Betr Founder and CEO Joey Levy will be the first person to admit that the performance of Betr Sportsbook hasn’t been earth-shattering. However, he will also tell you that was all expected.
“Everything you are seeing has always been part of the plan,” Levy told SBC Americas.
“It was always our plan to start by launching as a media company to begin building our nationwide audience and brand and developing the community that we have. Betr Media has quickly established itself, at least on social, as the fastest-growing sports betting media brand in the United States. So so we did that first. Second is we launched this free-to-play version of our beta sportsbook experience, too…onboarding and educating new users that have an interest in Betr per the work of Betr Media.”
That plan now includes the launch of prop-style DFS product Betr Picks, which will live in a single app alongside both the free-to-play and real-money versions of Betr Sportsbook, where available.
For now, Ohio and Massachusetts may have online sports betting but Betr Picks is not an option, at least for now.
“We plan on being in at least 30 states by the end of the year, and we decided to prioritize getting this product live as quickly as we could for Jake’s fight against Nate Diaz and ahead of NFL season,” he explained. “In these states, we obviously felt comfortable from a statute or case law legal precedent standpoint after you what was a pretty extensive diligence process that our legal team conducted before ultimately deciding to enter into the fantasy sports category.”
While many other sportsbooks have not only avoided the props-style DFS space but actively questioned its legality, Levy and Betr see this as the obvious solution to quickly achieve the scale the brand hasn’t been able to on the sports betting side.
“What this Betr Picks launch is all about is it’s the first time that Betr Gaming is able to finally fully take advantage of the nationwide media audience and brand of Betr Media, but it was just really important for us to begin laying the foundations of our online sports betting business in multiple jurisdictions. Now that we have clear visibility into the V1 product for online sports betting, we’ll plan on materially ramping up our investment in online sports betting after that product ultimately goes live.”
When Levy references the V1 product, he means the forthcoming version of the sportsbook that will utilize the recently acquired Chameleon technology from FansUnite. The current version of the product, which Levy termed V0, is currently limited to some full-game lines and, of course, microbetting, but lacks markets that even Levy admits are necessary to be a real competitor in the space.
“The V0 product experience is very much a beta product that is, candidly, not going to be competitive in its current form until we transition to V1 and ultimately have pre-match and in-play, parlays, same game parlays, exotic props, futures, core markets, and everything else.”
With that product still under construction, the focus will be on Betr Picks for the rest of 2023, including efforts in customer acquisition.
“There’s going to be more of an emphasis on Betr Picks this NFL season from a paid user acquisition standpoint on our side because of two primary factors. One is the geographic reach of the Betr Picks product and the second factor being that our online sports betting product is a beta product and it doesn’t have many of the table stakes things that would make it a truly competitive product experience.”
The sportsbook side is still a crucial piece of the puzzle, and Levy is still focused on maintaining the high standards of responsible gambling it has for Betr Sportsbooks on the Betr Picks side of the industry as well.
“We’ve established our license ability, our suitability, and our operational compliance capabilities in multiple jurisdictions for online sports betting, while also at the same time establishing ourselves as what we believe to be the leaders in responsible gaming. We are still the only ones to voluntarily and proactively ban the use of credit cards as a method of depositing. We also implement monthly deposit limits for young consumers 21 and 25 years old.”
Levy thinks these standards will help the company continue to expand on both the DFS and sportsbook side in the coming months, but other than a launch in Virginia in the coming weeks, don’t expect a rushed expansion into more states. Levy wouldn’t expand on which states were on the road map and when, but as he said, there is a plan and more sports betting states once the product is in shape is the next step as Betr grows.
