What do you get when you mix an aspiring ninja, a passion for skateboarding and ecommerce experience in the cake business? Well, if Leonid Pertsovskiy’s story is anything to go by, these are the ingredients that create a sports betting CEO and entrepreneur. His career is, of course, not that simple or straightforward – but the story behind the Betby Co-Founder and CEO incorporates each of the points above at one time or other, demonstrating a rather varied journey. Sports betting supplier Betby, Pertsovskiy’s brainchild, has grown considerably during that journey, gaining greater and greater recognition within the industry. Gambling Insider meets the leader behind the organisation to find out more about both Pertsovskiy himself – and Betby…
STARTING BY INNOVATING
“I’m more or less following the same path I chose when I was 17 and entering university,” Pertsovskiy tells Gambling Insider. “I’m still on this path of trying to bring innovation to niches where innovation isn’t always an integral part of the business, but I want it to become very important for them. “I remember when I was a very, very small kid, my dream was to become a ninja,” he laughs. “Then I had a period when I wanted to be a truck driver because I thought it was very romantic. I think when I was in the second year of my university course I realised I wanted to somehow be involved in business.” It was during his time at university that Pertsovskiy entered the first stage of his career. “I was a junior marketing manager, helping companies sell telecommunication equipment like cables and peripherals.” Pertsovskiy soon moved to the Research and Development department, while at the same time studying Innovation Management at the State University of Management. After graduating, he would find himself leading an IT company as its Marketing Director. This suited Pertsovskiy well, but it also introduced him to something new. “During this transition, I started thinking I should start my own project, because I’d been very deeply involved in ecommerce.”
It was this online aspect that caught his attention. “I like to analyse the efficiency of online stores, the retention and all this as well as, generally, what’s possible for the marketing that I was doing for my company.” This was in 2008, which means that, while ecommerce had already existed for around a decade, the emergence of accessible payment solutions meant online sales were about to balloon in popularity. Pertsovskiy didn’t let this opportunity go to waste, either. He saw the potential in this growing trend and threw himself into it. The dream of exploring espionage in feudal Japan may have been difficult for the younger Pertsovskiy to pull off, but understanding unique opportunities in ecommerce came easily to him.
“I started creating small websites, some online stores for my friends and wider network. The start of my business was creating a website for a relative who ran a bakery. I had just gotten married at the time and I understood that there is a high margin in cakes for special occasions. It’s more or less the same cake, but just much more expensive… My relative said he didn’t want to mess with all this, but if I wanted to try, then ‘good luck, Leo!’” Between Pertsovskiy wanting to make a website and his relative being cautious, they came to a compromise. “I created the website. I started doing some marketing campaigns on Google and I saw that there was some demand for this, so I decided to quit my job and try to focus on this business. In three years, it became one of the top three cake companies in the area. It became quite successful and continued like this for seven or eight years. It was my main focus and I made some money, so it was fun.”
FROM SKATEBOARDING PASSION TO COMPANY BOARDS
“During the period when I was creating websites, I was reading a lot of blogs and websites and news about startups, and I was quite keen on this,” he explains. “I thought I could create an idea and then get an investment, or something like this. At that time, I didn’t know that the idea cost nothing. I thought that the idea was everything.” He notes that the $1bn acquisition of Instagram with only 13 employees by Facebook was a significant inspiration for him and a testament to what can be achieved with only a small team. This wasn’t the only example that motivated him, though.
Pertsovskiy leans forward and lights up as soon as he begins discussing one of his idols. “Tony Hawk is the most famous skateboarder and, at the same time, he had some businesses related to skateboarding too. Such people inspire me, particularly him, because they’re doing what they really love, not what they’re forced to do. They just do what they were born to do and they enjoy what they’re doing. I initially thought passion couldn’t be combined with business, but they proved to me that it can.” Pertsovskiy spent many nights thinking about running his own skate shop, but he admits with a soft laugh that he wouldn’t have known the first thing about running one. Pertsovskiy knew he wanted to run a business of some kind, however, He’d seen others establish corporate careers out of their passions and he’d also helped his family find success by creating marketing campaigns, so he just needed the right niche for himself. “I didn’t think about gaming and sport much at that time. Even if I had, it would be considered a shady area because it wasn’t legal,” he admits. Gambling may have been blocked in his home country, but it certainly wasn’t blocked everywhere. In fact, online gaming really began to take off in the 2010s thanks to rapidly evolving smartphone technology. Several operators launched mobile casinos for the first time during this decade, including bet365, Paddy Power and FanDuel. Nowadays, modern bookies are only as good as the technology behind them.
