It’s Tuesday morning, there is no football on until the evening, and a sportsbook with 300 retail shops still has screens to fill and customers walking in. Virtual sports exist for exactly that gap. A virtual football league that kicks off every few minutes keeps the shop busy and the app active when the real fixture list is empty.
Choosing who supplies that content is less obvious than it looks. Some providers build animated leagues for low-bandwidth phones, others license real match footage or US league brands, and a few have quietly scaled back. This guide compares the virtual sports providers that are active today and explains which kind of operator each one suits.
What Virtual Sports Are and Why Operators Add Them
Virtual sports are simulated sporting events whose results are decided by a random number generator and then shown as an animation or as edited real footage. Football, horse racing and greyhounds are the staples, with basketball, tennis, cricket and motor racing now common too. Events last a few minutes and run around the clock, so there is always something to bet on.
For operators, that means turnover between real fixtures, extra content for retail screens and a simple product for new players. Regulators treat it as betting. In Great Britain, for example, the Gambling Commission’s technical standard RTS 7 covers betting on virtual events and requires outcomes to be demonstrably random, with results shown clearly to the player.
The product is a complement rather than a replacement. UK Gambling Commission statistics for April 2025 to March 2026 show £426.6 million staked on virtual betting online, producing £40.6 million in gross gambling yield, about 1.7% of online betting revenue and slightly down on the year before. The bigger growth story is outside the UK, especially in African and Latin American markets where retail and low-data mobile betting dominate. For more on the player side, see why players love virtual sports.
How We Compared These Providers
We looked at the range of sports and formats, whether a provider uses animation or real footage, the channels it serves (retail terminals, online, low-data mobile), the markets it is active in and its licensing. Recent activity mattered too. A provider with new operator launches in 2025 and 2026 was rated above one whose last public deal is several years old, and figures quoted below are dated because they come from company sites and industry news.
Pragmatic Play is not on the list, because it was reported in June 2026 to be phasing out virtual sports.
Best Virtual Sports Providers Compared
Order doesn’t imply rank.
Inspired Entertainment
Inspired is the established choice for regulated tier-1 operators. Its portfolio includes NBA Re-Play, which covers all 30 NBA teams in events of about two minutes, Real Play Soccer built on archive footage of historic English matches, and racing titles such as Golden Horses. In 2026 it extended its virtual sports partnership with bet365, agreed for Playtech to distribute its virtuals as a cloud service, and launched NBA Re-Play in Turkey. Its virtual sports segment reported $8.7 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2026, and it won the EGR B2B Virtual Sports Supplier award in 2025.
Best fit: regulated operators in the UK, Europe and the US, and lotteries, that want licensed league content and a supplier with public financial reporting.
Kiron Interactive
South Africa’s Kiron has been building virtual sports since 2001 and says it works with more than 150 operators in 70 countries. Its range covers football, cricket, basketball, ice hockey and racing on horses and dogs, along with numbers and instant games. Kiron.Lite is designed for low-data mobile use, which matters in markets where many players bet on budget phones. The company was named Best Virtual Sports Provider at the SiGMA Africa Awards 2026, rolled out its low-bandwidth Virtual League across six African countries in May 2026, and launched 20 titles with SportyBet in five African markets in October.
Best fit: operators in Africa and Latin America, and anyone serving retail and mobile players on limited data.
Sportradar (Playradar)
Sportradar now sells its virtual sports under Playradar, the casino games brand it launched in March 2026. The range includes Virtual Football using Bundesliga footage, simulated-play baseball with all 30 MLB teams, tennis, cricket, basketball, racing and motorcycles, split between scheduled pre-match virtuals and simulated games with in-play betting. Its developer documentation cites more than 180 bookmakers, and its Virtual Football World Cup was relaunched on Unreal Engine with 32 teams in May 2026.
Best fit: regulated operators already using Sportradar data or odds who want virtuals through the same integration. If you are building your own trading stack, our guide on building a sports betting odds feed covers the data side.
GoldenRace
GoldenRace, founded in 2006 and licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority, is the retail specialist. It says its content runs in more than 60,000 betting shops and over 500 websites, with more than 25 million tickets a day. Its football leagues cover England, Spain, Germany and Italy, alongside horses, greyhounds, motorbikes, 3×3 basketball, number games and crash games. In September 2026 it partnered with Novibet for Greece, Brazil, Mexico and Ireland.
