The Next: Volume 20 with XST Capital Group

XST Capital Group presents The Next, a recurring series featuring founders, CEO’s, and key industry thought leaders to discuss the companies shaping innovation with the digital gaming sector. In this edition, XST Capital Group founder Joel Simkins speaks with Kelson Quan, founder & CEO of Wager Games. This interview originally appeared on the XST Capital Group website.

“For those unfamiliar, can you give some color on the genesis of Wager Games and an overview of the business?”

Wager Games was founded on the realization that the sports betting user experience hasn’t evolved in decades—it still resembles a giant Excel spreadsheet. We saw an opportunity to bring in the engagement, energy, and interactivity that consumers are familiar with from mobile gaming and social platforms.

Our core belief is that modern users crave experiences that are personalized, interactive, and deeply social. Our platform transforms sports betting into a modern experience that is content driven, dynamic, and social. Over the past year, we've seen strong signals— our product has meaningfully increased GGR and retention and unlocked new acquisition for our partners.

What's really exciting is that we’ve only scratched the surface of what we envision our whole product could be. The metrics we’ve achieved so far validate our approach and fuel our optimism for what we can accomplish over the next 5 to 10 years.

“There are plenty of competitors in the social sports betting space that have taken the B2C route. What made you decide to go B2B, and is B2C something you would consider in the future?”

From a product standpoint, building a successful social network requires immense scale. For me, the definition of a successful network is one where everyone in that group, i.e. sports bettors, must be, must join, and must play there. Look at Instagram, if you’re a person with friends and want to know what's going on in the world, YOU HAVE TO be there. This takes an immense scale of content and people to make it a must.

The challenge in the sports betting industry is that users are fragmented into many user groups across state lines and multiple apps. Rather than creating yet another isolated social betting network, we chose to create one that bridges these fragmented communities and connects them all to the best betting content.

This decision aligns deeply with our mission: bringing people closer together through sports gaming and creating a truly interconnected ecosystem. We firmly believe the most impactful way to achieve this vision is through a B2B strategy

“I'd love to hear about the product development process at Wager Games. What is your strategy for developing your offerings, and what have been the key turning points in your development to date?“

Our approach to product development is pretty simple: continuously engaging with users and building solutions they love. However, our defining moment in breaking into the industry was applying a gaming perspective to our development process. Thanks to insights from seasoned industry investors like Ex-CEO of Pinnacle, Founders of Betting Hero, CXOs from Wynn, CSO of Churchill Downs and Partners at Zero Labs, we recognized that rapid, frictionless integration was going to be a crucial part of our product. Prioritizing features that could be deployed swiftly, with minimal technical burden, allowed us to deliver high-impact solutions.

The tagline for our customers is we deliver in just one week of work with a single line of code.

“How does Wager Games differentiate its value proposition from existing solutions and competitors also offering social features in sports betting?“

We view ourselves more as an entertainment plug-in for the sportsbook. Social is really just a piece of it. I think other social features and social network apps have done an amazing job in solving the problem of sharing bets. But in our eyes that is just a piece of the puzzle when it comes to the problem that we are solving.

We view our client’s problem as competing with every other entertainment platform that users have to choose from. Netflix, League of Legends, Instagram, SnapChat are all competing for consumer’s free time and attention. We view this as the harder problem and the larger opportunity to help sportsbooks become an entertainment destination. A destination that any sports fan HAS to be a part of.

“What is the integration process like for sports betting partners, and what level of customization is available in the plugin?”

We really pride ourselves in making an integration that is easy for our operators. 1 week, 1 line of code! We like to delight our operators with this simplicity, it is something that’s important to us.

Customization is also key to our approach. Our platform can seamlessly fit in with our partners’ designs, whether through standalone immersive feeds or our integrated content widgets that fit into the core user flows.

“On the same topic of partnerships, what is your target demographic, and how are you convincing them that your plugin is the right solution?”

As a B2B2C we have 2 customers: the bettor and the operator. Our product appeals strongly to younger, digitally-native sports fans seeking engaging, enjoyable experiences.

For operators, we partner with forward-thinking companies recognizing that traditional acquisition tactics are no longer sufficient for sustained growth. The days of pouring money into acquisition to achieve revenue targets are an emerging market theme and not a strategy that pays off in mature market conditions. Winners in mature markets are the ones who engage and retain their users. The future lies in deep user engagement and community-building. We help operators secure loyal users through compelling social interactions, positioning them for long-term success in a competitive landscape. We believe that we are going to make our clients the winner in the next decade of sports betting.

