BETBY has built a reputation as one of the industry’s most innovation-driven sportsbooksuppliers, with products spanning proprietary esports, prediction markets and 24/7 chess.

Its latest launch, SlotBetsGames, is arguably its most ambitious innovation yet, bridging sportsbook and casino through real-time, slot-stylesports betting. At the centre of many of those ideas is Kirill Nekrasov, Head of Innovation and R&D at BETBY.

As BETBY’s Head of Innovation and R&D, your role is essentially to think about what comes next. Have you always been someone who questions the conventional way of doing things and tries to anticipate where the industry is heading?

From the moment I entered the betting industry, my natural curiosity drove me to look for ways to push products further. For example, early in my career, I was working for a small B2C betting brand when a new version of CS:GO was released.

I remember starting to take notes by hand on paper, mapping out which in-game events could actually be turned into betting markets. Just a week later, I was the first in the world to offer live betting on CS:GO at the 2014 Cologne Major.

Since then, I’ve approached every product in much the same way: what else can we build that genuinely excites and adds value for the user? For me, more than anything else, innovation means spotting things others overlook and building around needs that may not yet be obvious to the rest of the industry.

Looking back at your professional journey, which experiences have most shaped the way you approach innovation today?

That early experience in esports had a huge impact on how I think today. At the time, there were no ready-made data feeds, no standardised frameworks and often no competitors whose odds you could even look at for reference. We had to build everything from first principles.

That taught me how to operate in complete uncertainty, trust my analytical intuition and create products where no playbook exists.
I still rely on that same mindset today whenever we move into an unfamiliar area.

We have done it with proprietary esports, prediction markets, 24/7 chess and now with SlotBets. The products are very different, but the principle is the same: don’t wait for a blueprint — create it.

SlotBets is probably BETBY’s most ambitious innovation since the company was founded. How did the original idea come about?

It is actually a funny story. We were originally in a brainstorming session working on a chess betting product. At one point, we got so carried away expanding and scaling the concepts that we completely forgot about chess and started applying those mechanics to traditional sports. That eventually became SlotBets.

The development journey was longer than for any other innovation we have undertaken so far, because there were so many different elements that had to come together. But it was worth every bit of effort, because we managed to create something genuinely different.

SlotBets challenges the traditional boundary between sportsbook and casino. What had to be approached differently to make that concept work?

Fundamentally, not as much as you might think from the user perspective. At the end of the day, sportsbook and casino are both different ways of presenting iGaming content.

The real shift happened underneath the product. We had to rethink risk management, adapt the traditional betting flow and re-engineer event creation from scratch. Even the way we process live data had to be completely reconsidered because SlotBets uses signals and data fields that traditional sports betting models were never built around. So the final experience has to feel simple and intuitive, but there is a considerable amount of new infrastructure behind that simplicity.

What does SlotBets allow operators to do that was difficult to achieve before?

It gives operators another way to use sport to compete for attention against modern digital entertainment.
Sportsbooks are not only competing with other sportsbooks anymore.

They are competing with TikTok, casual gaming, casino products and every other digital experience fighting for the same few minutes of a user’s attention.

It also opens up a different entry point into sports betting. Traditional concepts such as Asian handicaps, totals or more complex market structures are second nature to experienced bettors, but they can be intimidating for younger or more casual users.
SlotBets keeps real sport at the centre while presenting it through mechanics that feel more intuitive and visually familiar.

That creates a stronger bridge between sportsbook and casino audiences and lowers the barrier for users who may not engage naturally with a traditional sportsbook interface.

Do you see SlotBets Games as the beginning of a wider direction for BETBY? What comes next?

We have only revealed a very small part of what is coming. There are several concepts being developed behind the scenes that continue exploring the space between sportsbook and casino and challenge some of the traditional assumptions around how sports betting should look and behave.

I cannot reveal the exact details just yet, but we are pushing that direction much further. You will be hearing about it soon.

When you look three to five years ahead, where do you think the sportsbook experience still has the greatest room for reinvention?

That is an incredibly difficult question because this industry moves so quickly that even forecasting six months ahead can be challenging. Prediction markets are a good example. Not long ago, they were relatively peripheral to sportsbook conversations, but today, operators are looking seriously at how they fit into both fixed-odds and P2P environments. Esports is another example of how quickly market dynamics and momentum can change.

Because of that, I do not think foresight in R&D is about making one perfect prediction about where the industry will be in five years. It is about building the infrastructure, team and culture that allow you to react, adapt and innovate faster than everyone else when those shifts happen.

Ultimately, what would you like BETBY to be known for when people talk about innovation in the coming years?

I want BETBY to be known as the provider that consistently delivers exceptional, genuinely unique products. More than anything, I want us to be the company that sees massive opportunities precisely where everyone else sees problems. That is probably the best definition of innovation for me.