Best fit: retail-heavy operators in Africa, Latin America and Europe that want shop terminals and online from one supplier.
Highlight Games
London-based Highlight Games builds virtuals from real archive footage. SOCCERBET uses clips from the Premier League, LaLiga, Serie A and other leagues, and the portfolio also includes branded titles for MotoGP, ATP tennis and PDC darts. It won the EGR B2B Awards 2026 Virtual Sports Supplier title, went live with Ladbrokes Coral Digital in June 2026 and rolled SOCCERBET out to Stanleybet retail shops in Southern Europe in August.
Best fit: regulated UK and European operators that want real footage and recognisable brands rather than animation.
GlobalBet
GlobalBet has supplied virtual games since 2004 and covers football, basketball, tennis, greyhounds, horses and more, along with number games and a sportsbook. Its website cites more than 100 operators and over 10 million tickets a day, though we found no new public operator deals in 2025 or 2026, so those figures are best checked directly.
Best fit: retail and online operators in Europe and Africa that want virtuals bundled with number games.
NSoft
Mostar-based NSoft, founded in 2008, focuses on retail-friendly virtual games: dog, horse and motorcycle speedway races, a virtual penalty shootout and numbers games such as Lucky Six and Keno. It is strongest in the Balkans and Turkey, where it launched virtual games in 2023.
Best fit: retail chains in the Balkans, Turkey and Latin America.
DS Virtual Gaming
Austrian-developed DS Virtual Gaming has been active since 2005 and concentrates on racing: dogs, horses, harness racing and karts, plus a kickboxing title and roulette. In late 2025 it described expansion into Latin America, starting with Peru.
Best fit: operators that want racing content for retail terminals, particularly in Latin America.
1X2 Network
1X2 Network is mainly a casino studio, but its long-running Virtual Soccer title simulates a full season in about an hour across the English Premiership and more than 40 other leagues. It is a lightweight way to add virtual football through a casino aggregator rather than a dedicated virtuals contract.
Best fit: casino-led brands that want a single virtual football title inside their game lobby.
How to Choose a Virtual Sports Provider
Start with your channel. Retail operators need content that looks good on shop screens and terminals, runs on a fixed schedule and settles quickly, which is where GoldenRace, Kiron and NSoft are strongest. Online-only brands care more about on-demand play and mobile performance, and in markets with expensive data, a low-bandwidth option such as Kiron.Lite can decide whether players stay.
Then decide between animation and real footage. Footage-based products from Highlight Games, Inspired and Sportradar feel more like real sport and suit regulated markets that value recognisable leagues, though licensed content usually costs more. Animated leagues are cheaper to scale and easier to localise.
Check licensing and integration last, but don’t skip them. Make sure the provider is certified for every market you operate in, and ask whether its virtuals can arrive through your existing platform or aggregator instead of a separate API. The same questions apply to the rest of your stack, covered in our guides to choosing a sportsbook software provider and the leading iGaming platform providers.
Virtual Sports Providers FAQ
What is a virtual sports provider?
A company that builds simulated sports events, with results generated by a certified random number generator, and supplies them to sportsbooks and betting shops through an API or retail software.
Are virtual sports results fixed?
No. Outcomes come from a random number generator that is tested and certified, and in regulated markets such as Great Britain they must meet technical standards for randomness.
Can a new operator offer virtual sports without its own sports data or trading team?
Yes. Virtual sports don’t need live data feeds or traders, because the provider sets the odds and generates the results. That makes them one of the easiest betting products for a new brand to launch, often through the platform or aggregator it already uses.
Which virtual sport is most popular?
Football, by a distance, followed by horse and greyhound racing.
How do providers charge for virtual sports?
Usually as a share of the GGR the games generate, sometimes with a setup fee or minimum monthly fee. Branded and footage-based content tends to carry higher rates.
The right virtual sports provider depends less on who has the most leagues and more on where your players are: in a shop, on a cheap phone or on a regulated app. Shortlist two or three that match your channel and markets, and test how their content performs before committing to a long contract.
Industry events are where ideas turn into partnerships, and Gamingsoft is a consistent presence at the most important conferences on the global iGaming calendar. We attend these gatherings to stay close to the operators, developers, and regulators shaping the industry. Many of our strongest partnerships began with a conversation at an event. Our team is always ready to discuss game aggregation deals, market challenges, or anything else on your mind. Visit gamingsoft.com and connect with our business development team today.
