Betr Raises $50 Million From Leading Investors

TVN | MIAMI via PRNewswire — Betr Raises $50 Million From Leading Investors | Today, Joey Levy, the company’s Founder and CEO, and Jake Paul, the company’s Founder and President, made the announcement that Betr has been established. Betr is the first direct-to-consumer micro-betting oriented sports betting company. A new media endeavor aimed at the next generation of sports fans is also being launched by the two as part of the efforts being put forth by the company. Betr’s goal is to revolutionize the sports betting and gambling industries by challenging the status quo of both traditional gaming and traditional media.

Betr is the first direct-to-consumer sports betting company to focus predominantly on micro-betting, a new form of betting that introduces instant gratification to the user experience of sports betting. Micro-betting does this by enabling the moments that drive U.S. sports consumption – such as pitches and at-bats of baseball games and plays and drives of football games – to become discrete betting opportunities. Betr is also the first company to focus predominantly on micro-betting. Simplebet is a B2B technology firm that has pioneered the practice of micro-betting on U.S. sports by developing the machine learning and automation infrastructure necessary to make it possible for this new type of betting to operate on a large scale. Levy is one of the co-founders of Simplebet. Betr will be releasing its app in the coming weeks, initially as a free-to-play experience available in all 50 states, with a state-by-state rollout of its licensed real money betting experiences to follow later this year. Betr will be leveraging the technology that Simplebet has developed, and it will be using Simplebet’s technology. Through significant equity-based collaborations that the firm will be announcing in the very near future, Betr has ensured its entry into the markets of various states located inside the United States.

Paul, who has 70 million followers on social media and is one of the public figures that is searched on Google the most, kicked off the launch of Betr’s media company with a preview of ‘BS with Jake Paul,’ the first of many franchises Betr will release as it strives to become the primary media platform for the next generation of sports fans. Paul is one of the most searched public figures on Google. In the show, fans will be taken on a journey across the landscape of sports and sports betting through the eyes of an A-list athlete like Jake, who is arguably the most disruptive athlete-influencer in sports and one of the most famous Gen-Z personalities in the world. Jake will be joined by his celebrity friends. Each edition of the show will include Jake, his sidekick co-hosts, and celebrity/athlete guests who will discuss the most recent breaking news in sports. The show’s goal is to become one of the most viewed and engaged sports shows available on digital platforms. Betr’s media company will independently generate revenue for Betr, with the company evaluating sponsorship opportunities for ‘BS with Jake Paul’ and its other premium content initiatives. In addition to generating brand awareness and affinity for the Betr brand, this will help the media company generate revenue for Betr.

“I co-founded Simplebet to simplify the sports betting user experience – to reconsider why sports betting products felt uninterpretable to the casual fan who had never bet on sports before,” said Joey Levy, Founder and CEO of Betr. “In doing so, we discovered that the technology required to enable a scalable micro-betting platform around the moments that drive U.S. sports did not yet exist, given the global market’s focus was on soccer, a fluid sport without a natural start and stop cadence. So we decided to build it ourselves at Simplebet; however, years later, the user experience remains unintuitive for a mass market consumer.

Betr is going to unbundle microbetting by creating an entire company around it and delivering the experience in a user interface layer that is straightforward and easy to understand. Because of (1) the stop-and-start nature of U.S. sports, which lends itself perfectly to this style of wagering, and (2) the fact that micro-betting introduces an order of magnitude greater level of instant gratification to the current sports betting user experience, we believe that it will ultimately emerge as the predominant way that consumers bet on U.S. sports. This is due to the fact that (1) the stop-and-start nature of U.S. sports lends itself perfectly to this style of wagering,

We have an opportunity to build the most capital efficient and culturally relevant gambling business in the United States – ultimately surpassing other sports betting companies whose primary focus remains on spending heavily on customer acquisition while offering commoditized legacy sportsbook product experiences – by introducing superior and differentiated product, while capturing billions of dollars’ worth of free marketing via our media company, all while also directly monetizing our content. This will allow us to compete with other sports betting companies whose primary focus remains on spending heavily on customer acquisition while

Alex Ursa came to Betr from FanDuel, where he served as Head of Product and helped expand the company’s sports betting and casino operations into the undisputed leader in their respective markets. Mike Denevi, formerly of Bleacher Report, has joined Betr as the Head of Media. While at Bleacher Report, he was instrumental in making BR Betting the preeminent sports betting media brand on social media. In a post-COVID world that has embraced remote work, the company has its headquarters in Miami, and the crew will be working together in person. The company sees this as a competitive advantage that will help it succeed in the market.

“I wasn’t into sports betting until I was introduced to micro-betting,” said Jake Paul, Founder and President of Betr. “Micro-betting is the TikTok-ification of sports betting and I am excited to bring it to the masses through Betr. We are in this for the long haul and are focused on doing things the right way. We are getting licensed state-by-state, adhering to each state’s regulatory framework while advocating for important consumer protections and responsible gambling. We want to be the category defining consumer company in both sports betting and sports media by the end of the decade and are confident we will achieve that goal.”

“We’re thrilled to be Betr’s technology partner, powering unique in-play betting experiences centered around micro-betting and transforming the way consumers engage and wager on sports,” said Simplebet CEO Chris Bevilacqua. “The combination of our best-in-class technology together with the reimagined user experience, reach, and influence of Betr’s distribution channels will be a powerful force in the market. This partnership features many of the best elements of the rapidly increasing convergence of sports, media, and technology and we are excited to be in the center of it.”

Betr has received funding in the amount of $50 million from well-known institutional and strategic investors as well as from some of the most influential athletes, celebrities, and owners of sports teams. These investors include Florida Funders, 8vc, Aliya Capital Partners, Fuel Venture Capital, FinSight Ventures, the co-owners of the San Francisco 49ers, Boston Celtics, and Miami Marlins, Travis Scott, Ezekiel Elliott, Richard Sherman, Dez Bryant, DeSean Jackson, Braxton In the beginning of this year, Betr was successful in closing a Series A funding round for a total of $30 million, with Florida Funders serving as the lead investor. Due to the fact that the Series A was oversubscribed, the company decided to raise an additional $20 million through a Series A1 funding round, which was led by Aliya Capital Partners and Fuel Venture Capital. The Series A1 funding round had its initial closing during the previous quarter, and its final closing is scheduled to take place during this quarter.

“Florida Funders saw a massive opportunity in a nascent market where the legacy players have not been strong from product, technology, and cultural relevance standpoints,” said Saxon Baum at Florida Funders. “In addition to the market opportunity, the ability to back Joey Levy for the third time – having invested early with Joey in Simplebet and in 305 Ventures – was something we could not pass up on. In addition to Jake Paul, Joey has surrounded himself with great people, including Alex Ursa and Mike Denevi. We could not be more excited about the future of Betr – and are thrilled to be on this journey as this team changes sports betting and sports media in the U.S.”

You can find Betr on @betr on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter and at betr.app.

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