“I had a friend who was already involved in gaming at that time,” Pertsovskiy explains. “I was really focused on ecommerce, customer retention and optimisation of the client, so I looked through his websites.” As for what Pertsovskiy found, he wasn’t impressed. He looked to his friend and said: ‘Listen, I don’t think that it is optimal, but I have some ideas on how to make it more effective.’ Just like that, he became an advisor on the UI, UX and efficiency of the website. Something about this process caught Pertsovskiy’s attention... “After working on different parts of the online gaming business, including slots, payments, B2C operators and other third-party sportsbook providers, my friends and I realised that none of them could satisfy us as the sports provider’s client. So we thought to ourselves, why not try to build our own? We could end up being the best… That’s how we started almost seven years ago now. I was never seeking to start making big money; it never truly drove me. It was more about the creativity, the process to create something,” he emphasises. “I wanted to create something we could be proud of. At the same time, I wanted the chance to work with people with whom I want to work with, and who enjoy working with me in turn. With this group, we can all create a very good environment and build something together.” And, thus, Betby was born.
Every industry needs something new and there's something new happening here. I would call this organic growth and organic change
EVOLUTION VS REVOLUTION
Pertsovskiy put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard and brought sports and book together. “I really feel like we’ve still just started,” he reflects. “If somebody had asked me about our growth or size five years ago, I would never have thought we would be as big as we are now. Every industry needs something new and there’s something new happening here. I would call this organic growth and organic change.” Betby’s approach is, technically speaking, not only limited to sports betting. “We’re creating frameworks that can easily be used outside of our industry,” Pertsovskiy explains. “For example, the business intelligence tools, systems for the databases and the backoffice. It’s not about betting; it is about talking to the data. It doesn’t matter if you’re handling bets, spins, transactions or even something like medical results. If there is a large amount of data and there is somebody who wants to understand what is going on in this data, our software can be used to literally talk by voice or by text, to the data.” As for specific trends that have grown in popularity recently, Pertsovskiy says “bet builders have become more popular because math models and technological availability have allowed us to have a lot in life.” Recent changes, however, have been more evolutionary in the CEO’s opinion. “I don’t think this is a revolution. This is just expanding the coverage of what people used to see in bookmakers.” Sure, the products may have become “more beautiful or more friendly,” but Pertsovskiy sees this as a natural evolution of an industry which has far greater resources at its fingertips.
“If we talk about AI, it can bring many new people to the industry. Sports betting is following an overall trend. AI is everywhere. Companies, not just in our industry, are using AI tools to optimise costs.” As for how Betby is using it, Pertsovskiy is clear: “We’re very involved with AI. It is interesting and important, but it is just a tool to do something innovative.” The ideas and drive still come from the company and, while AI can assist with building that dream, the effort and expertise have to come from people, if they want to produce something that they can be proud of.
“I think sports betting should find some way of revolutionising itself, not just following overall trends. But I’m confident this will come about somehow. For five years or maybe more, people have been talking about Netflix-style or Tinder-style bookmakers… I haven’t seen any success here. At Betby, we have some ideas of our own… I’m not going to reveal them right now, but I think something important should come from within the industry, not just consuming ideas from the outside.”
FROM COMPANY BOARDS TO CHESS BOARDS: PERTSOVSKIY E4, CARLSEN E5
It’s not uncommon for sports betting companies to appoint sporting legends as ambassadors. After all, it’s only human nature to see someone we admire and be inspired by them (think Tony Hawk!). Towards the end of 2024, Betby went for a slightly more strategic play here and, by this, we mean the supplier partnered with the King of Strategy himself: Magnus Carlsen. The GOAT of chess becoming a Betby ambassador might not have been an easy prediction for anyone outside the company, but as Pertsovskiy explains, it was an obvious choice for him. “Magnus is involved in several projects, all of them around chess,” he says. “For example, recently he launched a product called Take Take Take. Which, again, is very innovative in a super traditional area.” It is easy to simply stick the word ‘innovative’ on a product, especially in marketing, but Carlsen understands his audience perfectly. Casual fans had complained that it was difficult to keep up to date with chess players and the tournaments they were entering, so Take Take Take updates them on what the top players are doing through instant and personalised alerts.
