SOFTSWISS Prediction markets for sportsbooks: What the first operator found after launch

N1 Bet was the first brand to go live with the company’s prediction markets.

Interview.- A new type of bettor has emerged, placing wagers on elections, economic shifts, and technological outcomes. Yet, most of that activity has remained outside traditional sportsbooks, with the value flowing beyond their reach.

N1 Bet is the first brand to go live with SOFTSWISS Prediction Markets, making an early call before this new P2P category settles into fixed-odds formats.

Alexander Kamenetskyi, head of operations at SOFTSWISS Sportsbook, built the product that brings the original event-trading model into the igaming context.

In this interview, Alexander Kamenetskyi and Daniil Korolko, head of product line at N1 Partners, do not fully agree on everything, and that gap is worth paying attention to.

“They were spending money. Just not with us.” – Unveiling a new betting segment.

Before Prediction Markets existed as a product you could actually launch, what were you thinking about the audience you weren’t reaching?

Korolko: We’d been investing in sportsbooks seriously for a few years, and the numbers were solid – retention, cross-sell between casino and sports, GGR growth.

But there was a clear signal of untapped demand: crypto-native users, people who follow financial markets, and politically attentive audiences. For them, the existing proposition did not resonate.

We’d look at volumes on platforms like Polymarket and see the huge demand forming outside the traditional sportsbook space. But that activity wasn’t translating into our ecosystem. At that point, we didn’t fully know how to fix it, but the gap was hard to ignore.

Kamenetskyi: A legitimate, high-volume betting segment has formed entirely outside the traditional operator ecosystem – and most of the industry chose to watch rather than act. Retail investors, politically attentive audiences, and technology-focused users – people who want to take a position on the events and information they follow daily. They were already spending money – just outside of the traditional sportsbook ecosystem.

What were the igaming industry thoughts about this audience?

Kamenetskyi: For quite some time, the dominant narrative in the industry was that prediction markets were just a crypto experiment or a temporary election-cycle spike – something interesting, but ultimately peripheral to the core business. That interpretation no longer holds.

Monthly volume grew from $32m in January 2024 to $12.6bn in January 2026 – a scale shift the industry can no longer afford to dismiss. That is no longer a trend – it is a fully formed product category. And critically, almost none of that volume has flowed through traditional operators.

Korolko: We had a version of that internal debate too – trend or category. We weren’t going to invest serious operational energy into something that peaks every four years. But then you watch what happens after the election cycle and the liquidity doesn’t collapse. It diversifies – macro events, tech releases, geopolitical stuff. At some point the debate stopped being about the product and started being about timing. That’s a different conversation.

Was there a specific trigger that closed the conversation for N1?

Korolko: A few things landed at once. The Polymarket numbers got mainstream coverage. And then SOFTSWISS came to us, saying they are building Prediction Markets for igaming, and that they want us to be the first to go live with it. Having a ready, compliant product we could activate quickly – that was the argument that closed it.

“P2P exchange means building liquidity from scratch on two sides. With Fixed-Odds, the operator manages liability within familiar bookmaking frameworks.”

Why Fixed-Odds rather than replicating what exchange-style platforms are doing?

Kamenetskyi: Because replicating exchange-style platforms is not a viable strategy for operators. A pure P2P exchange requires building and sustaining liquidity from scratch on both sides of the market, introducing KYC and compliance complexity that does not align with existing operator frameworks, and effectively giving up control over margin and revenue predictability.

On top of that, the regulatory landscape for exchange models remains highly fragmented and uncertain across the US, the UK, and Europe. For most established operators, that level of regulatory and operational exposure is simply unjustifiable. Fixed odds is not a compromise – it is what makes prediction markets operationally viable for the B2B sportsbook model.

What does this mean in practice – for the operator and for the player?

Kamenetskyi: The player bets against the house, not against another participant. The operator retains full control over the margin, prices markets through internal risk and trading models, and manages liability within established bookmaking frameworks.

From the player’s perspective, the experience remains simple – they take a clear position on an outcome, yes or no, without needing to understand complex market mechanics. From the operator’s side, it fits directly within existing licensing and compliance frameworks. That is exactly what makes the model scalable and commercially viable. It allows operators to expand into a new category without changing their core business model – while maintaining control over risk, margin, and revenue predictability.

Korolko: That was important to us specifically. It’s Fixed Odds. No P2P complexity, no exchange licensing requirement. The compliance story is straightforward. It meant we could make the decision without feeling like we were going somewhere entirely new from a regulatory standpoint.

