Former BetVictor CEO Michael Carlton Unveils 21.com, a New Casino and Sportsbook Built on AI and Crypto Technology

Key Points

• Michael Carlton, the former CEO of BetVictor, has launched 21.com, a new online casino and sportsbook built from the ground up with no legacy systems, with a target to reach a top-three position in every market it enters within two years.
• The platform runs on cryptocurrency payments and artificial intelligence. Carlton’s argument is that most of the big operators are still sitting on outdated infrastructure that was never built for how players behave today.
• The site is blocked for UK users, no specific target markets have been named publicly, and the leadership team around Carlton has not been revealed yet.

Michael Carlton spent 17 years rebuilding BetVictor from the ground up, pulling a telephone bookmaker into the world of serious online gambling. By 2006, the business was pulling in around £600 million a year in turnover. He was also one of the first people in the sector to shift a UK bookmaking operation to Gibraltar, a call so smart that much of the industry followed. When Michael Tabor bought BetVictor in May 2014, Carlton walked away from the company he had run since 1997.

What came next was not a quiet exit. Carlton put money into betting and gaming companies, stepped in as CEO at eNexus Group, and somewhere in between, started building something he hadn’t yet told anyone about. According to iNTERGAME Online, he has held the founder and CEO role at 21.com since September last year, which means the project was already months deep before anyone outside heard a word. That gap matters more than it might seem. Most brands get announced first and assembled later. Carlton did it the other way around.

Before he ran a sportsbook, Carlton spent 13 years at EY as a chartered accountant. That background, sitting alongside nearly three decades in gambling, shapes the way he reads what is happening right now. He watched the industry move from telephone to internet, and then from internet to mobile. His position now is that another turn is coming, and the operators who built their platforms before crypto and artificial intelligence became part of how players actually play are already behind in a way that cannot simply be patched over.

What Carlton Is Actually Building?

The platform was built from scratch. No systems borrowed from an older operator, no inherited payment architecture, no legacy customer journey already baked in. Carlton has said this himself, and it sits at the centre of everything he is claiming competitively. A spokesperson told SBC News that 21.com will start by focusing on a range of .com markets, though no specific countries have been named. At the time of writing, the site is blocked for anyone trying to access it from the UK.

Two things hold the brand together: cryptocurrency payments and AI-driven personalisation. Carlton was in gambling before the internet changed it, and he has watched every major shift since. He is not vague about where he thinks things are heading now.

“Having started in the gaming industry prior to the launch of the internet and then having the privilege of being involved as the industry evolved and adapted to the opportunities, there is now a further revolution occurring with the power created by embracing AI helping us to move faster and tailor personalised experience to the player,” he said.

For marketers, this carries more weight than a headline about crypto and AI. A platform where those features were part of the original build does not function the same way as one where they were added later as an upgrade. Affiliate journeys work differently. Bonus structures sit differently in the product. Player segmentation has room to move in ways it cannot when the system underneath was built for a different era and only retrofitted to keep up.

The Problem Carlton Is Betting Against

Most of the operators that run iGaming today were built in the early 2000s. Their platforms have been stretched and updated over and over, but what sits underneath still reflects the world those companies were born into: no smartphones as the dominant device, no digital assets in the mainstream, no AI doing real-time personalisation at any meaningful scale. Carlton’s position is that bolting new capabilities onto that kind of foundation has a ceiling, and the industry is starting to hit it.

“Many operators have been around for a long time and continue to be defined by legacy platforms and pre-crypto payment customer journeys that existed long before the modern technical tools that exist now became a reality,” he said. “21.com has embraced AI to deliver unparalleled customer experiences.”

UK regulations currently ban the use of cryptocurrency to fund gambling accounts. That fact may go some way to explaining why 21.com is pointing its early attention at .com markets rather than the UK, a territory where Carlton has more history than anywhere else. No official explanation has framed it that way, but the reasoning holds.

“With a team of industry-leading experts with the motivation and ability to achieve our goals but without any legacy systems, 21.com is able to take advantage of new technologies to become a market leader in the gaming industry,” Carlton added.

A Public Target with a Fixed Clock

Carlton has not left himself a way out if the pace slows. He put a specific outcome on the table and tied it to a specific deadline.

“21.com will be one of the top three operators in every market it operates and in the world within two years,” he said.

That is not the kind of thing most new operators say publicly. They tend to talk about ambition and direction without ever naming a number or a date. Carlton named both. The industry now has something to measure him against, and the clock is already running.

On the question of obstacles, Carlton is open about them without sounding rattled. “Challenges take all forms, whether they be technical, regulatory, creative, competitive, or resource-related,” he said. “But they can all be overcome with a positive mindset and determination plus a sense of humour.”

What Is Still Missing?

The announcement has gaps that the industry will expect to be filled before anyone draws a firm conclusion. The leadership team Carlton has called experienced and industry-leading has no names attached to it. No licensing jurisdictions have been confirmed. No markets have been listed beyond the broad reference to .com territories. The UK, where Carlton has spent more time and built more relationships than anywhere else, cannot currently access the platform.

For marketers and affiliates weighing 21.com as a potential partner, those gaps matter in practical terms. The affiliate proposition, the payment options in specific territories, and the regulatory standing of the platform in any given market are all still unanswered. Carlton’s name and track record give the brand a credible starting point. The operational detail that would let anyone assess reach and fit in concrete terms has not been made public yet.

Expert Analysis

Carlton’s return deserves to be taken seriously, and not because of a reputation built years ago. He turned BetVictor into a business with numbers behind it, dealt with real legal and regulatory pressure, including a detention in Israel in 2007 when the country had become BetVictor’s second-largest market despite having restrictions on gambling, and has kept close to the sector in the time since. The argument he is making about legacy platforms points to a real divide inside the industry. Building 21.com clean, from nothing, is a direct answer to that problem.

The two-year top-three target is where the harder questions sit. Getting there in a single competitive market is difficult enough. Getting there across several markets at the same time, without naming those markets, confirming licences, or revealing who is running the operation, means the industry is currently working with a promise and not much else. What Carlton discloses next, on markets, regulatory standing, and the people around him, will say more than anything announced so far.