Global ambition: the relentless rise of Betano

Take a ride out of Athens’ historic centre, through the traffic-clogged streets, past the 70,000-seat Olympic Stadium, and you eventually arrive in the suburb of Marousi on the northeastern outskirts of the Greek capital. It’s here, close to Neratziotissa train station, that you encounter Kaizen Gaming’s headquarters, officially known as the Kaizen Campus – an imposing, doughnut-shaped building that stands out given its footprint and location in this mainly residential neighbourhood.

Kaizen Gaming’s logo is plastered on opposite sides of the three-storey office’s white façade. The bioclimatic building orbits a verdant courtyard that has ­absorbed a light downpour the morning of EGR’s visit. At the main entrance, a half-dozen casually dressed Gen Z staffers file through electronically controlled turnstiles to begin their shift at the nerve centre of this 24/7 global operation.

Enter the inner sanctum of the 7,500 sq m Kaizen Campus and it’s clear meticulous planning went into its design and labyrinth-like layout, from the exposed ceilings and stylish lighting to bespoke furnishings, artwork and sculptures. The work areas, which are equipped with a total of 750 work- stations, comprise a mixture of open and quiet spaces, including fully enclosed capsules dotted here and there.

As well as more than 40 meeting rooms, other notable features include an on-site bistro, an auditorium sunk into the ground, a roof terrace for entertaining, 34 electric car charging stations and a playroom that even includes a climbing wall. EGR saw a room where four employees, or ‘Kaizeners’, were lying down while donating blood. 

Staff moved into the Kaizen Campus in 2023, yet the company broke ground on the building during a period of major upheaval and uncertainty, as 47-year-old founder and CEO George Daskalakis explains in his top-floor office: “For a long time, we wanted to develop our very own headquarters. In late 2019 and January 2020, we were looking at the final designs for the Kaizen Campus [but] then, in February, Covid came into our lives, and very quickly everyone was at home working remotely.”

As civilisation seemed to grind to a halt, it looked as if the plans for the new base might have to be put on ice. Or perhaps be shelved altogether. However, the decision was taken during lockdown to proceed with the project. “You want to feel safe – nobody was feeling safe at the time – and you want to dream […] the Kaizen Campus created that sense of optimism that life will go on and we’ll keep dreaming,” says Daskalakis. 

The Kaizen Campus is perhaps befitting an operator with Kaizen Gaming’s scale these days. This is a business employing 2,700 people across four continents, including more than 700 engineers, and boasting upwards of 13 million active customers.

Being privately owned, details of Kaizen Gaming’s financial performance aren’t published as frequently as its publicly listed counterparts, though its latest set of accounts for 2023 reveal revenue reached the €2bn mark, double the amount generated the prior year. Moreover, pre-tax profit surged from almost €71m in 2022 to €395m in 2023, a 458% increase. In addition, KPIs shared confidentially with accountancy firm BDO as part of the EGR Power 50 rankings, published in November, indicate that management will announce in the next set of accounts that 2024 was another stellar year. 

Kaizen Gaming did share snippets with EGR after its visit, though, including that sports betting gross gambling revenue (GGR) and active players climbed 42% and 37% year on year (YoY) in 2024, respectively. Casino GGR rose 47% and casino registrations jumped 118% YoY, it was revealed. Today, the company is in 18 markets, the most recent being Colombia at the back end of 2024, with Betano its brand on the international stage, while in Greece and Cyprus Kaizen Gaming operates the Stoiximan brand. The target set a few years ago was 26 markets by 2026, known internally as the ‘Kaizen 2626 vision’.

The aim has always been clear and unwavering: “Our ambition was to make Betano a global brand,” says Daskalakis, who is decked out in a Kaizen Gaming- branded white hoodie teamed with blue jeans and trainers. “The beauty is to always try to set very challenging but attainable targets. We’re at the pace that we wanted – 18 markets at the end of 2024. Now, it doesn’t matter if it’s [20]25 or [20]26 but from where we started, we are very close to saying it’s going to be a success.”

Given Betano’s international standing and brand presence, along with its 2026 target, would Daskalakis go as far as to say that Betano now competes with well-known international heavyweight bet365? “I wouldn’t want to say that,” he responds modestly. “We have done very well, and we are very proud of what we have achieved, but bet365 started expanding 15 years before us and they have a bigger presence around the globe.

