Reimagining sports book trading with virtual AI agents

‘AI IS CHANGING THE GAME’ By Mark McGuinness

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer just the future of sports book trading. It is the present. While much of the industry discourse has focused on AI for odds optimization or customer segmentation, the real innovation lies deeper: We can now virtualize an entire sports book trading team’s functions using AI agentic agents.
In recent years, I have worked with multiple sports book and casino operators navigating digital transformation across the iGaming ecosystem. One theme is now impossible to ignore: Traditional trading teams, constrained by headcount-heavy models and operational limitations, struggle to keep pace with the demands of modern sports betting. The solution is not simply to scale up with more hires, it’s to innovate. That’s where virtual AI agents come into play.

What Is a Virtual AI Trading Team?

Imagine an always-on trading department that never sleeps, never burns out and improves with every market it analyzes. A virtual AI trading team is a decentralized, constantly active framework of intelligent software agents, designed to perform specific tasks within the trading operation. These agents go beyond basic automation scripts; they are purpose-trained, adaptive systems that learn from data, follow defined standard operating procedures (SOPs) and make unbiased decisions at scale.
Whether it’s pre-match pricing, in-play risk management, margin adjustment or early detection of irregular betting patterns, these agents can work autonomously or alongside human traders in a hybrid framework. The result is a trading operation that is leaner, faster and significantly more cost-effective, all without sacrificing accuracy or compliance.

Why Now, You May Ask

The sports betting market never sleeps. From global football to regional table tennis, events happen around the clock. Yet few operators can afford to maintain full capacity staffing 24/7. Relying on skeleton night teams or outsourcing key decisions to third parties often leads to inconsistent pricing, slower response times and missed opportunities.
With AI agents in place, coverage becomes continuous. These agents can monitor markets, adjust pricing or flag risks at 3 a.m. just as effectively as during peak hours. This provides sports books with both a tactical advantage and a structural one, therefore liberating them from the limitations of a traditional 9-to-5.

Augmenting Human Traders, Not Replacing Them

It is important to clarify: The goal isn’t to replace human traders. It’s to remove low-value, repetitive tasks that bog them down, allowing them to focus on higher-order decision-making. When configured correctly, AI agents become powerful collaborators. They can process thousands of data points per second, model complex risk scenarios and respond to real-time betting patterns.
Human traders bring domain knowledge, strategic context and instinct, while virtual agents provide scale, consistency and real-time precision. Together, they create a symbiotic model that outperforms either system when working alone.

Tackling Bias and Human Error

Regardless of skill, every trading department is vulnerable to human bias. Overestimating the strength of a popular team, reacting emotionally to sharp money or missing subtle market shifts due to fatigue can cost operators dearly – and it does!
In contrast, AI agents operate within predefined parameters and training data sets, bringing objectivity to the trading floor, when built ethically and appropriately. They are not influenced by weekend headlines or social media hype, and every decision made is auditable, providing a clear log of why specific actions were taken … an invaluable asset in highly regulated environments.
It’s important to note that AI is only as effective as the framework that governs it. Poorly trained agents or opaque algorithms can cause just as much damage as inattentive traders. Therefore, it is crucial to establish clear SOPs, define acceptable thresholds, and continually refine models with fresh data and feedback loops.

What an Agentic Trading Framework Looks Like

Deploying a virtual AI trading team is not a one-size-fits-all solution; it’s a modular system of specialized agents, each trained for specific trading tasks. A typical structure might include the following:
• Market-Sentiment Agent: Scans live feeds, news and social media for price-impacting events.
• Pricing Agent: Adjusts pre-match and in-play odds using real-time and historical data models.
• Margin-Management Agent: Dynamically adjusts margins based on volume, risk exposure and market liquidity.
• Compliance Agent: Ensures all pricing and adjustments remain within regulatory and risk parameters.
• Risk-Alert Agent: Flags unusual betting activity or sudden line movement for review.
Each agent reports to a central orchestration layer that ensures coordination across markets and alignment with your house strategy. The human trader’s role shifts from executor to overseer, providing strategic guidance, resolving edge cases and fine-tuning the system.

The Commercial Benefits

Let’s talk numbers. Traditional trading departments are often some of the most resource-intensive parts of a sports book operation. Hiring, training, and retaining skilled traders across multiple time zones is a logistical and financial challenge. With a virtualized framework in place these costs can be dramatically reduced.
More importantly, the upside grows exponentially. Faster response times mean better odds efficiency and higher margins. Improved risk detection means fewer liabilities. Round-the-clock coverage opens up new market segments and time zones without requiring new hires.
It also introduces better scalability. When launching in a new market, you can train a region-specific agent to adapt to that betting culture without rebuilding an entire team. This flexibility gives you a competitive edge in a globalized sports-betting landscape.

Ethical Considerations and Oversight

As with any AI deployment, there are ethical considerations. Transparency must be built into the system. You must ensure agent decisions are explainable, accountable and aligned with responsible gambling frameworks. Just because an agent can make a call doesn’t mean it should be without human review.
Moreover, regulatory scrutiny is increasing. Demonstrating that your AI systems operate within defined guidelines, are trained on fair and representative data, and can be audited is essential for long-term viability.

Preparing for the Future

To successfully implement a Virtual AI Agent framework, sports betting operators need to take several preparatory steps:
1. Audit Your Existing Trading Functions – Identify what can be automated and what must remain human-led.
2. Build a Governance Layer – Define rules, escalation paths and fail-safes.
3. Train Your Human Team – Equip them to work with AI, not against it. Roles will evolve, not disappear.
4. Start Small and Scale – Test agents on a single sport or market before rolling them out.

The Endgame

AI is no longer just a support tool. It is becoming the new backbone architecture of sports book operations. The sooner we accept that trading teams can be virtualized, the faster we can move towards leaner, more efficient and round-the-clock operations. As an industry, we must stop worrying about how many traders we need to hire and start designing trading ecosystems that blend the best of human insight and artificial intelligence.
The winners of the next five years won’t just be those who adopt AI. They’ll be those who learn how to orchestrate it. And in a game where margins matter and milliseconds count, the edge won’t go to the biggest operator or sports betting platform provider. It will go to the smartest.

Mark McGuinness is a global marketing executive with 20-plus years’ experience in Web3, iGaming, and crypto. As CMO of Devilfish.com, he pioneers community-led growth, integrating NFTs and decentralized tech to reshape social poker through Digital Avatars, co-creation, and microtransactions for the next generation of free-to-play players.

 

*** This exclusive article was originally published in May 2025 edition of  Sports Betting Operator Magazine Issue 016 ***