“Players who hadn’t placed a bet in weeks came back when they saw markets on things they actually follow.”

Take us through the actual integration.

Korolko: It’s faster than anything we’ve launched recently. We’re already on the SOFTSWISS Sportsbook, so it was essentially a CMS activation – configure the markets, set margins, place the widget. The technical lift on our side was minimal.

So where did the work actually go?

Korolko: Internally. Deciding how to position the product, how to introduce it, what to communicate – there were real disagreements about that. And honestly, solving them took longer than we expected.

Some people wanted to explain the concept in full, and give players the context. We pushed back on that. In the end, we kept it simple: you can now bet on things beyond sport. Elections. Crypto. Tech. We showed players markets relevant to what they already follow. Getting to that decision wasn’t instant.

Kamenetskyi: Most of the effort didn’t go into technology – it went into product positioning and user experience. The binary format – will this happen or not – significantly reduces friction compared to traditional betting lines. There are no spreads, no accumulators, and no complex bet structures. For a casino audience in particular, it maps directly onto decision-making mechanics they already understand. The challenge is not in explaining the mechanics – it’s in presenting the product in a way that feels natural and immediately relevant to the player.

What other growing points did you see besides the new audience segment?

Korolko: Reactivation. Players who’d been dormant – hadn’t placed a bet in weeks – came back when they saw markets on things they actually follow. We knew the product would attract new types of players. We didn’t expect it to bring back so many existing ones that had gone quiet. We watched the dashboard and that was genuinely surprising.

What have you actually seen since launch?

Korolko: We are seeing engagement from players that were not active before. Players are coming in through prediction markets and then they start exploring our sportsbook – the cross-sell is working. The reactivation we mentioned. It’s early, though. We’re still learning what content works for our specific player base, which events actually land. The numbers are encouraging, but we’re not drawing hard conclusions from around a month of data.

What are you seeing across operators – is there a consistent pattern emerging?

Kamenetskyi: The patterns are already clear – and they are consistent across operators. We consistently see three core effects: player reactivation, cross-sell into sportsbooks, and a significantly lower entry barrier for casino audiences.

Operators who have already launched the product are seeing these effects across different player segments. Volume data clearly shows that prediction markets did not collapse after the election cycle – instead, activity diversified and sustained across multiple event categories. At the category level, this is no longer a question of uncertainty – it is a question of execution. The remaining question for operators is not whether this works, but how effectively they can capture that value.

“If you wait until the category is proven beyond all doubt, you’re waiting until your competitors are already live and your players are already somewhere else.”

How long does the first-mover window stay open?

Korolko: It won’t stay open at this size. Right now there isn’t a crowded B2B market for this product. Operators aren’t choosing between ten providers. If you wait until the category is proven beyond all doubt, you’re waiting until your competitors are already live and your players are already somewhere else.

Kamenetskyi: The question of whether this is a real product category was settled some time ago. It is. The real question now is which operators will build brand recognition in communities that have never engaged with a betting brand before – crypto, finance, politics. That kind of recognition is not built through a product launch. It is built by being present while those audiences are still forming and defining their habits. And once those habits are formed, you cannot buy your way into that position retroactively. By the time the category feels “safe”, the first-mover advantage is already gone – and the audience is already captured.

What’s the honest version of the uncertainty from here?

Kamenetskyi: The main variable is how quickly regulation will evolve across different jurisdictions. Prediction markets are moving towards formalisation within existing regulatory frameworks. The uncertainty lies in the speed of that process. And that directly impacts how quickly the category can scale across regulated markets. Importantly, this does not affect the viability of the model – it affects the pace of expansion. Operators who move early can already capture value while regulation continues to catch up.

Korolko: For us – honestly, we don’t know yet what the ceiling looks like. We know the floor. We’ve seen it. Players are coming back, new segments are engaging, cross-sell is moving. But whether this becomes a core part of the product in two years, or something significant but secondary – we’re watching it happen. We’re not far enough in to say.

Is there a version of this where the operators who waited were right?

Korolko: Maybe. If regulation tightens sharply in key markets, or if the audience turns out to be shallower than the volume numbers suggest. We don’t think that’s where it’s going. But we made this call under uncertainty, and that’s still true. We’re just further in now.

Kamenetskyi: The operators who chose to wait were right about one thing – it is always a harder argument to make before the data exists. But that data now exists – and it is already consistent across the market. At some point, “waiting for more evidence” stops being caution and starts becoming a missed opportunity. And in a category like this, missed opportunity is not neutral – it directly translates into a lost market position.