“We have great respect for them, and we are very happy we can compete with them in markets where we coexist, but we have some way to go until we can say we are truly global.”  

What’s in a name?

A portmanteau of Japanese words ‘kai’ and ‘zen’, which translates as ‘good change’ or ‘improvement’ in English, ‘kaizen’ has come to mean ‘change for the better’ or ‘continuous improvement’. It’s a philosophy that characterises Kaizen Gaming’s relentless progress since the business started life as challenger online bookmaker Stoiximan in 2012 with an investment of less than €1m and an initial team of 20 people.

However, attempting to get a new betting company off the ground nearly 13 years ago and make a dent in the market share of the international giants already embedded in Greece was akin to “David versus Goliath”, according to Daskalakis. “Bet365 and Sportingbet were in the market for five to 10 years. Pre-regulation, they built their brands, they had customer bases in Greece, and they were very dominant.” 

Daskalakis had previously been the country manager for bwin in Greece between 2002 and 2005, before he co-founded a media company and, a year later, in 2006, launched online poker site Poker.gr. Finding experienced people to join Stoiximan proved difficult, though. Especially when this fledgling firm had “no technology [and] not much experience”, he recalls.

“An online betting startup in Greece probably wasn’t the most attractive destination for top talent. So, to say the challenge was big would be an understatement. Some people would call it crazy that 20 people in Athens would try to compete with the largest companies in the sector without a lot of investment and technology.”

What the team did have, he says, was “no fear” coupled with a passion to deliver an online sports betting product and service that was tailored to the Greek market. The goal was to become Greece’s “local champion”. “Luck, timing, everything plays a role. Maybe if there was a competitor with a bigger budget, they would have taken that local champion spot themselves, but the drive we had as a team was immense,” Daskalakis says.

Besides having to absorb the particularly high tax rate of 30% to 35% on GGR in Greece (later replaced by a flat 35% GGR rate), Stoiximan and its competitors soon faced a far bigger problem: the financial crisis and the country defaulting on its $1.7bn debt to the International Monetary Fund in 2015.

Those were dark days for the nation. The prospect of ditching the euro for a devalued drachma led to many Greeks queuing up to withdraw their savings, though banks were shut and capital controls meant ATMs could disgorge just €60 per customer per day (€420 per month). The debt crisis also forced the Athens Stock Exchange to temporarily close. Stoiximan, which had grabbed a podium position in Greece by this point, lost 93% of customer deposit volumes overnight.

“Putting Kaizen aside, it was a difficult moment for the country,” Daskalakis acknowledges. “You couldn’t feel very optimistic, but I’m a great believer of opportunity in a crisis. We felt there was an opportunity for us, which was that international brands probably didn’t have Greece very high in their priorities. “They could have had funds stuck in Greece because you weren’t allowed to take money abroad due to the capital controls. They also had the same issues as us with payments.”

Amid the deep uncertainty, the Stoiximan team made dummy calls to rivals to find out what they were telling their customers about the situation. As Daskalakis recalls: “We phoned one very big company in Greece pretending to be a customer and asked them what they thought would happen with the capital controls and if we could go back to the drachma. She was a great rep, but she said, ‘We don’t know. We’re sitting here in the UK. You’re in Greece, so you tell us’.”

With necessity being the mother of invention, management threw resources behind developing ways to process customers’ card payments (completed in two weeks) and guaranteed their deposited funds. An unforeseen consequence of this promise was players began parking large sums of euros in their Stoiximan accounts. “We were receiving wires from people who felt it would be better for them to send money to Stoiximan than have it in the bank where they could lose it, or it would turn into drachma. They started sending €5,000 or €10,000 but didn’t have any intention to play,” the CEO laughs.

Stoiximan T&Cs clearly stated you had to gamble with deposited funds rather than treat the site like a de facto bank, so Daskalakis would personally send the money back attached with a polite note. Banks reopened after three weeks, the financial paralysis subsided and Stoiximan won the trust of customers as an honourable homegrown company. Daskalakis says: “By 2016, we were number one in Greece. In all fairness, I think 2015 played a big role, so we are very proud that we turned this very dark moment initially into our rise to the top of the market.”

