Show Notes
🎙️ NEXT.io Podcast #267 with Martin Martirosyan, CEO of Imagine Live Group & Nadiya Attard, Chief Commercial Officer
Imagine Live has grown from 7 tables in 2022 to over 150 today — with studios in Armenia, Romania and Spain. But the bigger story is what's coming next. In this episode, Martin and Nadiya break down the AI dealer debate, the operator dependency trap, and why quality is the one thing they refuse to discount.
⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro & Sponsors 01:41 - Meet Nadiya Attard & Martin Martirosyan 02:14 - Nadiya's move to Imagine Live: what impressed her 03:24 - Imagine Live's origin story: from 7 tables to 150+ 04:33 - AI live dealers: hype or the future? 06:18 - Will AI replace real dealers? Martin's honest take 08:30 - Are players actually asking for AI dealers? 09:44 - How Imagine Live uses AI: infrastructure, not a gimmick 16:30 - Localization in live casino: why one Spanish doesn't fit all 24:00 - The Armenia advantage: talent, speed and studio quality 31:00 - Breaking into new markets: the operator relationship challenge 38:00 - The operator dependency trap: why 40%+ from one supplier is a risk 41:15 - The Playtech monopoly lesson and what's repeating now 44:25 - Transparent commercial pricing: Nadiya's philosophy 46:21 - Imagine Live's USPs: quality, speed and technology 50:31 - Predictions: where is live casino in three years?
🔔 SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nextdotio/podcasts
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-io-podcast/id1515442333
CONNECT WITH NEXT.IO ✩ Website: https://next.io/
This episode of NEXT.io is brought to you by: Pragmatic Solutions – Leading iGaming platform technology https://pragmatic.solutions/
Pragmatic Play – Industry-leading content provider https://www.pragmaticplay.com/en/
Sponsored by: Hard Rock Games: https://www.hardrockgames.com/
Creedroomz: https://www.creedroomz.com/
More from NEXT.io Podcast
🎙️NEXTPredict Podcast #5 with Rebecca Kossnick, Co-founder & CEO at Hypernatural Before Kalshi. Before Polymarket. Before prediction markets were on the front page of every newspaper, Meta built one. In 2020, a small team inside Facebook launched a product called Forecast. No real money, just points and public reputation. Every forecast was made public. And it was, by any measure, remarkably accurate. Rebecca Kossnick joins Pierre on the NEXTPredict Podcast to tell the full inside story and to explain why Meta is now building a second one, called Arena. ⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:04 - Welcoming Rebecca Kossnick 01:30 - How Forecast got started inside Facebook's team 03:30 - Launching in April 2020 and the first wave of users 07:29 - The status problem Forecast was solving 10:52 - The challenges: explaining probabilities to users in 2019 15:47 - The grand vision 18:30 - Why Forecast didn't survive 23:48 - Hypernatural: the AI video company Rebecca and Taylor built next 25:43 - Where prediction markets and AI video collide 27:36 - Opportunity or problem? 30:18 - Where does Rebecca see Hypernatural in three years? NYC Summit - NEXTPredict October 22 - 23, 2026 at Convene 30 Hudson Yards. 🎟 Get your tickets here: https://nextpredict.io/summits/the-worlds-prediction-markets-summit/ 🔔 SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/409DefE06IKPhZzhDIDpH3?si=06a0ceb6be594746 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/next-io-podcast/id1515442333?l=en-GB CONNECT WITH NEXTPredict ✩ Website: https://nextpredict.io/
🎙️ NEXT.io Podcast #268 with Michael Pedersen, CEO of Swivel Gaming
🎙️NEXTPredict Podcast #4 with Chuck Todd on the 2026 Midterms, Prediction Market Blind Spots & the Future of Political Forecasting Chuck Todd spent three decades at NBC News as political director and moderator of Meet the Press. He now runs The Chuck ToddCast independently. He is also the official ambassador for NEXTPredict New York, taking place October 22-23. In this episode, Pierre sits down with Chuck to do something very few people are qualified to do: speak to both the political reality and the prediction market picture at the same time and point out exactly where the two come apart.
🎙️NEXTPredict Podcast #3 with JB Mackenzie, General Manager & VP Futures & International at Robinhood. Two years ago, Robinhood launched one prediction market on one election night. Today it's their second biggest revenue line — bigger than crypto, bigger than equities. Over 2 million customers have traded a prediction market on Robinhood, and the industry has gone from 3 CFTC-regulated exchanges to over 22 in the same period. JB Mackenzie, VP and General Manager of Futures and Prediction Markets at Robinhood, joins Pierre on the NextPredict Podcast to go under the hood on how this happened — and where it goes next. ⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:34 - JB welcome 01:47 - The Sunday in London that started it all 03:09 - When did this stop being a feature and start being a business? 04:49 - Why Robinhood chose not to vertically integrate 09:23 - From 3 exchanges to 22 11:19 - The crypto.com and OG partnership explained 16:22 - The customer is the secret sauce. 18:21 - It feels like a Sprint but it's a Marathon 19:52 - Prediction markets: now Robinhood's second biggest revenue line 22:26 - "Prediction markets wasn't the plan" 24:23 - Sports is the headline. 27:17 - Will prediction markets replace the insurance industry? 30:29 - The #1 thing holding prediction markets back 33:31 - The midterms: Robinhood's election hub explained 35:04 - Where does this space look in 2029? 36:02 - Prediction markets as financial education
🎙️NEXTPredict Podcast #2 with Jan Czarnocki, Chief of Staff and General Counsel at Elastics In this episode of the NextPredict Podcast, Jan Czarnocki — Chief of Staff and General Counsel at Elastics, and one of the first angel investors in the company — shares a ground-level view of what prediction markets actually look like from the inside. Elastics is building an AI-powered trading terminal for prediction markets, designed to give serious traders one place for research, execution, automation and portfolio management across Polymarket, Kalshi and beyond.