‘No FOMO’: Inside Kaizen Gaming’s sponsorship playbook

When Betano became the first sports betting operator ever to partner with FIFA in 2022, the reaction inside the industry was closer to bemusement than envy. Four years later, the Greek-founded operator has been an official tournament supporter of the FIFA World Cup 2026 across Europe and South America – its third FIFA agreement, secured for a 104-game tournament whose commercial programme had already broken all sponsorship revenue records for a stand-alone sporting event.

For Julio Iglesias Hernando, CCO of Betano’s parent company Kaizen Gaming, the journey to become an established FIFA partner is a story about trust as much as money.

“When we became the first sports betting operator to partner with FIFA in 2022, many in our industry questioned the move. The conventional wisdom was that FIFA would keep our industry at arm’s length,” he recalls. “But as usual, we tried to find a different angle to the problem: we are a fully responsible and regulated operator, willing to collaborate and learn, working hard to maintain the society’s trust to operate.”

Qatar 2022, he says, “was as much about education as activation. It helped us understand how FIFA communicates with its audiences, where our brand could add genuine value, and how to build trust.” The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 in the United States then served as a dress rehearsal, giving Betano “the opportunity to test and refine our activation playbook on a major FIFA stage before the biggest event in football”.

By 2026, the relationship had matured into something structurally different. “Three tournaments of experience mean we now approach the partnership with a clear activation framework: how we show up for fans, how we create meaningful moments around the matches and how we balance commercial goals with responsible gaming principles that a partner of FIFA’s stature rightly demands.”

What strikes him most is not the media value. “The real value of this relationship isn’t just the badge on the broadcast,” he adds. “It’s the permission it gives us to engage with football’s international community in ways that feel authentic, and the standard it sets for how we operate everywhere we do business.”

A growing portfolio

Kaizen’s rise has been rapid by any measure. When Iglesias Hernando arrived from William Hill in February 2021 – after a career spanning Heineken, Kellogg’s and Philip Morris – the company operated in six markets. It is now live in more than 20 regulated jurisdictions across four continents, has collected back-to-back operator of the year honours and leads Brazil’s fiercely contested online betting market with roughly 23% share, ahead of Bet365.

The sponsorship portfolio has grown in step: FIFA, UEFA club competitions, Bayern Munich, Flamengo, River Plate, FC Porto and, most recently, Tottenham Hotspur – which follows a two-season front-of-shirt run at Aston Villa that ended with the arrival of the Premier League’s gambling sponsor ban .

“Our sponsorships are a deliberate map of our markets,” Iglesias Hernando says. “The right partnership in the right territory, with the right club for that audience, does work that a generic global campaign simply cannot replicate.”

That still leaves the inevitable CFO question: what does any of it actually return? He is honest about what can and can’t be measured. Technology now offers “genuine visibility into fundamentals like brand exposure under specific broadcast conditions, share of voice, and audience reach across markets”. But some things can’t be captured in numbers: “the cumulative effect of being present at the moments that matter to fans, the brand permission that comes from association with clubs people love.”

Iglesias Hernando acknowledges: “We won’t always have a clean number to put in front of our CFO for every element of that work, but we know why we’re doing it, and the results across our markets continue to validate this conviction.”

As for what gets a deal over the line – or kills it – the answer is direct