International expansion outside Greece and Cyprus was a logical next step for the business. However, the bosses realised Stoiximan (‘Stoixima’ means ‘bet’ in Greek) wouldn’t travel so well overseas as a brand. For a start, it’s often mispronounced by non-Greek speakers. The correct pronunciation sounds a bit like ‘sticky man’ in English. They had considered going with ‘Sman’ but decided against it. What they needed was a name that would work in various markets, was memorable and people could easily type it into a browser or search engine. Betano.com was available for sale and it met the criteria. 

“Fail fast”  

Poland was pinpointed as the first overseas market to attack with Betano in 2015, though Kaizen Gaming’s boss freely admits the initial international foray didn’t go as planned. That might be putting it mildly.

“It was a complete disaster,” Daskalakis says calmly. “We didn’t know how to expand. We tried to replicate what we were doing in Greece, [but] we didn’t understand the culture of the local market, the preparation [needed], payment methods and the local people you need to be strong. In general, we were clearly not ready – but they say, ‘fail fast’.”

A year after launch, Betano exited Poland. The focus instead switched to Romania where the company had already begun the process of applying for an online licence to operate under a new regulatory framework. Betano went live in the Eastern European country in 2016 and it soon became the firm’s first success story outside its home market. 

Daskalakis says: “That [Romania] went the complete opposite to Poland; we did really well. Quite quickly we established ourselves as the second-most popular operator in the market. The best thing about Poland was it wasn’t a very expensive lesson […] you don’t like losing but you have to accept it, you have to be pragmatic, see what you can learn from it and move on.”

Later, in 2018, Betano went into Germany, yet to fund further expansion, invest in technology and hire more people, the decision was taken to sell a 36.75% stake in Stoiximan to legacy Greek operator OPAP. This later increased to 84.49%, as OPAP took control of Stoiximan but left the original team in place to independently run it on a B2B basis.

“We were already number one in Greece and there wasn’t much more we could do. We wanted to compete internationally […] so, we thought it was a good time to cash in on the Stoiximan success,” explains Daskalakis when discussing the rationale for selling up. It’s also important to note OPAP previously owned 36.75% of Betano but sold its minority stake to pan-European lottery giant Allwyn in 2022.

In 2019, by which point the company’s headcount had reached 500, Betano was unleashed in Portugal. Like Romania, Betano quickly made inroads. “People say, ‘Learn from your failures’ but I say learn from your success too,” Daskalakis points out.

The following year, the brand made its debut in Brazil and looked to exploit the propitious opportunity. International operators such as Sportingbet, Betfair and bet365 already had a firm foothold in South America’s most-populous country, while a raft of domestic operators had sprung up since sports betting was legalised in 2018.

“We came to the party quite late,” Kaizen Gaming’s chief notes. Yet the operator proved first-mover advantage doesn’t always guarantee long-term success. Investment in marketing, creating a localised product and payment options contributed to Betano gobbling up market share and overtaking the incumbents. “The timing was right. Brazil started booming, but when we got there, we weren’t really expecting that [success],” Daskalakis admits.

A survey by Env Media, released in July 2024, revealed Betano to be the most recognisable and trusted brand in the Portuguese-speaking country. Of the 500 adult gamblers quizzed by the media agency, 73.9% said they knew and trusted Betano.

Interestingly, Daskalakis says the perception among bettors in Brazil is that Betano is a local company. Despite not having concrete evidence to prove who is the number one operator in Brazil (we might get that from the regulator now the market has just regulated), Betano is thought to be out in front.

A white paper on the Brazilian market, published in September by supplier OpenBet, said Betano led the way with 23% market share. The data was from consultancy outfit H2 Gambling Capital. Meanwhile, independent research firm Regulus Partners, which estimates Brazil’s grey market to be worth $3.4bn (£2.7bn), although some observers believe it could be double that, said in a recent blog post that Betano is “now probably the Brazilian market leader”.

Daskalakis responds coyly when the topic is broached: “We [Kaizen Gaming and EGR] probably have the same [data] sources and other services and surveys. It seems like we are in first place now, but nobody can say for sure. Hopefully we find out once there is official data. But I don’t think it’s first place that counts. It’s about building and pushing the brand – and shaping an experience that is attractive to customers.”

