After 935% growth in year one and their buying cycles shrinking from 100+ days to under 30, it tracks.

What’s remarkable isn’t just the speed—it’s how they engineered internal adoption without mandates.

“We didn’t mandate that you had to purchase through AWS Marketplace,” explained Mozammil Aslam, Director of Strategic Sourcing at Riot Games during the last AWS re:Invent. “We made AWS Marketplace the least path of resistance for new software requests.”

This isn’t a small buyer testing a new channel. Riot has 4,500 employees across 20+ offices, their EMEA entity alone reportedly had €1.85B in 2024 revenue.

When their Strategic Sourcing leader shares procurement strategy, alliance leaders should pay attention.

From Detective Work → Strategic Power

Their Marketplace transformation started with a painful realization: Riot’s procurement team was drowning in tactical vendor verification while engineers waited months for tools. InfoSec reviews alone consumed 4-6 weeks just validating basic certifications.

“We didn’t want to play detective to see if this SaaS vendor was legitimate or not,” explained Mozammil Aslam.

By leveraging marketplace’s pre-vetted suppliers with SOC 2 certifications readily available, procurement stopped hunting vendors and started doing what creates value: verifying whether tools solve real business problems and negotiating better terms.

The speed advantage compounds

Engineers launch trials immediately, validate requirements, and have tools ready before the old process would’ve completed InfoSec review. This prevents a costlier problem: shadow IT from engineers finding workarounds.

All-In on Marketplace

Most enterprises test marketplace cautiously. Riot went all-in. After their breakthrough in 2022, they saw triple-digit growth in 2023, another 20% in 2024 even as the base expanded massively.

They’re also expanding beyond SaaS into AI.

“We’re looking at machine learning models, purchasing containerized images,” Aslam revealed, signaling marketplace is becoming their default procurement layer for all technical assets.

The impact extends beyond large enterprises

Aslam suggested startups might benefit even more: “The capital that you would normally invest towards TPRM tools, you can leverage AWS Marketplace for these pre-vetted suppliers and reallocate that capital towards chasing the market opportunity.”

3 moves for ISV alliance leaders:

• Optimize listings to compress reviews —highlight certifications, compliance, security architecture, etc.

• Build frictionless trial paths on marketplace, so buyers can validate tools before formal procurement starts

• Enable your sales team to ask and answer questions “Can we buy this on marketplace?” - Riot’s procurement now asks this question for every new request

Where are your top enterprise accounts in their marketplace journey - and are you ready when they set a 90% target?

Source