How one challenger is trying to disrupt the ‘shady’ gambling industry

Betting startup Smarkets is on a roll. Its annual report shows its profits were up 160% in 2016 to £13.7m while revenue increased 144% to £26.5m. Average active monthly users, meanwhile, were up 118% to almost 25,000 and it had close to 200,000 users. It made the top five in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 and the Deloitte Fast 50 lists. Those numbers might seem small given the scale of the Paddy Powers and the Betfairs of this world, but Smarkets thinks it can take them all on through a focus on technology, price and volume. And its CEO Jason Trost believes it is about time a company shook up what he describes as the “shady” world of gambling.