Seven years ago, before most of us had heard of Kalshi or Polymarket, Gino Donati was already building a place where bettors bet against each other instead of the house. That place is BetOpenly, a peer-to-peer exchange built on a simple promise: no vig on the lines you see. He's now building OpenMarkets, which he calls the Expedia for sports betting.
Gino doesn't pretend the ride has been smooth. He opened by calling being first to market his "worst achievement," since competitors who launched years later are now worth many times more. He's lost his bankroll more than once, turned down millions in funding, and walked away from an acquisition offer.
Justin Herzig sat down with Gino to talk through how BetOpenly prices every bet, why better prices alone haven't won over retail bettors, how parlays work when you can be the house, why a universal betting wallet is harder than it sounds, and the advice he'd give anyone getting into prediction markets.
Watch and Listen to The Interview Here - Read Below
From $100 on the Niners to Running Accounts
Justin: Your grandfather gave you $100 and told you to pick a winner instead of giving you a birthday present. In high school you were playing bookmaker, taking bets from friends. What did you learn in those early days?
Gino: "I'm from an Italian family, and gambling was a completely normal thing. They didn't teach me about lines and odds. They just said pick a winner. No odds, no line. $100 was a lot back then, and it was, just pick the Niners. They were fantastic in the '80s and '90s, and that's exactly what we did. So I had the misconception that sports betting was really easy. That's how I got hooked, and I've been hooked since."
Justin: That may have led to what you've talked about before: losing all your money three or four times over in your 20s and owing every bookie in town. What finally changed?
Gino: "If I still bet with my gut, I'd bleed out 10% to 20% of every dollar I wagered. I'd be on the wrong side of every trap. I don't want anyone to walk away thinking I'm a professional bettor or that you should tail me blindly. I still have the worst leans.
"I started following trends and systems and understanding line movement. I started reading into percentage of tickets, percentage of money, reverse line movement. I saw there were guys who won regularly and wondered how they did it. And it wasn't all self-education. I owed bookmakers in town, and I started talking to people at our local card room, a California card house called Artichoke Joe's. There were winning bettors in there, bookies, and people looking for accounts that had lost a bunch of money. I gave them my accounts and they won the money back.
"That bridged me into running numbers for a betting syndicate. They just wanted accounts. 'Hey Gino, you suck at betting, but we're going to make you 25% of everything we win, risk-free.' Music to my ears. I stopped losing and started winning. Huge swing. I could still watch a game and sweat it, I could log in and see what we were cheering for. And that was my introduction to the idea that people actually win in this industry. For some people, it is investing."
Justin: My first intro was at 18, selling Cutco knives, when I met a family that ran an offshore book. I had to choose whether I wanted 10% of everything or 25% off the winnings and losses. That was quite the intro.
Gino: "Exactly. We were one and the same."
Building an Exchange Before It Was Cool
Justin: Before sports betting was legal in the US, you were in South America trying to build an offshore book. What happened in Panama, and how did it set you up for where you are now?
Gino: "I started building BetOpenly while living in Argentina and flying to Panama. I went into a bank I'd been referred to, and they told me I was approved for everything. I just needed to buy a condo from someone's sister-in-law. That was literally the prerequisite. It sounds like a scam, but you don't get ripped off. She just makes her commission on what's probably an overpriced condo.
"We were planning to build BetOpenly offshore, almost Polymarket-esque for version one. Then, while it was being built, before we had a minimum viable product, PASPA was overturned. I called a lawyer in San Diego and asked whether their understanding of the law was the same as mine. Games of skill are different. You can't be the house, you can't set lines with width and market make.
"My plan was always Betfair-like, minus Betfair's flaws. All my Italian cousins told me why Betfair, which is a billion-dollar company or part of one, wasn't the number one book. So we were going to build a peer-to-peer exchange you just needed a VPN to log into, no different from a Costa Rican offshore."
Justin: Exchanges aren't new internationally. When you were building yours, was it "there's a model that works and I'll make tweaks," or a bigger vision of what this could become?
Gino: "More the latter. Use Betfair as the example. Betfair was Kalshi before Kalshi. Betfair was BetOpenly before BetOpenly. Why did it spike up and then come back down? It's still a very successful company, but there was a time investors expected it to be worth as much as Kalshi is today.
"So we cloned the model and made tweaks to what we thought held it back. We took things from Pinnacle, which I still consider the sharpest book, and from Betfair, and blended them. But we had one main difference, and it's our differentiator to this day.