They also introduced interactive viewing and the chance for professional players to break down and explain different moves on the platform. Chess might have a huge following, but it is notoriously difficult to follow the professional side of it. “Chess is one of the oldest sports ever and it is super limited in creating something interesting, right?” Pertsovskiy continues. “There are only 8x8 squares, not a lot of pieces and all the rules are obvious, but at the same time, Carlsen and his team created something new. They want to make chess great and popular again.” It’s this kind of innovation that captured Pertsovskiy’s attention and one that reflects his business too. “We’re really proud of the partnership,” his demeanour lights up as he explains, “because Magnus also realised we share the same values. Magnus is not only a good chess player, the greatest chess player, but he’s also a good businessman.”
We're really proud of the partnership, because Magnus also realised we share the same values. Magnus is not only a good chess player, the greatest chess player, but he's also a good businessman
AN INNOVATIVE FUTURE
We’ve seen how Tony Hawk shaped Pertsovskiy’s past and how Magnus Carlsen is entwined with Betby’s present, but what does the future hold for all the players on his hypothetical chess board? It’s clear how much Pertsovskiy values innovation and how this one word will continue to drive the business. “I really think, right now, we are at the stage where we have all the resources to boost our growth further and to show everyone what we can do to bring something new to the industry. It won’t just be the sports betting industry either, because we’re very strong with our technology in general. “From time to time, we have some small spinoffs. They’re not businesses, but ideas
and small projects, products that we think can be used outside of betting and gaming. This is an example of how we do not limit ourselves to the industry that we’re working in.” As for the ideas that have worked in the company, Pertsovskiy notes that it’s important to monitor trends without feeling the need to commit to them wholeheartedly.
“Every sport that is popular should be present in a bookmaker’s website,” he states, but not at the expense of other markets. You cannot force people to bet on something. Growth “should be organic.” The best example he has for this is esports. “We will continue developing our esports section, for sure. We will continue focusing on that, but I can’t say that it will be the biggest part of our business. I think it will maintain between 15% and 20% of the bookmaker business in the next five years.” While esports is nothing new, for example QuakeCon stretches back to 1996 and the first Counter-Strike Major was in 2001, regulated esports betting is still considered somewhat of a novelty. Some saw the trajectory of the esports betting market and assumed this would continue until it overtook traditional sports, but Pertsovskiy isn’t as convinced: “A lot of new sports appear, but they cannot overtake football in the coming, I don’t know, 50 years or so.”
But esports betting is still a multi-billion-dollar industry. For that reason, Pertsovskiy has assembled a team that really understands the needs and demands of both the leagues and the fans. It’s a delicate tandem many have walked before and fallen from, though Pertsovskiy remains confident. “I think our esports product is the best in the industry. I don’t see anything compared to it.” It’s one thing to be the boss of a company, but quite another to be a leader. Pertsovskiy started out as a website builder, and then was part of advising UI and UX. But, as a CEO now, how does he spend his day to day? “My role has changed a little bit because now I work less with products and I work more with people,” he tells us. “In every single department, we have a lot of people who are much smarter than me and they know how to do their job much better than I do. So I cannot give them a lot of advice on how to build infrastructure, or how to do risk management or marketing. But at the same time, my role now is to work with all these people to oversee the processes and the culture.”
Tireless innovation drives Pertsovskiy and he is constantly looking for areas that have untapped potential. “In the AI department, I can still contribute ideas because it’s so fresh.” This seems to be something that’s caught the mind and soul of Pertsovskiy, without affecting his commitment to the company. “Within the next 10 or so years, we could have a few AI projects that could become spin-offs of Betby, maybe even outside of the industry. It would be interesting for me to be involved in this – but only if they don’t need me here on a daily basis anymore!
“We aren’t just satisfied with what we have achieved already; we have big, big plans,” Pertsovskiy concludes. “That means I’m here and I’m not going to be focused on something else. I’m focused on Betby and I really love it here.”