Bet.Works hires Laila Mintas to oversee US expansion

US-based iGaming and sportsbook technology start-up Bet.Works has strengthened its expansion efforts in the country's burgeoning sports betting market by appointing Dr Laila Mintas as chair of its advisory board.

Mintas, a lawyer by trade, served as the deputy president of Sportradar US from August 2016 until stepping down from the role last month.

The appointment has been confirmed after Bet.Works signed an exclusive nationwide multi-year agreement with media platform theScore to power the launch of a New Jersey-facing sports betting app.

The launch of the app, which is expected to take place in the first half of the year, has been made possible by an agreement between theScore and the operator of the state’s Monmouth Park Racetrack. This partnership will run for an initial term of five years and could be extended up to a total of 15 years.

Bet.Works’ founder and CEO is David Wang, the former corporate vice-president of Wynn Resorts, who was appointed as an adviser to theScore in August last year.

In announcing the appointment of Mintas, Wang underlined her experience in working with sports leagues and bodies, such as American football’s NFL, basketball’s NBA, the NHL ice hockey league, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the Nascar stock-car racing series.

In December, Sportradar entered into a multi-year partnership with Nascar, a month after signing a data partnership deal with the NBA.

Mintas, who has a PhD in online gaming from Berlin's Humboldt University, has previously held a number of high-profile sports integrity roles.

At Fifa, football’s world governing body, she served as the head of legal and international development for the organisation’s Early Warning System, which monitors sports betting markets for suspicious activity. Mintas then moved on to Concacaf, the sport’s governing body in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, where she worked as director of sports integrity for two years.

She remains a professor of global sports law at Columbia University in New York, and established her own Las Vegas-based consultancy at the end of 2018.

Mintas said that Bet.Works is “uniquely positioned to capitalise on the growth of the US sports betting industry” and added that the company’s US-based management team would be dedicated solely on the American sports betting landscape.

Few other details have been disclosed about Bet.Works’ investors or management team.