"Here's my elevator pitch. I know syndicates can beat -110 books. So why do they get to market make and take you for -103? Why can't they just beat you at +100? That's BetOpenly in a nutshell. We use consensus lines and odds. If Team A is -160 and Team B is +140, we force -150 and +150. If I know the books can get beat at -160, why would I let a market maker offer you +135 when the fair price is +150? It's a peer-to-peer swap. We joke that we're like Tinder. Nobody gets to just extract 2% or 3% from you. They have to beat you on the game itself.
"I'd bet that if you unpacked every ticket filled on every major prediction market yesterday, you'd find width between the two sides of a game. I want to erase that. I just want you to have the fair, de-vigged line."
How BetOpenly Sets a Fair Price
Justin: When I log onto BetOpenly and see bets I can take, where do those prices come from? Is BetOpenly looking at the market and finding the de-vigged line, or are two parties working it out?
Gino: "It's both simple and complex, but I'll call it a consensus line. We use APIs to look at Pinnacle in real time. If Pinnacle has -200 and +180, we score that as -190 and +190. If Kalshi has -190 and +184, we score that as -187 and +187. We take the consensus across the five books with the most volume.
"It's not perfect, but it's pretty decent, I'll be honest. We believe we're taking everything that's available in the market in real time and removing the width."
Justin: People's first reaction is that it sounds too good to be true. The fee is a percent if you win?
Gino: "1% to the winner, nothing to the loser. I almost hate saying our pitch because everyone says it, but we're the only ones who really do it: you win more and lose less on BetOpenly. You win more because we get you a better line when you're opposite a sharp or a market maker. When you lose, you put up less to win the same amount."
To see how that compares with the fee structures on the bigger exchanges, our Prediction Markets 101 walks through how prices and fees work in plain language.
Why Better Prices Haven't Been Enough
Justin: You've been around seven years and built something that sounds like a dream for sports bettors. So why don't more people know about it?
Gino: "Me. I'm the problem, and I mean that sincerely. I was offered $2 million early on, and I didn't take it. It would have meant giving away 40% of the company. Who cares? 40% of a $100 million company is worth four times what I have right now.
"I said no because those investors all said, let the market makers in. I said that's already been done with Betfair. They said the US market doesn't care. They told me I was a fool, that if I gave people slightly better prices than the sportsbooks I'd blow up. And they were right.
"So I self-financed, and we don't market. Marketing is how you get recreational bettors to sign up. Deposit $5, get $100. The operator is down $95 on you and makes it back with the width. They work with market makers who extract money from you over the long run, and they earn back their acquisition cost.
"The second reason, more seriously: a lot of people don't care about getting the best line. They're fine trading against market makers because FanDuel offers them -110, so -103 feels good. They know the fair price is +100, and they don't care. We have to accept that we're more boutique, and fewer bets filled. That was a real negative. We've solved those problems now, but only in August. My biggest fans would tell you I always look out for them, but they'd also tell you they had winning bets that didn't fill, so they also used a sportsbook or another exchange. We recently signed with a DCM, which means we can now fill orders through regulated exchanges. So for the first time, I believe BetOpenly is the best solution for sports fans. You can use it for the best lines, or if you're running out of time and want a bet to fill, or you're at the game having fun, you can fill instantly and I'll connect you to a prediction market. It's a worse line, you'll get it, and I get a small commission."
Justin: So it's a hybrid now. The core BetOpenly model, where you only pay 1% if you win, still exists. But if you can't get matched, you can be routed to a more traditional prediction market.
Gino: "Yep, and your wallet works the same. It's one balance. You're clicking the button, so you know what you're choosing, but you don't have to manage anything. It just filled at a different line.
"I was on the fence about it, because it goes against everything I stand for. I'm such a psychopath that our de-vigged line is green and the instant fill is red. Here's a green light, here's a red light. And users love it. They told me they had accounts with competitors they didn't want anymore. Let me be a degen sometimes and responsible other times. They were right. I should have done this all along. I should have taken the money, given the market what I knew it wanted, and built the other side."
Parlays, RFQs and Being the House
Justin: RFQs are the piece I'm most interested in. How do you de-vig a price for a parlay or a combo?
Gino: "A lot of the prediction markets, and I'm not knocking them, their founders are geniuses and worth 100 times what I am, take the other side of all combos themselves. We don't do that. On BetOpenly, when someone else makes a parlay, you can take it. You can create parlays and you can house them.
"With parlays, you'll see the de-vigged lines and you'll see people offering slightly different prices. I love OddsJam for this. They show parlays with our logo at +1200 that are only +800 or +900 elsewhere. The other exchanges aren't doing anything bad. They're offering the same legs with a little width, and that's how parlay prices compound up or down.
