You probably did it today without even thinking. Pulled out your phone during a break, scrolled past your messages, and opened a betting app. Maybe a quick sports wager, a few spins on a slot game, or just checking the odds on tonight’s match. It feels normal now, almost routine. Just another way to pass the time between meetings or while waiting for coffee.
But here’s the thing: a decade ago, none of this existed the way it does today. The infrastructure, the seamless experience, the way these platforms feel like any other app on your phone—that didn’t happen by accident. It was built deliberately, piece by piece, by people who saw an opportunity where others saw only complexity. One of those people is Uri Poliavich, the founder and CEO of Soft2Bet, a company that helped turn iGaming from a fragmented industry into a global digital ecosystem.
Contents
- The Early Days: Before the Apps Took Over
- Enter Uri Poliavich: The Unlikely iGaming Founder
- What made Uri’s approach different
- Building the Infrastructure Nobody Sees
- The Rise of iGaming Through MEGA: Gamification Meets Gambling
- Core MEGA features that drive engagement
- The Numbers: iGaming’s Explosive Growth
- Where We Are Now: The New Normal
The Early Days: Before the Apps Took Over
Go back to 2015, and online gambling looked very different. Physical casinos still dominated the landscape. If you wanted to bet, you planned a trip, booked a hotel, set aside time. The early online platforms that did exist were clunky, hard to navigate, and not built for mobile. They felt like add-ons, not alternatives.
But something was shifting beneath the surface. European countries like Malta and Gibraltar were becoming licensing hubs, opening the door for regulated online gambling. Governments were creating frameworks. Technology was advancing. Smartphones were everywhere. The pieces were in place, but the platforms themselves weren’t ready. There was a gap—a real one—between what regulation allowed and what technology could deliver.
Enter Uri Poliavich: The Unlikely iGaming Founder
Uri Poliavich wasn’t supposed to end up in iGaming. Born in Soviet Ukraine in 1981, he grew up with what he describes as hunger—not just physical, but a deep drive to build something meaningful. At 14, his family relocated to Israel, where he served in the military, earned a law degree from Bar-Ilan University, and started his career in legal work and mergers and acquisitions.
Then came the pivot. In 2010, Poliavich took a role as VP of Business Development at WK Group, managing operations across casinos, lotteries, and sportsbooks in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It was hands-on, high-pressure work—managing teams of over 100 people, solving operational problems in real time, and learning what it actually took to scale a business in emerging markets.
By 2016, he’d seen enough. Regulation was opening up across Europe. Operators needed technology that could scale, adapt to different jurisdictions, and keep users engaged—not just signed up. That’s when he and his wife Yael launched Soft2Bet from a small office in Malta. The founding vision was clear: build a technology-first platform that treated iGaming like a modern digital business, not a traditional casino.
What made Uri’s approach different
- Technology first, casino second: Most operators at the time were gambling companies trying to add tech. Uri built a tech company focused on gambling.
- Modular and compliant: Soft2Bet’s platform was designed to adapt to different markets without rebuilding from scratch.
- Retention over acquisition: While competitors spent heavily on advertising, Uri focused on keeping users engaged once they signed up.
- Long-term thinking: Licensing and compliance were treated as assets, not obstacles.
Building the Infrastructure Nobody Sees
Here’s what most people don’t realize: when you open a betting app, you’re not interacting with the casino brand. You’re interacting with an entire infrastructure layer that company probably didn’t build itself. That’s where Soft2Bet comes in.
Soft2Bet doesn’t run consumer-facing apps. Instead, it provides the backend platform for operators who do. Think of it as the operating system beneath the brand. It handles everything from payment processing and fraud detection to game integration and regulatory compliance. Every market has different rules. Every jurisdiction requires different reporting. Soft2Bet built a system that could handle all of it without operators needing to start from scratch each time.
