INDUSTRY INSIDER: MARK MCGUINNESS


From three columns to a single swipe


In twenty-fi ve years, the sportsbook has travelled from a wall of markets to a single, visceral moment. Mark McGuinness argues that the providers who win the next decade will be the ones brave enough to show players less.


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ew people have watched the betting interface change from as many angles as Mark McGuinness. From the first three-column websites to today’s prediction markets, he has advised the operators and the suppliers building the screens on which billions are staked. We asked him to trace the journey, and to explain why the next competitive advantage may be restraint.


GIO: Take us back to the beginning. What did a sportsbook look like when it first moved online? MM: It looked like the coupon it replaced. The early websites were three dense columns of markets, essentially the printed betting sheet moved onto a monitor. Density was the pitch. If you offered more markets than the shop on the corner, you signalled authority and choice, and the punter was expected to do the reading. It served a customer who had arrived intending to bet and only needed the price. It asked a lot of the user and assumed patience the user actually had, because there was no faster alternative.


12 AUGUST 2026 GIO


GIO: What broke that model? MM: The phone, and then the moment. When betting moved to the app, the small screen forced those three columns off the page. You could no longer show everything, so for the first time suppliers had to choose what mattered. Then in-play arrived and changed the product itself. Betting stopped being a decision you made before kick-off and became a live, emotional stream you dipped into while the match ran. Cash-out turned every bet into a small ongoing negotiation. The interface was no longer a catalogue. It was a feed.


GIO: And prediction markets are the latest turn? MM: They are, and they matter more for what they signal than for their current size. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket present a bet as a yes or no contract at a price, framed as trading rather than gambling. Strip away the regulatory arguments and the interface itself is doing something clever. It reframes the act. A


The three-


column website was built for a punter who had already decided to bet. The feed is built for someone who has not


person who would never open a bookmaker’s app will happily take a position on an event, because the screen tells them they are an investor, not a punter. The wrapper has changed the meaning of the thing inside it. For a solution provider the lesson is not to copy the format, but to study the framing, because the wrapper you choose decides who feels invited in.


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