"We say create or take. You can create anything you want on BetOpenly at the de-vigged line. When you land on the site, you see a bunch of creates with no width anywhere. Then there's the take screen, which is the inverse of what everyone else has made. What you see is what you get. If you see the Cowboys, someone else made the opposite. Don't think in double reverses."
Justin: Make it real. Three uncorrelated legs, all against the spread, all de-vigged so each is 50/50. I should be getting 8-to-1 back on my money. Am I getting that?
Gino: "Minus 5%. We had too many people creating parlays and not enough people taking them, because why would you take someone else's parlay when you have no edge? So BetOpenly takes the true parlay price and subtracts 5%, and it shows you that with a red warning. If you house parlays, you're EV positive by about 5% on every one.
"We have an open API, and there are people who only take uncorrelated parlays of three legs or more, because they know they're blindly 5% EV positive."
Justin: At PredictQ we build content and tools for retail traders, people trying to be profitable or at least get close to even. One tool we're working on now helps people building combos see what the fair price is. Sounds like they could just put it on BetOpenly and see the fair price, at least for uncorrelated legs.
Gino: "I'll give you both sides. I've made so many mistakes we could do an entire show on them. We originally only allowed two-team parlays. That was me trying to stop people from being degens, and trying to change people's behavior is the dumbest thing a founder can do. Now we allow up to five legs.
"If you like parlays, we have the best lines and odds. And if you ever wanted to be a legal bookie, you get 5% for housing the parlay. We also just signed a partnership with Odditt. They suggest fun, themed parlays to people. It has nothing to do with EV, it's built to appeal to retail. But if I had to end it in one sentence: every parlay is about 5% negative EV on BetOpenly, compared to something like 30% with the books."
OpenMarkets and the Universal Wallet
Justin: Earlier you said something I agree with, and I've heard a senior person at DraftKings say it too: retail traders are mostly price agnostic, at least up to a point. But you're building OpenMarkets to help people get the best price on any trade. What is it, why are you building it, and how does that square with price-agnostic customers?
Gino: "In January we got an all-stock offer from a publicly traded company to buy BetOpenly. Somewhere between $12 and $14 million, depending on how you weight the stock. It was a fair price, and I would have taken it in cash. But under the terms, I couldn't sell the stock. I'd be giving up a company I have complete control over for no control, without enough cash in the deal, and I could have gotten burned. A competitor of mine did sell, in a very different financial position, and it didn't go well for him. So I think I made the right call.
"Why does that matter? BetOpenly had a liquidity problem. I solved part of it by partnering with prediction markets. But we still live in a world where you can rob Peter to pay Paul in arbitrage. You can't buy Apple stock on Robinhood and sell it on E*Trade for a profit. It's weird that you can in betting. The technology exists to fix it.
"So we built a back wire. If you were on Pittsburgh at -150 somewhere and BetOpenly had +150 or better on the other side, it would just connect the two. The limits were cash constraints. I have to guarantee every depositor is good for every dollar they put into BetOpenly. We use major banks and processors, and I have to stay compliant.
"Investors who saw that wire said: Gino, this isn't a BetOpenly solution, it's a solution the whole industry needs. So OpenMarkets, in its simplest form, is a universal wallet. The way OddsJam lets you and me see when there's a price difference and run to it, OpenMarkets lets operators and institutions do that with each other. We just raised $3 million at a $50 million valuation, with two more commitments pending. I hope we get the full five, but right now I have three in the bank."
Justin: My half-baked theory is that prediction market operators are moving toward the Robinhood model for stocks: free trading, then routing your order where they make the most on it. Even exchanges that run their own clearinghouse might route your order elsewhere if they find a better price instead of taking the liability themselves. Is OpenMarkets aiding that, or eliminating it?
Gino: "On day one, we're aiding it. And to your point, if it solves itself without anyone involved, then what's the point? I tell my investors that.
"Here's where I'm really going. Imagine you, as the user, don't want money sitting on Kalshi, Polymarket and BetOpenly separately. People say retail is price agnostic. I think they're that way because of how annoying we make it to be price sensitive."
Justin: 100%. I think in the future more money will be traded off prediction market sites than on them. The way we see PredictQ, you come for the content and tools, and when you're ready to trade, the wallet's already there. You tell us you want Chiefs -3 and we route you to the best price.
Gino: "We should talk offline, because there's stuff I can't share until it's released. But we're spending $2.2 million on CFTC licensing to do a lot of what you just described.
