SlotBets Explained: Why BETBY is betting on a new iGaming category

BETBY recently introduced SlotBet Games, a new category positioned between sportsbook and casino, with BETBY SlotBets as its first product. Built around 15-second rounds linked directly to live sporting action, SlotBets combines real sports with familiar casino mechanics including reels, combinations and multipliers. But BETBY’s ambition goes beyond adding another engagement feature to its sportsbook, the supplier wants to establish an entirely new way of playing sports. SBC News spoke with Kirill Nekrasov, Head of Innovation and R&D at BETBY, about the thinking behind SlotBets, why basketball became its first real-sports application, comparisons with microbetting, the commercial benefits for operators and the risks involved in trying to create a new iGaming category from scratch. You have described SlotBet Games as a completely new category, which is a big claim. What makes this something genuinely new rather than simply another sportsbook feature with casino-style presentation? Image: BETBY I understand the question because everybody says their new product is innovative, and we are quite careful with that. For us, the distinction is in where the product sits. This is not a traditional sportsbook product presented with nicer graphics, and it is not a casino game where sport is just being used as a visual theme. The actual live sporting event powers the gameplay. We are taking what happens on the court or on the field and translating those events into a slot-style experience in real time. The player gets reels, combinations, multipliers and very short rounds, but the combination lines are determined by the sport. That is why we started using the term SlotBet Games. We needed a name because internally we realised that neither “sports betting” nor “casino” really described what we were building anymore. For example, I think Crash Games are a useful comparison. Crash Games started as a particular mechanic, but over time developed its own recognisable gameplay, terminology and player expectations, becoming a category in its own right. That is the case with SlotBet Games as well. The philosophy behind it is to ‘slotify’ sports betting, and we call the act of playing it slotbetting. BETBY SlotBets is the first product built around that idea. Why was bridging sportsbook and casino the starting point? Because operators have been trying to cross-sell those audiences for a very long time, and it is still difficult. You can put a casino tab next to a sportsbook tab, but that does not mean the player naturally moves between these two distinctive verticals because they are completely different experiences. A casino player is used to something very immediate: the objective is obvious, the cycle is short and within seconds you know the outcome. Then that same player enters a sportsbook and suddenly there are handicaps, totals, dozens of markets, odds formats and terminology they may never have seen before. Our goal was to remove that friction. If somebody likes sport but comes from a casino background, why should we require them to become a sportsbook expert first? At the same time, the sportsbook itself is changing because we are competing for the same attention as TikTok, YouTube, streaming platforms and mobile games. People are used to continuous entertainment, so the second part of the thinking was: how do we make following a live match continuously interactive rather than having long periods where the player is simply waiting? SlotBets came from those two problems meeting each other. So how does a 15-second SlotBet actually work? It is a very intuitive process. You set your stake, press Spin, and the next 15 seconds of the live match determine the result. Those 15 seconds are split into three five-second windows, one for each reel. Each reel lands on the highest-value event that happens during its window, whether that is a three-pointer, two-pointer, miss, foul or even no action at all. At the end of the 15 seconds, the three reels form your combination. Matching two symbols creates a payout, while matching all three produces a higher one, with the current top prize reaching x500. That is the key difference: the slot result is not random. The real basketball action builds the reels in real time and determines the outcome. You even treat “nothing happened” as an outcome. Why? Because if you want to turn the whole match into gameplay, you cannot only assign value to spectacular moments. Traditional sports betting naturally puts huge importance on goals, points or final results, but a live event also contains plenty of quieter intervals. In SlotBasketball, if nothing happens during one of the five-second reel windows, that reel lands on none. And none is not simply an empty result. It has its own value in the paytable, so matching two or three none symbols can still produce a payout. It sounds like a small mechanic, but philosophically it is very important. We want the entire match to have gameplay value, including the moments where, from a traditional betting perspective, nothing happened. Basketball is the first real sport. Why did you start there? Basketball is perfect for proving the concept because there is constant activity. Possessions change very quickly and you have two-point attempts, three-point attempts, misses, rebounds, turnovers, fouls, free throws, you name it. Something meaningful is happening all the time, so a 15-second window naturally has a lot of content. But one of the most interesting things we discovered was actually the pauses, since basketball games feature a high number of pauses and interruptions relative to their actual playing time. In SlotBasketball, stoppages can become part of the gameplay through the Pause Bonus. If eligible stoppage time accumulates during the round and reaches 30 seconds in total, the player’s payout is multiplied by x1.2. That captures the SlotBets idea quite well. A made shot has value, a miss has value, a foul has value, a quiet window can have value, and even a stoppage can have value. We are trying to gamify the full rhythm of the match rather than only the headline events. Why slots specifically? Why not build the experience around another casino mechanic? Slots have probably the lowest learning curve in casino. People understand reels, matching combinations and multipliers, you do not need to give somebody a long tutorial before they can interact with the product. That was very important for us because the whole objective is reducing friction. If we created another complicated mechanic and then asked casino users to learn that before they could enter sports, we would simply be replacing one barrier with another. And slots also have a very particular rhythm. There is anticipation, resolution and then immediately another opportunity, which maps extremely well onto what we wanted to achieve with live sports. The 15-second rounds immediately invite comparisons with microbetting. How different are the two products really? There is definitely some common ground because both are about very short windows and very immediate events, so I think the comparison is completely fair. But the mindset is different. With microbetting, you are still fundamentally behaving like a sportsbook player: you choose a market, you look at the price and you predict an isolated event. SlotBets turns that sequence into gameplay. You are interacting with reels, combinations and multipliers. Multiple things happening within the live event can contribute to the result, and even “nothing happens” can become meaningful. That is much closer to casino behaviour. So I would say that while microbetting makes sports betting faster, SlotBets is trying to change the form in which the player experiences sports betting altogether. In part two of SBC News’ chat with Kirill Nekrasov, we touch on the commercial opportunities that operators can glean from SlotBets and merging both sportsbook and slots.