Why Bettortainment thinks sportsbooks are wasting the live moment

Fresh off ICE Barcelona, Bettortainment co-founders Gavin Puszczalowskyi and Jonathan Baxandall joined The BettingStartups Podcast to unpack what operators are still getting wrong about engagement, and why “entertainment” is becoming the most underappreciated lever in betting today.

For Puszczalowskyi, ICE reinforced a familiar theme. “There are always key words at a conference, and those key words change over time,” he said. “And of course right now we're in a world of AI, so a lot of people are talking about AI, but I always hear customer retention.” 

The problem, he added, is that despite years of discussion, little has fundamentally changed. “I never see anything that develops in the 12 months between the ICE or the SBC [conferences], where you go, ‘oh, last year you were talking about customer retention, and this year there's this product.’”

That’s the gap Bettortainment wants to slot in by acting as “the home of the live betting watchalong,” Puszczalowskyi explained. “It is all about customer retention and customer engagement. It is content with a purpose.”

The company specializes in creating and distributing live, expert-led watchalong content designed to keep users engaged while sport is actually happening. Rather than treating live games as a lost cause for engagement, Bettortainment builds interactive experiences—spanning betting watchalongs, podcasts and betcasts, social content, and influencer-led formats—that give players a reason to stay inside an operator’s ecosystem during peak moments.

Puszczalowskyi traced the philosophy back to his background in radio. “When I created content as a radio presenter, my job was to create content that I thought would hook people in and keep them hooked in,” he said. “It was pre-planned, pre-thought… there were levels of thinking behind the content as opposed to just producing content, throwing it out there, and seeing what works.” 

A core belief is that sportsbooks underutilize the live window. “I still massively believe that sportsbooks do not do enough to engage and retain their customers when sport is live,” he said. “It’s almost like some of them give up and go, ‘well, we can’t possibly compete with the might of the Premier League so we won’t bother.’” Instead, Bettortainment focuses on giving users a reason to remain active during live play, not just before kickoff.

“If you give your customers a reason to stay on your sportsbook when sport is live, they will stay,” Puszczalowskyi said. “You just have to give them a reason.” Bettortainment thinks the reason lies between content and community. “We don’t really create content. We create a community,” he added, pointing to the interactive nature of watchalongs where users participate, respond, and remain engaged in real time.

Crucially, success isn’t measured in views alone. “We don’t just get eyes on,” Puszczalowskyi said. “It’s about the performance metrics. It’s about dwell time on your sportsbook. It’s about driving people back into your ecosystem and betting activity when the sport is live.” The model mirrors live radio engagement: once someone participates, they’re far more likely to stick around. “Once you have a customer, do not let them go.”

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