"The simple version, a trade desk that shows all your balances everywhere, already exists, and it isn't that popular. The market for that is tiny. If you mark up the price, you're not getting the best price anymore. People willing to pay $100 or $500 a month for software is an even smaller market. We offer it free today. My DMs are always open.
"The universal wallet is where it gets hard. Exchanges want the money on their own site. They want to pay you interest on it like a bank. FanDuel would say there's no chance they'll honor an outside wallet, you need to deposit with them, they have rollovers and bonuses.
"Here's the problem in one sentence. Priceline works because your debit card can buy a flight anywhere. Betting today is more like airline miles. I can't take my American Airlines miles and buy a Delta flight. You have a bunch of siloed wallets. So if I pitched you 'Expedia for betting' and you said great, let's go, I'd be misleading you. Kalshi isn't going to let me take their users' balances and only fill their bets when they have the best line. I have a solution, but I can't share it publicly. In short, the universal wallet doesn't exist today for a reason.
"We're already seeing this start to solve itself in siloed ways, like FanDuel offloading combos onto Kalshi. Institutions have yet to really enter the space. I've been fortunate to meet with the big trading firms. They hold their cards close, but they want more emerging markets and more asset classes, and we're building what they've told us they want.
"We have one main competitor in this space that's raised about the same. They're solving it bottom-up, we're solving it top-down. I think one of three things happens: they win, we win, or we solve it from both ends and end up working together. It all depends on money and who you partner with.
"This is going to sound lame, but my dream with BetOpenly isn't to sell it. If someone buys it for what it's worth, sure. But my dream is to sell fractional shares to our users and have the profits deposit into their wallets every day. On a big day, we make $10,000. Imagine you own 1% of BetOpenly and you just magically get $100 that day. That's the ultimate rewards program, and nobody could compete with it.
"In crypto terms it's a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. I hate NFTs and I think crypto's been hijacked by scammers, but I still think blockchain is one of the three biggest technologies of our lifetime, alongside the internet and AI. In the perfect world, when I exit, BetOpenly is owned by its users, and they're incentivized to bring as many people onto it as possible."
Gino's Advice for New Traders
Justin: Everything you're building seems aimed at the retail user. What's the one piece of advice you'd give someone getting into prediction markets?
Gino: "This is Uncle Gino coming out. I'll give you three buckets.
"One: if you truly have an edge, keep it to yourself. It won't last forever. And if you don't have an edge and you love sports betting, trying to grind it like a job will drain the fun out of it. It's a hobby.
"Two: if it's entertainment to you, it's one of the most fun, cheapest ways to have fun. I can have more fun betting $100 on my couch than taking my wife out to a $200 dinner. Don't tell her that. And I have a chance to win money back, which I don't have at dinner. But here's the other side: sports betting is very addictive, and people lose what they can't afford. Only risk what you're willing to lose. In my 20s I tried the Martingale, doubling up after every loss. It doesn't work in blackjack and it doesn't work in sports. You can easily go 0-for-10. Every bet is an independent event.
"Three: if you're truly passionate about numbers and trading, I think this is one of the most advantageous industries to be EV positive in. The person on the other side isn't a commodities trader. It's usually someone less sophisticated. There's a lot of money to be made, and we're only in the second or third inning. There are going to be a lot more chapters before the dust settles on regulation."
Justin: So if you're 42 and married, make the $100 bet. If you're 22 and single, you might get something out of that $200 dinner.
Gino: "Exactly. And I'll end with this. If you took away sports betting, I wouldn't really know my friends from high school anymore. Fantasy football and sports keep us together. Guys need a reason to reach out to each other, and sports gives you a timely event multiple times a week with crazy outcomes. Socially, it's a very important thing."
Justin: Nothing matters more to me on a weekend. I could have tens of thousands of dollars in play across prediction markets and DFS, but I've got to get that home league win with the friends I've been in a league with forever.
Want to dig into de-vigged pricing, parlays or finding the best price across exchanges? Jump into the PredictQ Discord. If you're opening new accounts, check the current sign-up offers first, and use our sports page to compare prices across exchanges before you trade.
This article is an adapted interview based on a real conversation about how one founder approaches betting and prediction markets. It is not an exact transcript, a directional prediction, a trade recommendation, or investment advice. Prices, odds and company figures discussed were stated by the guest at the time of recording October 2nd, 2026, are point-in-time, and may change. PredictQ is a marketing partner of Kalshi and Polymarket and may receive compensation for referrals. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.