Rebuilding Live Betting: Owning the Highest-Revenue Sportsbook Vertical
How I owned the product roadmap for Live Betting at Kaizen Gaming — driving feature discovery, A/B experimentation, and conversion improvements across one of the most technically complex areas of the sportsbook.
Context
Live Betting is the heartbeat of any modern sportsbook. At Kaizen Gaming (Betano / Stoiximan), it represents one of the highest-revenue verticals — and one of the most technically complex. Markets change every second, odds update in real-time, and players need to make decisions under time pressure. The product has to be fast, reliable, and intuitive.
I owned the end-to-end product roadmap for this vertical as Product Manager from 2022 to 2024.
The Challenge
- Technical complexity: Live betting depends on real-time data feeds, instant odds updates, and settlement logic that has to be correct to the millisecond
- User experience under pressure: Players are making decisions during a match — any friction in the bet placement flow directly costs revenue
- Balancing stakeholders: Trading wants risk controls, commercial wants conversion, players want speed. The product has to serve all three
- Measurement difficulty: In a live environment with constantly changing state, running clean experiments is harder than in traditional product contexts
My Approach
Deep Discovery
I started by sitting with traders during live events, watching how they manage risk in real-time. I observed players placing bets during matches, noting where they hesitated, where they abandoned, and where the experience felt seamless. This domain immersion informed every product decision that followed.
Structured Experimentation
I introduced a structured A/B testing framework for live betting features. We measured conversion rate at each step of the bet placement flow, engagement with in-play market displays, and error rates during high-traffic moments. Each experiment had clear hypotheses and success criteria before it shipped.
Iterative Delivery
Rather than big-bang releases, we shipped incremental improvements to the live betting experience — from market display optimisations to bet placement flow refinements to settlement UX improvements. Each change was measured, and learnings fed into the next iteration.
Results
- Measurable improvements in bet placement conversion through targeted UX iterations
- Reduced error rates during peak live betting moments
- Improved engagement metrics across in-play market display
- Established a repeatable experimentation framework that the broader sportsbook team adopted
- Mentored Product Owners who continued evolving the vertical after my transition to Senior PM
Key Takeaway
The best product decisions in live betting come from understanding the domain deeply — not just the user, but the underlying systems. Knowing how odds are compiled, how risk is managed in-play, and how traders think gives you an unfair advantage in building products that work for everyone in the value chain.