrictions, Catena Media managed to organise a Christmas party for the Malta office. Unfortunately, other locations were not so fortunate, so to make up for it we sent Christmas gifts to everyone else across the globe so they could enjoy a movie night, no matter where they are.?

Catena Media organized the fifth annual SEOIT Conference in Serbia, this time a virtual edition attended by 170 people from Serbia. Our SEO experts led discussions on scaling SEO activity, organizing the content in the topic clusters to increase the organic traffic and the challenges of SEO project management for agencies and in-house teams.

We are also excited to have selected the class of 2022 for the Catena Academy, a leadership training programme where 12 of our colleagues will develop skills required to be an inspiring and effective leader, that will further their careers.?

The start of a year is the perfect time to reflect on the achievements of our teams, particularly those recognised by our peers. This year Catena Media won two industry awards, Affiliate of the Year at the EGR North America Awards and Casino Affiliate of the Year at the SBC Awards. “This is the recognition of the formidable work and dedication of all of our people across our different locations and departments” said Catena Media CHRO Fiona Ewins Brown.