DATA.BET's Berest says prediction markets deserve standalone vertical status

Yurii Berest, CEO of sportsbook supplier DATA.BET, said prediction markets should be treated as a standalone vertical, in an interview with iGaming Business. Berest said the segment has moved from a niche format into mainstream discussion, citing a wider range of events and easier presentation as factors. DATA.BET launched its own prediction markets product in April, the company said.

H2 Gambling Capital data shows that in 2025, prediction markets handled $16m for March Madness, and a year later the college basketball tournament was projected to surge to an estimated $530m. Berest said wagering has traditionally centred on sports, whereas prediction markets carry it into politics, technology, economics, entertainment and other real-world events. He added that users can watch a market's implied probability shift as fresh information arrives.

DATA.BET's offering is available via iFrame and API integration and is built for sportsbook users rather than traders, the company said. Berest said players use standard decimal odds, their existing account and the same balance, in fiat or crypto, and that operators can integrate via API without additional integrations. He said the product required a new subsystem with different pricing logic, risk management and odds calculated dynamically from incoming stakes and fast-changing data. Since launch, DATA.BET has added market types and richer live and historical market data, according to Berest.

Berest described a spectrum of prediction market designs, stretching from peer-to-peer exchanges with liquidity-driven pricing through to fixed-odds models. Exchange-based markets, he said, excel at price discovery but bring complexity such as order books, liquidity depth and partial fills. DATA.BET blends both approaches, he said: the interface feels familiar, while pricing draws on exchange information, available liquidity and volume-weighted average price calculations. Users, he said, never have to deal with an order book or learn a trading interface.

Berest said real-time data and automation are needed for pricing, exposure management, market suspension and settlement to operate with minimal manual intervention, and that event monitoring is increasingly important for markets tied to fast-moving events. He said AI can support monitoring, classification, anomaly detection and operational automation, but that core pricing and settlement logic must remain transparent, deterministic and based on defined market data and resolution rules. He said settlement rules should be defined before a market opens and applied through an automated, auditable process rather than discretionary decisions after the event.

Berest expects the category to move toward more short-duration markets that resolve frequently, producing a more repeatable engagement pattern, alongside a simpler user experience. In his view, most users will not mind whether the underlying pricing originates from an exchange, a liquidity model or a sportsbook trading system; what matters is that a market is easy to grasp, competitively priced and playable straight away with the account and balance they already hold.