WhatsApp has long been a place where football supporters argue over team selections, share tips and discuss the next goal. It has also been used by informal bookmakers taking wagers through private messages, sometimes with no licence or consumer safeguards.
Now, gambling technology companies are trying to turn the messaging service into a betting interface, allowing customers to search markets, build a bet slip and place a wager without opening a conventional sportsbook app.
Josh Swerdlow, co-founder and chief executive of conversational betting provider ChatBet, said the emerging model was distinct from earlier services in which bookmakers manually accepted wagers through WhatsApp.
“Those models relied on humans reading messages, checking odds, responding to customers and manually processing bets. They’re labour-intensive, difficult to scale, prone to human error and only available while someone is sitting behind a screen,” he told SiGMA News.
“What we’ve built is the first conversational transaction layer for sportsbooks.”
A sportsbook inside the conversation
Customers using the system can ask for matches or betting markets in ordinary language, rather than searching through menus and filters. They can also send voice notes, use abbreviations or refer to teams by nicknames.
Swerdlow said the technology was designed to interpret the way supporters actually talk about sport.
“Someone might say ‘Galácticos’, ‘Los Blancos’, ‘Madrid’ or simply ‘Real’. They’re all referring to the same team,” he said.
“The platform understands intent, asks follow-up questions when necessary and only confirms a bet once it’s confident it knows exactly what the customer wants.”
The operator remains responsible for prices, accounts, payments and regulatory controls. Conversational betting suppliers act as another front end, drawing information from the same systems used by the operator’s website or mobile application.
“All odds come directly from the operator’s trading platform in real time,” Swerdlow said. “If a price changes before the customer confirms the bet, the updated odds are presented for acceptance, exactly as they would be on a website or mobile app.”
Registration, identity checks and deposits may still require customers to use an operator’s established procedures, depending on local law. Swerdlow said the aim was to keep as much of the journey within WhatsApp as regulation permitted.
The format could also make it easier to turn advertising into bets. Someone who sees a promotion during a match could respond at once, without leaving WhatsApp to find the same market in a sportsbook app.
BetCris, a licensed sports betting and online gaming operator active in Latin America, has introduced ChatBet’s conversational betting technology to its customers. Hazel Zuñiga Gutierrez, automation supervisor for the operator, said the service was designed to shorten the journey between a customer’s initial interest and the placement of a wager.
“For us, this wasn’t about launching another chatbot. It was about removing friction between customer intent and placing a bet,” she told SiGMA News. “If a customer sees an advert, receives a campaign message or wants to place a bet during a live match, they can act immediately without switching apps or navigating multiple screens.”
She said customers had adapted easily to the interface.
“What excited us most wasn’t simply launching on WhatsApp. It was seeing how naturally players interacted with it. They didn’t need instructions or training. They simply started talking. That’s exactly how technology should work. The conversation feels familiar because it’s happening in a place our customers already use every day, in the language they naturally speak.”
Early figures and wider ambitions
Swerdlow said roughly one in three users who start a conversation went on to create a bet slip and claimed that average revenue per active user had increased by $22, or approximately €19.30.
“We’re seeing very encouraging engagement across live deployments,” Swerdlow said.
Zuñiga Gutierrez said BetCris was assessing the product according to customer behaviour and commercial results rather than its novelty.
“For us, success isn’t measured by novelty,” she said. “It’s measured by whether customers find the experience easier and whether that translates into stronger commercial performance. So far we’re very encouraged by both customer engagement and the quality of the conversations taking place inside WhatsApp.”
Conversational betting is emerging as operators rethink how their mobile services work. Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, said nearly nine in 10 internet users went online through mobile devices in 2025. Separate figures from the European Gaming and Betting Association showed that mobile generated 58 per cent of Europe’s online gambling revenue in 2024.
ChatBet’s initial focus has been on markets where WhatsApp is already widely used for business and customer communication, namely Latin America and Africa, including markets such as Mexico and Zambia.
Swerdlow said the company was also receiving interest from Europe, sports media businesses, affiliates and prediction markets.
“The opportunity is much bigger than sportsbooks and WhatsApp,” he said. “It’s about turning conversations across all messaging and social apps, from WhatsApp to Widgets, from TikTok to SnapChat, and from Kick to Discord.”
Where regulation draws the line
A 2025 court case in Britain showed the difference between licensed services and betting operations run through private messages. An unlicensed bookmaker received a suspended sentence after withholding £269,000 in winnings from a customer.
The Gambling Commission said the case showed what can happen when betting takes place outside the regulated market, where customers may be left without basic safeguards or a clear route to recover their money.
ChatBet argues that its model is fundamentally different because it does not set odds, hold customer funds or replace the operator’s compliance systems.
“Identity verification, payments, responsible gambling controls, audit trails and customer accounts all remain within the operator’s existing licensed systems,” Swerdlow said.
“From a regulatory perspective, we’re a communication and transaction interface—similar to how businesses already use messaging platforms for customer engagement—rather than a separate gambling platform.”
Conversational betting is unlikely to replace sportsbook apps in the near term. Operators instead see it as an additional way for customers to access the same regulated betting services.
Zuñiga Gutierrez said the operator was already seeing a meaningful proportion of its active customers engage with the service, although it did not disclose a precise figure.
“Customers are already spending hours every day inside the conversation. Top-of-funnel, middle-funnel, stats are all up considerably.”
She said conversational betting was expected to develop alongside existing digital services rather than replace them.
“We don’t see it replacing existing channels for the moment; we see it becoming another major channel alongside them.”
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