29A Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept No. 1:

Opportunity

On May 14^th, 2018, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state of New Jersey in a landmark case that struck down a 1992 law banning sports betting in most states. The ruling will forever alter the landscape of sports gambling in the U.S. as avid bettors will no longer be forced to look to shady offshore operations or bookies in order to place their bets but will instead allow them to become a part of the future of the business. As it currently stands just months after the ruling, there are a handful of sites and services out there competent enough to cater to the needs of the market.

Today’s bettors are a lot like today’s fantasy sports fans, probably because they are mostly comprised of the same people but no matter, they share similar interests and needs. Most importantly, everyone wants to be a winner. Sites like DraftKings and FanDuel do a good job of making their customers feel like winners by offering competitions that create hundreds, or even thousands of winners. However small their payout may be, they’re winning money (quite easily as well), and it’s what keeps them coming back. Meanwhile, betting sites like Bovada offer reward programs to their visitors alongside welcome bonuses to get new customers started quickly. All of this is great, but these sites have their flaws. Right now Bovada is simply a space to go and place bets. They seem to be working on becoming something more, but as it stands they are little more than a way to quickly put down a wager and not much else. Even if you wanted to place a bet on-the-go you’d have to access their full site as their app doesn’t allow you to do so. DraftKings and FanDuel are the titans of the daily fantasy sports industry, so they’re a little less flawed. However, one would expect with how large their customer base has become that they’d expand into new arenas of the sports betting world, yet they seem content to sit tight with daily fantasy. The one thing that none of these sites offer is expert insight or analysis. Like I said before, winning is the most important thing to every bettor who finds themselves on a given site, and when they have “experts” telling them to bet one way or the other, it makes them feel better about their picks. Fantasy sites have been including this feature for years, and just like fantasy, it all comes back to winning.

Essentially, the opportunity is this: the U.S. sports betting market is valued at about $60-70 billion dollars with a current growth rate of about $10 billion per year (a growth rate we can only expect to rise with the new SC ruling). Despite this massive amount of value there are only a select number of sites currently capable of offering quality service to the market, and they aren’t without their flaws. There is an opportunity for someone to step in and create a betting service that combines the best of what everyone else has to offer and then some, and in doing so take control of the behemoth that is the sports betting market in the USA.

Innovation

My idea is to introduce a site that can offer betting, daily fantasy, and the like all in one place, while also improving upon the current model for these kinds of sites. A service that could serve as a one-stop shop for all of one’s betting needs. Like current sites it would offer a welcome bonus (i.e. matching one’s first deposit 50% up to $250) and would include rewards for things like wagering a certain amount or playing for a certain number of days in a row. Additionally, I’d like to draw an idea from the website Bleacher Report, which provides links to articles from other sites in addition to their own articles, as well as Twitter feeds geared to the specific team, league, or sport one is reading about. Basically, a hub of information gathered from across the web related to whatever one could want to know about. Essentially, I’d like to do the same thing but betting related. You enter the site, click on whichever sport or event you would like, and all your options appear: betting, daily fantasy, the latest news and updates from all over, you name it. Everything you would need to gamble away a small fortune, which brings me to how I would make money. Like any sportsbook, there are two sides to every bet with only one winner, so if I collect a total of $100,000 in bets (we’ll say $50,000 from each side) and winners’ payouts end up totaling $75,000 then I can just give them their $50,000 back plus $25,000 out of the money collected from the losers, and keep the remaining $25,000 as profit. It’s how almost any sportsbook turns a profit. Additionally, the site could include ads should it gain enough traffic to warrant them, which would provide an additional source of revenue.

Venture Concept

The idea here is to help lead the way into a new age of sports betting. To move away from quiet and simple betting sites and toward a new model wherein these sites are hubs for information and gambling. Fantasy sports have experienced this kind of evolution in the last ten years or so, from basic “Play Here!” websites to articles, TV shows, and a myriad of new ways to play. It’s a full-on movement. Sports betting is ready to follow a similar path, and it might have an even higher ceiling, but what’s available right now just won’t cut it in 5-10 years. No one currently offers anything outside of the bare minimum with a few handsome rewards here and there for spending a lot of money. Were I to launch my site, by then I’d like it to be the leader in online sports betting and expanding with perhaps my own to staff of journalists to write articles and create videos. Additionally, I’d hope to have an app that is a must have for sports fans in order to bet and cash in, and perhaps begin giving the option to trade earnings in for prizes (ranging from small things like giftcards or sweepstakes entries to more luxurious prizes like a vacation) rather than cash. Bettors care about winning so why not help them win and win big? No matter what, the important thing would be to continue to set my service apart from the basic click-and-bet sites that currently rule.