“One impressive aspect is your growth with limited additional funding. How do you allocate your limited resources to maximize growth and fit your strategy?”

I think we got lucky in our team. When we came together it was just 3 friends that wanted to enter the space. It just so happens that two of us are engineers, so it kind of eliminates the most expensive part of a startup. We are also riding an AI wave that helps engineering, sales, and customer success scale with a small team.

In addition, we try to just stay really focused on 1 or 2 things. Over the past year, we focused exclusively on Kambi customers because the implementations required minimal adjustments, making expansion efficient. What we didn’t expect is them to ask us to serve their clients globally, which we were really excited about. And again, adding more clients from Kambi is incredibly scalable for us. So now we can go to 50+ clients globally without adding too many new resources.

“What is your vision for the future of social interaction within sports betting, and how do you see Wager Games pushing that innovation?”

I see the future to be more akin to gaming platforms like Roblox. We envision sports betting evolving into immersive, game-like experiences akin to these types of platforms, where community and creativity flourish within defined ecosystems. Sports betting will likely evolve into many different types of engaging games and experiences. We are already seeing this happen with daily fantasy, fantasy, prediction markets and even games like ZenRun. To us, social is just how we spend time on the internet together. The future is being able to do that in different ways. So our roadmap is focused on creating experiences that enable players to do that.

“What are the biggest opportunities you see for Wager Games in the intersection of social media and sports betting?”

The largest untapped opportunity lies in attracting casual sports fans into active participation. Sports betting today lacks accessibility for mainstream audiences, despite clear potential demonstrated by fantasy sports' mainstream success. Products like PrizePicks have succeeded by making sports betting accessible and intuitive. Our goal is to similarly lower the entry barrier and bring casual fans into vibrant, engaging betting communities, and expand the market's overall potential.

“What is Wager Games' roadmap for 2025? What are your plans for growth and development in the coming year?”

We have some pretty exciting integrations coming down the pipeline from a content perspective. We’ve had some amazing results working with Staked AI, Outlier, Linemate, and OddsJam to collaborate and deliver delightful user experiences. We will continue to double down on these experiences that sports betting customers love and bring that to our operators. We are also going to be building our casino product, which we are really excited about.

“When you're not spending your time working on Wager Games, what do you like to do in your downtime?”

Probably like most founders my time is spent on our mission and then my spare time is spent on our mission. But I do appreciate balance—I love being outdoors like camping, fishing, playing tennis, and going to the gym. Probably most importantly, I always try to prioritize quality time with my wife, family, and close friends.

Thank you for participating in our CEO interview series, it has been very interesting discussing Wager Games. With all my questions for you, I think its only fair to now turn the tables on me. Go ahead and ask me anything you want on the industry.

You've built XST Capital to sit at the intersection of capital, strategy, and a booming digital gaming industry. But I imagine there's a deeper motivation behind that. What is it about this moment—this industry—that made you believe now is the time to build something like XST, and what do you feel the rest of the market is still underestimating?

Kelson, thank you so much for participating—it’s been great getting to know you and the Wager Games team since we first connected at ICE Barcelona 2025. That’s an incredibly thoughtful question, and I truly appreciate it. Beyond the obvious answers—making a good living, setting my own schedule, and working with a curated group of clients—I genuinely believe XST is just beginning to build something special. It’s a potential legacy not just for me, but for the team I’m developing. With nearly 30 years on Wall Street (I started when I was 13—kidding), I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t across roles as an investor, buy-side analyst, sell-side analyst, and investment banker—a fairly unique career path. I truly relish working with the dynamic companies shaping the gaming industry for the next generation. XST allows me to bring all those perspectives together and provide our clients with completely honest, unbiased advice to help them achieve the best outcomes. I’ve got some very exciting things up my sleeve for the future of XST and look forward to unveiling them soon.

Kelson Quan - Biography

Kelson Quan is Founder & CEO of Wager Games, the B2B platform that turns sports betting into immersive media and content experiences. Before launching Wager Games, he was a software engineer and product-manager at Apple, Citi Ventures, IBM and Ingest.ai. He loves working with startups as a lead mentor at Techstars and EIR at Co-Created. When he’s not working he’ll be outdoors: fishing, backpacking, playing tennis!