Brazil has been used as a springboard to expand into other Latam markets, such as Chile, Ecuador and Peru. In 2024, Betano went into Argentina and Mexico. In mid-November, it soft-launched in Colombia.

Daskalakis compares identifying which markets to target to a common dilemma in poker: “When you are a small company just starting to expand, it’s like a poker game. You can’t just pick a table and sit down; you have to look at who is sitting at the table because if you can’t see the loser, then it’s you.” He adds: “We tried to pick our battles. And in hindsight, it was a wise move.” 

Away from Latam, Betano was rolled out in Bulgaria in 2021, Czechia and Ontario in 2022 and Nigeria in 2023. Last year, the brand launched in Denmark and the UK. However, the UK involved a white-label agreement with BVGroup as opposed to using Kaizen Gaming’s proprietary technology. It was a decision that made business sense from a time and resource viewpoint.

Daskalakis says: “We have developed a lot of capabilities when it comes to expanding but, right now, we can launch in four markets a year. Time is of the essence, so we’re trying to explore new avenues when it comes to expanding.

“The UK was a market that would be very demanding for us to develop. We are not focused on [horse]racing, there are other sports in the UK that we don’t have, and the legislation requirements would be very heavy.” 

Get shirty 

As part of the UK launch, Kaizen Gaming struck a two-year deal with Aston Villa last April that saw Betano become the Premier League club’s principal and front-of-shirt sponsor. Behind Daskalakis’ desk hangs a framed Aston Villa home shirt emblazoned with the Betano logo in white lettering. To the left is Giannis Antetokounmpo’s number 34 Milwaukee Bucks jersey. (In 2023, the Greek-Nigerian superstar of the NBA became Betano’s first-ever global brand ambassador.)

On the opposite side of the room, above a sofa, is an Olympiacos shirt featuring the Stoiximan logo. If it wasn’t obvious, sponsorships have played, and continue to play, a vital role in amplifying both brands. For instance, Betano has netted a hat-trick of partnerships ith Portugal’s three most successful clubs: FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting CP. In Brazil, its logo appears on the shirts of Clube Atlético Mineiro, while Betano is the headline sponsor of Brazil’s top league, the Campeonato Brasileirao Série A, as well as the main domestic cup competition, Copa do Brasil.

It also has deals with Sparta Prague and Viktoria Plzeň in Czechia, FC Lokomotiv Sofia in Bulgaria and Romania’s FCSB (formerly Steaua Bucharest), to name a few. But it was in late 2022 that Kaizen Gaming really turned heads by striking a deal for Betano to become FIFA’s gambling sponsor and regional supporter for football’s governing body in Europe at the 2022 World Cup. It was the first time that world football’s governing body had partnered with a betting company.

“Some back and forth” between Kaizen Gaming and FIFA, Daskalakis remembers, meant the deal wasn’t confirmed until just one week before the tournament kicked off in Qatar that November. Despite the last-minute scramble, Daskalakis insists it was a “landmark sponsorship” for the industry and Betano, adding: “I don’t think many people saw that coming.”

Betano followed this up by becoming the official global sponsor and official betting partner of Euro 2024 in Germany, with the logo periodically appearing on the LED pitch-side advertising boards during the 51 matches.

If that wasn’t enough, Betano became the official sponsor of last summer’s Copa América in the US, while a similar deal was inked in August in Monaco as Betano was unveiled as official global sponsor of UEFA’s Europa League and Conference League competitions as part of a three-year tie-up.

Looking at Google Trends, you can clearly see a surge in worldwide online searches for ‘Betano’ throughout 2022. There’s then a sudden spike once the World Cup starts. The pattern repeats itself when Euro 2024 and Copa América come around as TV audiences are exposed to the brand.

High-profile sponsorships of this ilk, supported by above-the-line marketing efforts, don’t come cheap, of course. Indeed, the Aston Villa deal alone was widely reported, but not confirmed, to be worth £40m. Kaizen Gaming’s latest set of accounts reveal advertising and marketing expenses amounted to a hefty €278m in 2023. That was a 96% increase on the €142m shelled out the prior year.

