Smarkets is taking a step back into the spotlight after a quieter few years focused on rebuilding its core product, founder and CEO Jason Trost tells SBC News.
The company finds itself competing in a still highly saturated UK market, one which is preparing for a huge overhaul later this year with a new tax regime expected to prompt significant changes.
Smarkets decided to get 2026 off with a marketing push, becoming the official sports trading partner of the Rolex SailGP Championship for the next three years. This return to more visible marketing comes after the firm scaled back its presence while upgrading systems and refining its platform.
“We decided to kind of take a break from press as we upgraded our systems,” Trost tells SBC News.
“We retooled our website, we’ve just launched a new interface and SBK has been quietly becoming one of the UK’s top sportsbooks.”
“The SailGP partnership is our first major announcement of telling everybody ‘we’re here and we have an amazing product’.”
Predictions vs exchange
Smarkets operates both a betting exchange and a sportsbook, with SBK built on top of the exchange infrastructure. Trost describes the two products as serving different segments of the market.
“We have a sportsbook which is more of a retail end of the sports betting market and we have Smarkets which is a prediction market, or our betting exchange, if you like,” he explains.
“Both sit on the same underlying platform. The sportsbook’s actually built on top of the exchange,” he continues, adding that the company has been “putting our energy into that product” as SBK gathered momentum.
“Now that SBK has some really nice momentum, we’re pivoting that momentum back to the Smarkets brand,” he says.
The global betting industry has a new player in town, however, one which seems strikingly familiar to those involved in the betting exchange space. This is, of course, prediction markets.
Addressing the growing conversation around prediction markets – particularly in the US with brands like Kalshi and Polymarket – Trost says that the terminology often causes confusion.
“They’re called betting exchanges in the UK. They’ve existed for 20 plus years in the UK in a very legal, stable framework here,” he says.
“This concept of a prediction market coming to the UK – it’s here already.
“It’s like soccer and football – they’re not apples and oranges, they’re both apples.”
Smarkets – a finance focus for betting?
Trost believes the long-term structure of sports betting will increasingly resemble financial markets. The fanfare around predictions in the US could be an indicator that some customers are well on board for this kind of product.
“Long term, I think sports betting is going to look like the financial industry, where you’ll have exchanges on the base level, and then you’ll have brokers that sit on top of the exchanges,” he says.
“I want Smarkets to be the base layer exchange… and for other people to be able to plug into it, as well as we have our own brokers that plug into it.”
That technology-first mindset, he argues, differentiates Smarkets from many traditional bookmakers.
“Most bookies are marketing companies,” Trost says. “We’re a technology company.”
With a background in computer science and being a formal stock trader, he says that focus has shaped the company’s development from the beginning. The idea for Smarkets came after he encountered early US-facing political trading markets in the early 2000s.
He explains: “I saw this market and it was moving in real time, and I thought, ‘holy cow, this is really cool’.
“But the interface was bad and the application of the technology was poorly implemented. But that was the impulse for me to start this company.”
As much as it may make many people roll their eyes, it’s hard not to talk about technology without also talking about AI and the impact it is having across many industries – including betting.
Companies of various sizes and across many different markets are looking at how AI can be integrated into their business. Trost shares that Smarkets is applying the technology broadly across its operations.
He says: “We’re using it internally to help us code faster, we’re using it to do reviews, we’re using it for customer service, we’re using it for fraud, we’re using it for KYC.
“It’s kind of an ‘all of the above’. It sounds cliche but it’s truly like a once in a generation technology.”
An unseen opportunity in the UK?
The regulatory situation in the UK has caused a lot of headaches for many. The 2020-2023 review of the Gambling Act left the industry in limbo for three years as it awaited a judgement on its regulatory future.
In the many months since the review’s White Paper was published in April 2023, recommendations have been adopted – like financial risk checks and a ban on cross-sell bouncing, among others. Some politicians are now calling for another review of legislation betting legislation.
However, despite the challenging regulatory and conditions – and financial ones which we’ll get into later – Trost remains confident in the domestic opportunity in the UK.
“I think the UK market’s there for the taking,” he says.
“I think a lot of the incumbents are kind of asleep at the wheel. There’s the ‘big six’ and they kind of do the same thing every year. So I think there’s a possibility to tap into the market.
“The other thing that is kind of an open secret is that most of these bookmakers make most of their money from casino, whereas we are the only bookmaker, or sports trading company, that I know of that doesn’t offer casino.
“We do that thematically, because we see ourselves as a financial technology company, not an entertainment company.”
There has been plenty of regulatory change in the UK market over the past few years, not least in recent months since the Autumn Budget in November. As of late 2025, Remote Gaming Duty is set to increase to 40% in April.
The tax raises are expected to have a huge impact on operators and various shapes and sizes, particularly those with a heavy investment in casino. Flutter Entertainment, Entain and Evoke have all openly stated that marketing budgets will shrink. The coming tax burden has not put off Smarkets from new marketing initiatives, however.
“The UK just jacked the tax rate on casinos from 20% to 40% and all of our competitors are actually going to be under the cosh because that’s their big money maker. They just lost 20% of the revenue from their money maker.
“So it’s like a prime position for Smarkets, because we don’t have casino and we don’t have that dependency on the revenue stream, so we think that the market is there for the taking.”
Trost describes a broader ambition beyond sports betting alone for the future of his now-18-year-old, London-based business.
“I think finance is going to converge into a super app,” he says.
“I want Smarkets to play a role in that ecosystem. So long term, I want Smarkets to be able to offer other asset classes, and be able to do financial functions that you would use on other apps, and be able to bring all that functionality into one place.”
As exchange-style betting gains renewed attention globally due to the ‘predictions market’ craze, Trost believes the company’s 18-year foundation positions it well.
“Sports betting is and should be treated like financial technology,” he affirms.
“We’ve also been of that mindset, but that’s pretty new for the sports betting industry.”
With the SailGP deal marking a return to public-facing growth, Smarkets appears ready to test that thesis more visibly in the years ahead.