From Startup of the Year to Ecosystem Builder: Sparket's Next Chapter
Last year's winner. This year's sponsor. That's not a coincidence.
A year ago, Sparket walked off The Starties stage with Startup of the Year.
This year, they're back as a sponsor.
Early momentum is common in real-money gaming. Converting it into infrastructure and then community is rarer. Sparket is doing both.
Ahead of The Starties Networking Party in New York, co-founder and COO Evan Fisher broke down where Sparket has pushed since winning the inaugural Startie, what its new product Spark AI is actually solving, and why showing up in person still matters.
From Sportsbook Tech to Broader Platform
Sparket is a B2B sportsbook technology company operating across sports betting and iCasino. Its operator roster now includes PENN Entertainment, Station Casinos, tribal operators, and most recently WONDR NATION and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation at Foxwoods.
Alongside operator growth, Sparket has expanded into real-money skill-based contests - both proprietary games and white-labeled integrations - with early-stage providers like Thunder and Toast. Partnerships like those tend to emerge when founders are in the same room, having the same conversations, and finding genuine overlap. In B2B gaming, distribution and integration matter just as much as the product itself.
Spark AI and the Long-Tail Problem
There's one fundamental common thread among bettable sports: someone in the stadium ticking off official data. Markets settle cleanly because a verified source exists.
Pop culture events, reality TV, alternative sports - none of that infrastructure exists for them. Spark AI is Sparket's answer. It blends crowd-sourced inputs with an AI verification layer to handle outcome resolution and market creation for non-traditional events, covering the full betting market lifecycle for categories that legacy data providers were never built to support.
The ambition is a new category, not an incremental feature.
Showing Up Early, and Often
Evan's advice for startups heading to NEXT was direct: do the legwork before you land.
LinkedIn outreach. Pre-booked meetings. Direct messages to companies you actually want in the room with you. The iGaming startup ecosystem is tight, and targeted prep before a conference consistently outperforms winging it on arrival.
"These conferences have some of the highest ROI of any biz dev opportunities that we pursue," Evan said.
NEXT skews senior and more intimate than the mega-shows, with less noise and more decision-makers per square foot. For early-stage companies, one right conversation in that environment can move faster than months of cold outreach.
Why Sparket Backs The Starties
Sparket won Startup of the Year at an event that was independently voted, community-driven, and by every account genuinely high energy. Returning as a sponsor was an easy call.
Real business came out of last year's room. Partnerships with Thunder and Toast are a direct example. Founders, operators, and investors in the same space with genuine intent tend to produce pipeline and Sparket is betting on that again this year.
The Starties Spotlight Series
Explore the full spotlight series:
- Ron Segev, Segev LLP: Smarter Capital, AI Shifts, and Building for the Long Game → Read Article
- TxODDS: Building Blockchain-Powered Pricing Infrastructure for the 2026 World Cup → Read Article
- Sportradar Futures Hub: Solving the Distribution Gap for Gaming Startups → Read Article
- XST Capital Group: Inside the Deal Flow Driving Prediction Markets and Betting Tools → Read Article
Each conversation offers a different lens on where gaming, betting, and iGaming innovation are headed and the people helping move it forward.
⭐Join Us at The Starties Networking Party | March 9 | NYC ⭐
Kick off the NEXT.io conference with founders, investors, operators, and startup supporters from across the iGaming ecosystem.
🗓 Monday, March 9
🕗 8:00pm – 11:00pm
📍 SHIFT Midtown – 330 W 38th St, New York
Presented by TxODDS
Co-hosted by BettingStartups x WagerWire
In partnership with NEXT.io and FoodFight
Capacity is limited 🎫 Get tickets at: TheStarties.com