“It’s very challenging to say with high confidence that you can calculate your return on investment [with a sponsorship deal],” Daskalakis explains. “Of course, we try to use data and trends to see the effects of those sponsorships. We monitor it and try to measure KPIs around the brand and see how it is affected by the deals. Overall, it’s clear from what we have seen there was a very positive effect from those sponsorships. But it’s also about how you utilise a sponsorship […] the integration is very important and how you take advantage of a unique opportunity.” 

Given the rapid-fire nature of deals Kaizen Gaming has struck with teams, leagues and competitions of late, Betano and its bright orange and white logo feels almost omnipresent in football. But does Daskalakis – a father of three young children – ever worry about young fans being exposed to a betting brand like Betano when they watched, for example, Euro 2024?

“I think about it, and I have interesting discussions with my children,” he says. “I think over-exposure is bad, but you cannot hide things from children in today’s world. It’s naïve to think that if you remove one kind of advertising kids will not find out; kids are very smart. My focus would be explaining to kids what is good, what is dangerous, and why.” 

More broadly on the topic of advertising and whether it potentially plays a part in instances of gambling-related harm, he says: “I enjoy wine. Should we stop producing wine because people drink more of it than they should? I think not. We should explain the logical way to consume wine […] the same goes for our industry; education is very important. Sometimes it’s the elephant in the room because people feel uncomfortable about it.”

Daskalakis is a firm believer in the role technology can play in responsible gambling (RG) efforts: “Technology is on our side and we can use that technology to detect patterns [of potentially harmful play]. AI is here and I think the world is going to change dramatically in the next few years. That will benefit us. “Five years from now, we will be in a completely different place when it comes to responsible gaming and how we can improve in this very delicate area.” 

And the winner is… 

Rewind to October 2022 and Kaizen Gaming has just been crowned operator of the year at the EGR Operator Awards. Judging by the reaction in the room at the black-tie event held at Grosvenor House in Mayfair, London, this was a surprise result; Kaizen Gaming was among a shortlist of 14 operators in the headline category that included bet365, Entain and DraftKings.

Later that evening, a seasoned executive at a UK operator was playing a postprandial game of poker on the mezzanine level when he leaned across to EGR and, in a hushed tone, said: “So, who is Kaizen Gaming?” He was being genuinely inquisitive, perhaps unaware of Betano and its rapid international gains.

Two years later, Kaizen Gaming proved that win was no fluke by impressing the independent judges enough to scoop ­operator of the year once again. In fact, it was a record haul in 2024 as the ­company took home seven titles. 

Pragmatic Play COO Irina Cornides joked when handing out the award for operator of the year how Kaizen Gaming would need to pay for extra baggage to transport the trophies back to Athens. The awards from that evening sit proudly in the Kaizen Campus’ reception.

“When we failed in our first expansion effort in Poland in 2015, who would have thought that 10 years later we would win EGR operator of the year twice?” Daskalakis remarks. “Leading this exceptional team is a privilege. I’m proud of what we have achieved and excited for what lies ahead, both in terms of our business, but also giving back.”

On that last point, Kaizen Gaming launched the Kaizen Foundation last year, a social purpose organisation through which the company aims to have a positive impact on society, education and the environment. Its most significant project is spearheading the ongoing €4.1m renovation of Penteli Children’s Hospital in Athens. Kaizen Gaming’s social impact instrument is set to invest €14m in 2025 for causes across the operator’s footprint.

Naturally, the company is not resting on its laurels; not if it’s to realise that 2626 vision. Indeed, there were 1,000 job openings posted in 2024, as the business looks to support its rocketing growth and ambition to make Betano truly a global brand. Owning and operating its own tech stack and platforms has been, and will continue to be, vital. “It isn’t an exaggeration to say we wouldn’t be where we are today without developing our own technology,” Daskalakis comments.

He also insists he’s as motivated as ever. Speak to the staff and they’ll tell you the CEO is often the last person to leave Kaizen Campus, while also being approachable and open to new ideas. EGR quickly discovered he’s also a big sports fan with an encyclopaedic knowledge of football and basketball. “I enjoy building stuff, and as a team we also enjoy competing […] it’s mostly about coming to the office and enjoying working with people that stick by you, especially in the hard times.”

Before EGR leaves, Daskalakis emphasises one final point: “‘Be humble, stay hungry and always hustle’ is the motto we go by, and we don’t intend to change our approach.” Why would they?