BETBY recently launched BETBY SlotBets, the first product within SlotBet Games, a newly created iGaming content category designed to slotify sports betting by combining real-time sporting action with familiar casino mechanics. G3 spoke with Sergey Tsukanov, Chief Sportsbook Officer at BETBY, about how the product fits into the sportsbook ecosystem, the value it can create for operators and what it says about the wider convergence of sports betting and casino.

Sergey, BETBY describes SlotBet Games as an entirely new iGaming category rather than a sportsbook feature or casino game. What makes SlotBets sufficiently different to justify defining a new category around it?

For us, it comes down to what actually powers the experience. SlotBets is not a traditional sportsbook market with a casino-style interface, and it is not a slot using sport as a theme. The real sporting event itself drives the gameplay.

We take what is happening on the court or field and translate it into short, slot-inspired rounds in real time. You have reels, combinations, multipliers and rapid outcomes, but the result is determined by the sport. That is why we talk about SlotBet Games as a category. We are creating a recognisable type of gameplay with its own mechanics, terminology and player behaviour. The concept is to slotify sports betting, and we call the act of playing it slotbetting.

Crash Games are probably the clearest comparison. They started as an unusual mechanic and eventually became a recognised category in their own right. That is the ambition here as well.

SlotBets takes a live sporting event and turns it into a series of 15-second, slot-inspired betting rounds. What led you to the idea of “slotifying” live sport, and what does that reveal about how player expectations are changing?

There were really two things behind it. The first was the gap between sportsbook and casino. Operators have both verticals sitting next to each other, but the audiences do not always move naturally between them. A casino player can enter a sportsbook and suddenly face odds, handicaps, totals and terminology they may never have dealt with before. We wanted to make that transition much more intuitive.

The second thing was attention. Sportsbooks are no longer competing only with other betting products, they are competing with TikTok, YouTube, mobile games, streaming and every other platform designed to keep people continuously engaged. That changes expectations because users are increasingly used to short cycles, immediate feedback and constant interaction.

So SlotBets brings those behaviours into live sports without losing the sport itself. You still follow the real match, but every 15 seconds there is another interaction and another potential outcome.

Sportsbook and casino have traditionally existed alongside one another without necessarily sharing the same audience. Why has it proved so difficult to move players between the two?

Because the user behaviour is very different. Casino is generally immediate and intuitive: you spin, something happens, you see the result. A sportsbook can require much more knowledge and decision-making before the player even places the bet.

So if you take a casino-first player and simply send them into a conventional sportsbook, you have not really solved the cross-sell problem. You have just moved them into an unfamiliar environment.

SlotBets tries to create a bridge between these two worlds because the player gets familiar casino mechanics, but the content is real sport. For operators, that is very valuable because, instead of asking the user to make a hard jump from one vertical to another, you are creating something that naturally sits between the two.

With SlotBasketball, baskets, misses, fouls, stoppages and even periods where nothing happens can become part of the gameplay. How important was it to turn almost every moment of a live event into something the player can engage with?

It is fundamental to the product. If you only give value to baskets or major events, you still have a lot of passive time and we wanted the whole rhythm of the match to matter.

In SlotBasketball, each 15-second round is divided into three five-second windows, one for each reel. Each reel reflects the highest-value event that happens during that period, whether it is a three-pointer, two-pointer, miss, foul or even no action at all. And “nothing happened” is actually a valid symbol with its own place in the paytable, so a quiet five-second window can still contribute to a winning combination.

We took it even further to the point where even stoppages can have value. Through the Pause Bonus, eligible stoppage time can build towards an additional multiplier. That is very different from the way we normally think about sports betting, where attention tends to concentrate on the big moments. With SlotBets, every single part of the match becomes gameplay.

The 15-second rounds and rapid outcomes feel closer to TikTok, mobile gaming and short-form entertainment than traditional sports betting. How consciously did those forms of entertainment influence the development of SlotBets?

Very consciously, although we were not trying to copy any particular platform. What interested us was the behaviour those platforms have created. People are used to something happening constantly. They scroll, react, move to the next piece of content, get immediate feedback and continue. There are very few moments where the experience asks them to sit and wait.

However, sports betting has traditionally been quite different because you can place a bet and then wait a very long time for the result. There is still a place for that, of course, but we think there is also demand for a more continuous form of sports entertainment.

SlotBets is built precisely around that idea. Short cycles, very little friction and frequent interaction, but all connected to an event the player already wants to watch.

There is an obvious commercial incentive to create faster cycles and more continuous interaction. How do you make sure SlotBets remains enjoyable rather than simply increasing wagering frequency?

By starting with the experience rather than the frequency. If the only objective was to create more bets per minute, like microbetting, there are much easier ways to do that. That said, the product has to make sense to the player first.

That is why simplicity was so important. You set your stake, press Spin and the real match builds the three reels over the next 15 seconds, meaning that the player can understand very quickly what is happening and why they won or lost.

On top of that, the sport also gives the experience natural variation. You are not repeating an identical loop because every 15-second window of a live match is different. From the operator side, of course, greater engagement, frequency and time spent on the platform are important benefits. But those should be the consequence of creating an experience users actually want to continue playing.

BETBY believes SlotBets could rethink the traditional match tracker. What does that opportunity look like for operators?

I think this is one of the most interesting commercial applications.

The traditional match tracker occupies a very valuable space on a sportsbook event page and it performs an important job because it tells the player what is happening, but it is fundamentally passive.

SlotBets can potentially use that same space to do both things: represent what is happening in the live event and, most of all, give the user something to interact with. That allows operators to turn an information-only area into a monetised part of the player journey without taking the user away from the match.

In fact, the opportunity is broader than sportsbooks. SlotBets can be integrated into sportsbook, casino or both through a lightweight iFrame, and the slot-style interface also gives it potential in retail casino environments. That flexibility is crucial because different operators will have different ideas about where the strongest value sits.

How far can the concept extend beyond basketball?

Basketball is particularly well suited to proving the concept because there is constant activity. If you look at football, for example, you can have longer periods where the ball is moving but nothing happens that you would necessarily define as a clear SlotBet event.

Basketball is different because every possession gives you something, whether it is two or three-point attempts, misses, fouls, turnovers, free throws – the event density is extremely high. But that does not mean the concept stops with basketball or is unfeasible for football, different sports simply require different mechanics.

Apart from traditional sports, we are also developing SlotBets for 24/7 esports content, including SlotSoccer, SlotCricket, SlotHockey and SlotPingPong. That gives operators another advantage because esports can complement real sports during off-hours, seasonal gaps or quieter periods in the live calendar. The important thing is not forcing exactly the same mechanic onto every sport, the SlotBet has to reflect the rhythm of the underlying event.

Does SlotBets point towards an even broader convergence between sportsbook, casino and interactive entertainment?

I think the boundaries are definitely becoming less rigid. Players do not necessarily care whether an experience sits under sportsbook or casino, what matters more is whether it is entertaining, intuitive and worth interacting with. That is part of what makes SlotBets interesting. A sportsbook player can look at it and see a new way of engaging with live sport, while a casino user can look at exactly the same product and recognise reels, combinations and multipliers.

For the operator, it can sit in a sportsbook, casino or potentially retail, there are multiple options. So I do think we are moving towards a market where the experience matters more than the label attached to the vertical. Sports betting will still be sports betting and casino will still be casino, but the most interesting product opportunities may increasingly sit in the space between them.

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