Menu Icon
Refresh Miami Logo
Search Icon
Sign Up Sign In

To improve the sports-betting experience, Betr nets $35M Series A2

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
PinLinkedIn

By Nancy Dahlberg

Don’t bet against this Miami startup. Betr is out to defy the odds.

Betr, a sports betting and media company, today announced it has raised a $35 million Series A2 round of financing valuing the company at $300 million pre-money to help fuel its mission to simplify sports wagering for the casual fan.

“Betr exists because we want to make sports betting something that’s more accessible and intuitive to the far broader market of casual fans and even hardcore sports fans who simply haven’t been able to understand the current product experiences or never really felt like it was an engaging entertainment experience,” explains Joey Levy, Betr’s CEO and co-founder. He said the funding will be used to grow the startup’s gaming and media divisions and to enhance its “focus on responsible gaming supported by a team that believes in doing the right thing.”

The funding round was co-led by Roger Ehrenberg via IA Sports Ventures and Eberg Capital as well as Fuel Venture Capital. With the new funding, Miami-based Fuel expanded their investment in Betr from $10 million to $20 million in total.

Betr co-founders Levy and Jake Paul participated in the round, along with major existing investors including Florida Funders, FinSight Ventures and Aliya Capital Partners. Betr was founded in 2022 and announced a $50 million Series A pre-product last August.

Betr has been on a roll, hitting some significant milestones this year. Its gaming division, Betr Gaming, focuses on simplifying and improving the user experience for the casual sports fan, a market Levy believes is underpenetrated. Betr Gaming began with a microbetting-only product, allowing users to bet on individual plays in sports, such as the next pitch, play and basket rather than a game’s outcome, but is expanding its product offering to include include full sportsbook capabilities. 

Betr Gaming is licensed and operational in Ohio and Massachusetts. It is licensed in Virginia with plans to launch soon and also holds market access in Indiana. In addition to online sports betting, Betr Gaming will soon be unveiling two additional real money gaming verticals, Levy said.

Betr recently acquired the Chameleon platform from FansUnite, which will enable Betr Gaming to launch its online sports betting product, Betr Betting, with full sportsbook capabilities. the Chameleon platform will also support the two additional real money gaming verticals That Betr plans to announce.

Betr Media, Betr’s division led by Paul, a professional boxer and celebrity social media influencer, is the fastest growing sports betting media brand in the country, surpassing 1.3 billion social media impressions in its first 10 months. This one-year-old startup competes with giants like DraftKings and FanDuel, “yet we’re winning on the brand awareness and brand affinity game,” Levy said in an earlier interview. 

Betr Media is primarily focused on original and short-form content favored by Betr’s primary 21-34-year-old male demographic, and has been adding influencers to its brand including the Cavinder Twins.

“Our ability to rapidly scale Betr Media’s audience, and then convert this audience to Betr Gaming at low-to-no-CAC, will enable us to have the best unit economics in the regulated real money gaming industry, positioning Betr to create more value than incumbent operators over time,” Levy said.

Levy is a three-time entrepreneur who grew up in South Florida. He founded his first sports gaming related startup in 2019 in New York and then won a Thiel Fellowship to build startup No. 2 — Simplebet, which built technology enabling microbetting — in the Big Apple as well. But Levy moved back to the Miami area during the pandemic. “I always told myself that for my third business, I would start it in Miami and that’s exactly what we’ve done with Betr.”

Betr now has several dozen employees, and is hiring for a Head of Growth, a UX Research Lead and other roles. The company is bucking the remote trend: Full-time employees are required to work out of Betr’s offices in a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Miami’s Little River area that they custom designed. Half the space is devoted to Paul and his content creator team with collaboration spaces, podcast and production studios, and a boxing ring, while the other half is for Betr Gaming.  

“Joey, Jake, and the incredible Betr team are truly creating something remarkable,” said Jeff Ransdell, Fuel Venture Capital’s Managing Director. “They are addressing a genuine need in the sports media and betting world, catering directly to the end consumer. The overwhelming demand from investors wanting to join this journey is a testament to the validity and promise of what they’re building.”

READ MORE ON REFRESH MIAMI:

This report was updated. Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg and email her at [email protected]

Nancy Dahlberg
Latest posts by Nancy Dahlberg (see all)