FIRST.bet CEO Tom Light on AI-built sportsbooks, bet builder simulations and expansion beyond Latin America

FIRST.bet, the sportsbook provider launched by Tom Light after his time at SBTech, has used its first two years to become one of the established suppliers in Latin America and Brazil. Speaking to SBC News at SBC Summit 2026, Light said the company now has Europe and Africa in its sights.

Light said the company does not take its cues from other B2B suppliers. Instead, it looks to large B2C operators such as DraftKings, Betano and bet365. That thinking informed the decision to bring in Ian Bradley, a former DraftKings SVP and former SBTech colleague, as co-CEO. Light described Bradley as a leading product specialist and said the aim was to add deep product knowledge rather than only sales and networking skills.

The company's newest product, SportOS, drew large numbers of delegates to its stand in Hall Four. FIRST.bet says the system gives operators and suppliers full control over how they launch, run and differentiate a sportsbook. Light said it is driven by artificial intelligence and lets users type a prompt to create a sportsbook and its user experience. His argument is that casino content and live dealer games are largely the same across operators, so the sportsbook is the main place left to differentiate, and a standard iFrame limits that.

On product development, Light said he wants to improve the bet builder so it can combine correlated and non-correlated selections as widely as possible, while keeping market uptime high and avoiding locked markets. He noted that mathematical models alone have limits. FIRST.bet has therefore introduced Monte Carlo simulations, which use a random number generator to simulate a full match tens of thousands of times, including events such as passes, corners and free kicks. The company then measures how often the chosen events occur together to price the correlation.

Light said the product team are keen bettors themselves, which he believes helps them design features that suit customers. On responsible gambling, he said FIRST.bet generally applies its strictest measures across all of its markets because it operates under varying compliance regimes. He pointed to tools such as reality checks and cool-off periods, and to the complexity of differing rules on markets involving young players, citing Lamine Yamal at Euro 2024 as an example.