But the real innovation wasn’t just technical—it was strategic. Poliavich recognized early that the expensive part of online gambling wasn’t building the platform. It was getting users to stay. Customer acquisition costs were climbing. Advertising was getting more expensive. The operators who would win weren’t the ones with the biggest marketing budgets—they were the ones who could turn a one-time user into a long-term player.
That insight led to the creation of MEGA.
The Rise of iGaming Through MEGA: Gamification Meets Gambling
In 2024, Soft2Bet launched MEGA—the Motivational Engineering Gaming Application—and it changed the conversation around player engagement. MEGA isn’t a game. It’s a gamification layer that sits on top of casino and sportsbook platforms, borrowing mechanics from mobile games to create habits, not just transactions.
Here’s how it works:
Core MEGA features that drive engagement
- City Builder and Stadium Builder: Players complete missions to progress through levels, building virtual cities (for casino) or stadiums (for sports betting).
- Collections and avatars: Users collect digital items and customize their profiles, creating personal investment in the platform.
- Challenges and leaderboards: Weekly competitions and social rankings add a competitive edge.
- Personalized rewards: Data analytics enable platforms to offer customized bonuses based on player behavior.
- Social interaction: Chat rooms and community features turn solo betting into shared experiences.
The results speak for themselves. Operators using MEGA saw screen time increase by 400%, deposits rise by 50%, and player lifetime value grow significantly. In 2025, MEGA won “Product Launch of the Year” at the Global Gaming Awards EMEA, and Uri himself was named “Executive of the Year.”
Sports betting apps’ notifications and leaderboards
What makes MEGA different from traditional casino bonuses is the psychology. Instead of one-off promotions that spike activity and fade, MEGA creates ongoing reasons to return. It treats betting like entertainment—something you come back to because you’re invested, not just because there’s a deal. And it works because it’s designed around how people actually behave, not how operators wish they would behave.
The Numbers: iGaming’s Explosive Growth
The iGaming industry has grown at a remarkable pace, and platforms like Soft2Bet have been central to that expansion. Consider these benchmarks:
- The global online gambling market reached $88.65 billion in 2023 and is projected to hit $227 billion by 2033, growing at over 12% annually.
- In the U.S. alone, online gambling revenue hit $6.19 billion in Q1 2025, representing 32.8% of total gambling revenue—up from 29.3% the year before.
- iGaming growth (27.3%) significantly outpaced traditional casino growth (1%) and even sports betting (13.6%).
- Europe remains highly regulated, with operators now holding over 321 licenses across 21 countries, each with strict compliance requirements.
Soft2Bet itself has scaled from a small Malta office to a global operator holding 19 licenses in 12 countries, including Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Romania, Mexico, and Ontario. The company now offers over 12,500 games from hundreds of providers and manages more than 1 million live events annually in over 20 languages.
Where We Are Now: The New Normal
Today, betting apps sit comfortably between Instagram and Netflix on millions of phones. They’re part of the daily digital rhythm—something you check during downtime, between tasks, or while watching a game. The transition happened quietly, market by market, platform by platform, until it simply felt inevitable.
But it wasn’t inevitable. It was engineered. By people like Uri Poliavich, who understood that winning in digital business meant building systems, not just products. It meant treating compliance as a competitive advantage, not a cost. It meant designing for retention, not acquisition. And it meant borrowing the best ideas from gaming, social media, and mobile apps to create experiences that people actually wanted to use.
Soft2Bet isn’t a household name. Most users have never heard of it. But the platforms they use every day—the seamless logins, the instant deposits, the missions and challenges that keep them coming back—those were built on infrastructure that companies like Soft2Bet made possible.
From a small office in Malta to a global technology provider serving millions of users across regulated markets, Uri Poliavich’s journey mirrors the rise of iGaming itself: deliberate, disciplined, and built to last. The apps feel effortless now. But behind that simplicity is a decade of hard work, strategic thinking, and a clear understanding of what it takes to build a digital business that doesn’t just grow—but endures.