SBC has named the five inductees to its Hall of Fame class of 2026, with the ceremony set for Monday, 28 September at 15:30 at the Palácio Estoril Hotel in Lisbon.
The induction sits inside the SBC Leaders Summit, an invite-only event for C-level executives that runs the day before SBC Summit 2026 opens.
The class of 2026
The five inductees are:
- Khalid Ali, CEO, International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA)
- David Natroshvili, Founder, Spribe
- Jason Robins, Co-Founder and CEO, DraftKings
- Karen Marcela Sierra-Hughes, Vice President of Latin America, Caribbean & Spain, Gaming Laboratories International (GLI)
- Mor Weizer, CEO, Playtech
Ali runs IBIA, the integrity body whose members are regulated operators and which monitors betting markets for suspicious activity before reporting it to regulators and sports governing bodies. Sierra-Hughes covers Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain for GLI, the testing and certification laboratory that regulators in those markets rely on to sign off gaming products.
Natroshvili founded Spribe, the studio behind Aviator, the crash title that pushed a new game format into operator lobbies across Latin America, Africa, Asia and parts of Europe. Robins co-founded DraftKings in 2012 as a daily fantasy sports operator and took it public on Nasdaq in 2020, after the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) opened US states to regulated sports betting. Weizer has been CEO of the London-listed Playtech since 2007, a period covering the supplier’s move from casino software into live casino, sports betting technology and B2C operations.
“When I look at this year’s five inductees, what strikes me is how much ground they cover between them. Entrepreneurship, technology, integrity, regulation, operator leadership. You don’t often get that in one room. Celebrating them in Lisbon isn’t just about five great careers. It’s a chance to recognise how far our industry has come, and the people who got us here,” said Rasmus Sojmark, CEO and Founder at SBC.
Ten years of inductions
The Hall of Fame was launched in 2016 as the Sports Betting Hall of Fame, when much of the US market was still unregulated and the supplier base looked different from the one the award now recognises. The 2026 class marks its tenth year.
The 2025 intake was Esmeralda Britton, President of Costa Rica’s Junta de Protección Social; Chad Millman, Co-Founder of The Action Network; Scotty Schettler, former Director of Race & Sports at Stardust; and Shelley White, former CEO of the Responsible Gambling Council.
Earlier honorees include John Anderson, former CEO of 888 Holdings; Victor Chandler, founder of BetVictor; Chris Christie, the former Governor of New Jersey whose state took the PASPA challenge to the US Supreme Court; Denise Coates, Founder and CEO of Bet365; Fred Done, founder of Betfred; Carsten Koerl, Founder and CEO of Sportradar; Pontus Lindwall, CEO and Founder of Betsson AB; and Norbert Teufelberger, Co-Founder of Bwin.
Where the ceremony sits in Lisbon week
The SBC Leaders Summit gathers more than 500 C-level executives. The daytime programme is closed-door networking, presentations, panel discussions and regional and regulatory roundtables, with no public agenda attached to it.
The evening moves to Estoril itself, with a cocktail reception, gala dinner, poker tournament and an after-party at Casino Estoril, the venue widely credited with inspiring Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale.
Leaders Summit attendees also get full access to SBC Summit and the Affiliate Leaders Summit, which run from 29 September to 1 October at FIL and the MEO Arena.
What the class signals
The five names cover integrity monitoring, product testing, game supply, a listed supplier and a listed operator, spread across the US, Europe and Latin America. Latin America enters through a certification executive, and the US through a company that held no sports betting licence in 2016, when the award was created. Two of the five sit on the compliance and integrity side of the industry, a balance the early classes, weighted towards operator founders, did not have.
SBC has not said when nominations open for the 2027 class. The 2026 inductions run on the afternoon of 28 September, hours before the Lisbon week proper begins.
Source: SBC
