Jake Paul launches micro-betting startup following $50m funding round

Social media star and influencer Jake Paul and Simplebet co-founder Joey Levy have unveiled new US-focused micro-betting website and sports content site Betr, which aims to dominate the American sports betting market.

The announcement follows a $50m funding round in Betr which attracted investors including American rapper Travis Scott, FinSight Ventures, the co-owners of the San Francisco 49ers, Boston Celtics and Miami Marlins as well as NFL players Richard Sherman and Desean Jackson.

The series A founding round, which was led by Florida Funders, was oversubscribed, necessitating the need for an additional $20m Series A1 round spearheaded by US-based VC funds Aliya Capital Partners and Fuel Venture Capital.

Paul, who has more than 40 million followers combined across YouTube and Instagram, will serve as Betr’s first president while Levy, whose four-year-old Simplebet business will provide technology for the platform, will serve as its first CEO.

Paul, who will fight fellow social media star KSI next year, released a video on Twitter in support of the launch.

Our guy @JakePaul turned down $40M for this. ? pic.twitter.com/ASZIgdgPoz

— betr (@betr) August 8, 2022

“I wasn’t into sports betting until I was introduced to micro-betting,” Paul explained in a statement.

“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,” the social media star added.

The duo have been joined by ex-FanDuel product director Alex Ursa, who has joined the firm as head of product and former Bleacher Report podcast host Mike Denevi, who joins as head of product.

The startup will be based in Miami, with founders citing a competitive advantage to working from a centralised office over working remotely.

Aiming to serve as the first direct-to-consumer micro-betting service, Betr wants to simplify user interaction by gearing its entire business model around the vertical.

This stance is based on a company-held belief that micro-betting will become the “predominant” way consumers bet on US sports. As justification, Betr has cited the so-called “stop and start cadence” of US sports and a perceived magnification of the instant gratification of the current sports betting UX.

Powered by Simplebet tech, Betr will release its debut app in the next few weeks as a free-to-play offering available across all 50 states, with a plan to roll out a real money betting version on a state-by-state basis later this year.

To facilitate this, the firm has inked a number of undisclosed market access deals and strategic equity-based partnerships over a number of US states.

In tandem with the sportsbook app launch, Betr’s media company has launched with a preview of its debut show ‘BS w/ Jake Paul’, which features Paul along with a number of high-profile celebrity guests.

“The show sets out to become one of the most viewed and engaged sports shows on digital with each episode featuring Jake, his sidekick co-hosts, and celebrity/athlete guests as they discuss the hottest stories in sports,” Betr said in a release confirming the launch.

Levy welcomed the launch, suggesting that Betr had the potential to appeal to no-nonsense bettors, an objective which he could not achieve while in charge of Simplebet.

“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,” Levy explained.

“In doing so, we discovered that the technology required to enable a scalable micro-betting platform around the moments that drive US 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,” Levy added.