Inside Kaizen Gaming’s Sponsorship Playbook: FIFA, Tottenham and Why Betano Still Avoids the US

Kaizen Gaming, the Greek-founded operator behind the Betano brand, has quietly built one of the most aggressive sponsorship portfolios in global sports betting — and its chief commercial officer says the company still has no plans to enter the United States market. In a wide-ranging interview, CCO Julio Iglesias Hernando laid out the thinking behind deals with FIFA, Tottenham Hotspur and a growing list of top-flight football clubs, along with why Betano continues to sit out the world’s largest regulated sports betting market.

Betano became the first sports betting operator to ever partner with FIFA back in 2022, a move that drew skepticism rather than admiration from industry peers at the time. Four years later, the company is serving as an official tournament supporter of the FIFA World Cup 2026 across Europe and South America — its third consecutive FIFA agreement and part of a commercial programme that has already broken sponsorship revenue records for a single sporting event.

From Skepticism to a Repeatable Playbook

Iglesias Hernando, who joined Kaizen Gaming from William Hill in February 2021 after a marketing career spanning Heineken, Kellogg’s and Philip Morris, describes the FIFA relationship as a story about trust more than money. “When we became the first sports betting operator to partner with FIFA in 2022, many in our industry questioned the move,” he said. “We are a fully responsible and regulated operator, willing to collaborate and learn, working hard to maintain the society’s trust to operate.”

He frames Qatar 2022 as an education exercise and the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup in the United States as a dress rehearsal for the 2026 tournament. By this year, he says, the relationship has matured into a defined activation framework covering fan engagement, in-market moments and responsible gaming standards that a partner of FIFA’s stature demands.

Kaizen’s broader sponsorship map now includes FIFA, UEFA club competitions, Bayern Munich, Flamengo, River Plate, FC Porto and, most recently, Tottenham Hotspur. “Our sponsorships are a deliberate map of our markets,” Iglesias Hernando said. “The right partnership in the right territory, with the right club for that audience, does work that a generic global campaign simply cannot replicate.”

The Tottenham Deal and the Post-Shirt-Ban Era

The Tottenham partnership, announced in July 2026, is notable for what it deliberately avoids. Betano becomes the club’s training wear partner for the 2026/27 season only — replacing BetMGM — before the deal evolves into an official Europe and Latin America betting partnership running through 2029. Crucially, the Betano logo will not appear on retail training merchandise at all, a structure that effectively tests what a Premier League gambling sponsorship looks like once front-of-shirt inventory disappears under the league’s new restrictions starting in 2026/27.

Iglesias Hernando pushed back on the idea that reduced shirt visibility means reduced value. “We have secured invaluable assets: the association with one of the Premier League’s most globally recognised clubs for the next three seasons, prominent presence across training wear and highly engaging partnership activations,” he said. Tottenham’s global audience of more than 600 million, paired with Betano’s growing footprint in Latin America, gives the regional structure of the deal a clear commercial logic.

On measuring return, he was candid that not everything shows up on a spreadsheet. Modern tracking gives Kaizen visibility into brand exposure, share of voice and audience reach, he said, but “we won’t always have a clean number to put in front of our CFO for every element of that work.” The bar for any deal getting done, he added, is simpler than the analytics: “If there is no trust that the partnership has the potential to be a long-term one, there is no deal.”

Why the US Market Remains Off the Table

Despite sponsoring a World Cup played largely on American soil, Kaizen has deliberately avoided launching Betano in the regulated US sports betting market. “Steering clear of the US market has been a strategic decision,” Iglesias Hernando said. “We have watched many overseas brands incur staggering losses trying to capture market share there.” He noted the company is monitoring developments and gaining exposure to the North American landscape through its existing presence in Ontario, Canada, but gave no indication of an imminent US launch.

Elsewhere, Kaizen’s expansion has continued regardless of tough incumbents — the company entered Ghana in February 2026 as its 20th regulated market despite a dominant local operator holding an estimated 60-65% share. Kaizen already leads Brazil’s online betting market with roughly 23% share, ahead of Bet365, and says its ambition is to be a top-three operator in every market where Betano operates. As US bettors continue to weigh their own sportsbook options among established domestic operators, Kaizen’s caution about the market stands out relative to how aggressively it has expanded elsewhere.

A Broader Critique of Sportsbook Marketing

Asked what he carried over from his consumer goods background, Iglesias Hernando offered a pointed critique of the wider betting industry. “I believe that our industry has amazing technical expertise in the digital space, but an appalling lack of knowledge of marketing fundamentals,” he said. “A large part of our industry still does not get it, or even worse, they just imitate.”

He described Kaizen’s internal sponsorship philosophy with a phrase he called the company’s “secret motto”: No FOMO. “No deal in itself is important enough to sacrifice our principles and framework,” he said. In an industry where sponsorship spending is often reactive — one operator signs a club, so a rival signs the neighboring one — that discipline is presented as Kaizen’s real differentiator heading toward 2030.