Former Pinnacle director takes part in £1.5m funding round in trading startup

Trading startup GamePLAI has secured a £1.5m investment from industry stalwarts, including former Pinnacle trading director Marco Blume, as the supplier looks to expand its footprint.

The pricing and modelling specialist said it would use the seven-figure capital injection predominantly across its tech and product roadmap ahead of a busy 2024 sporting calendar.

The roadmap includes the launch of a player prop offering, including a Player Micros product for football ahead of the Euro 2024 and Copa America tournaments.

GamePLAI was previously incubated in the Techstars Sports Accelerator and Sportradar’s Acceleradar programme which provided the supplier with early-stage investment.

The business was co-founded by Nikos Gyparis Volakis and Graham Savage, with the rest of the team made up exclusively of PhD physicists.

Savage, a former PwC head who holds a PhD in experimental particle physics from Royal Holloway (University of London), serves as CEO of the group.

Volakis, who has a MSc from the University of Edinburgh in software engineering, is the company’s chief technology officer.

Elsewhere, following the £1.5m injection, GamePLAI confirmed the appointment of former Paddy Power head Donal Barron as chair.

Barron, who previously served as Banach Technology’s head of corporate development after a seven-year spell with Paddy Power, will now lend his expertise to the startup in his new role.

Savage, GamePLAI co-founder, said: “At GamePLAI, we’re harnessing the gains in automation seen in other tech sectors and bringing them to the sports betting industry with more accurate pricing and automation, which reduces the manual overhead of risk management for trading teams.

“Our mission is to become the premium supplier of automated and quantitative-driven sports solutions within the industry, and we feel very fortunate to have the backing of our investors in delivering our vision.”