Novibet’s Executive Director of Sportsbook, Giannos Grivas, spoke to SBC News about the company’s plans to launch two major products, the secrets behind a 180% year-on-year increase in player props betting post World Cup, and the key role data will play in the future of betting.
So much of operators’ focus has been on sportsbooks in 2026 – and you don’t have to look far to figure out why.
The 2026 World Cup was a major event, touted as the biggest sporting event of all time.
But since the dust has settled on the summer footballing bonanza in North America, the question for these operators has been the same – how do we keep these customers engaged?
Novibet, which has owned its own tech stack for nearly 20 years, appears to have done just that.
The firm saw a 180% uptick year-on-year in the player props betting department the month after the World Cup concluded, highlighting the appetite for similar content which defined World Cup betting over the summer.
For the company’s Executive Director of Sports, Giannos Grivas, this isn’t just a one off and is something the business can continue to take advantage of.
“We implemented our in-house player props model created by our own algorithm team in trading, and we launched it in the World Cup.
“We realised the massive increase in turnover, massive increase in bet builder share. The challenge for us is that it was the World Cup – how were we going to keep customers engaged after this?
“But in August, player props turnover grew 180% compared to the previous year, so us staying with the customer, having the ability to create our own products via our tech stack, and offering more pre-built bet builders, enhanced odds and unique player props is something which we can see is working.”
Novibet then, Novibet now
Grivas’ career in iGaming has come full circle. The former footballer, who represented the Greek U21 team and played in the country’s top division in the early 2000s, initially joined Novibet as a pre-game and in-play trader just months after he retired from playing.
Internal growth led him to becoming the company’s Director of Sportsbook by 2016, but he departed just before the COVID-19 pandemic caused mass lockdowns globally in early 2020.
Stints at the BVGroup and bet365 followed, before a four-year spell at Kaizen Gaming between 2021-2025 in management positions.
But in late 2025, nearly six years after he first left, Grivas rejoined Novibet carrying a whole lot more experience from across the iGaming industry.
At the SBC Summit, he told SBC News that he knew the time was right after a discussion with the company’s Chairman, Rodolfo Odoni.
“Last summer, I spoke with him and I realised that he has the same passion,” Grivas explained.
“He has the same drive to succeed as we did in the very early days. This met my exact ambition to grow and to make things happen.”
“Of course, aspects such as speed and pricing are such a challenge, but having worked with the likes of bet365 and Betano – companies I will always have huge respect for – I strongly believe that Novibet’s platform is unique at its value.
“This is because we have the ability to create products by ourselves. We can train our algorithms, use the data in order to feed our platform and create the most unique products for our consumers.”
Follow the customer
The last few weeks cannot have been too easy for Novibet. Despite remaining as Greece’s second-largest operator, according to the Blask Index, their second biggest market, Brazil, is facing a uniquely dire position as President Lula declared an outright ban on online betting in the country last month.
With the firm still having a foothold in markets such as Ireland, Mexico, Chile and Cyprus, though, it has to look forward and press on despite regulatory challenges, according to Grivas.
The company’s Director of Sportsbook believes that in what he described as a “battlefield”, Novibet cannot be looking over its shoulder and fearing competition and regulation, but should rather be embracing it.
Grivas was coy, but did cite how Novibet is doing this. “We are preparing something very big to launch in the next few months,” he revealed.
“We have two very big products ready to implement.”
The onus, now more than ever, seems to be on sportsbooks having to create unique products to stand out from the competition.
But despite Novibet clearly in line to do that, Grivas hinted that it’s more about patience and waiting for the customer trends to provide an insight into what the modern day punter wants from a platform.
Therein, again, lies the value of the company’s proprietary technology stack.
He continued: “Customers will show us the way. When I was a bettor, I’d have a bet on the match result and sit with my friends and wait to see whether the result came in.
“Now, it’s another ball game entirely. For the modern day bettor, something has to happen in the next five minutes or so.
“Customers are so familiar with stats, they know everything because player and team data is so easily accessible.
“But the average age of our customers is low, which is a positive sign, and we have to try and feed into that.”