By Riley Kaminer
It all started with microbets: betting on whether a play will be a run or a pass; whether a drive will be a touchdown; who will be the next player to score. Then it became a way to bet on fantasy sports. Coming soon: The rollout of a full-scale sportsbook product.
Miami startup Betr is on a mission to build a “category-defining business” in the U.S. gambling industry, said co-founder and CEO Joey Levy, who founded the company in 2022 alongside pro boxer and social media darling Jake Paul. To help make this vision come to life, Betr has collected $15 million in fresh capital in a round co-led by Harmony Partners and 10x Capital. The round, which values the company at $375 million, also included Miami investors Fuel Venture Capital, Florida Funders and Aliya Capital Partners, as well as New York investor Roger Ehrenberg’s Eberg Capital.
10x is a particularly relevant player to have a spot on Betr’s cap table, having been a major investor in sports betting innovator DraftKings since 2018, in addition to previous investments in 23andMe, Palantir, Robinhood and Udemy.
“We believe that Betr has the product, management and market opportunity that we saw in DraftKings in its early days with a significantly larger TAM and room for growth today,” David Weisburd, 10x Capital’s co-founder and head of venture capital, said in a statement.
The company signaled that these funds will be deployed to grow all their major divisions through user acquisition, product development, and growing its team. Beyond its sportsbook and fantasy offerings, Betr is also developing an online casino, with plans to launch in its first state by the end of the year. It also has a media arm led by Paul, which is currently focused on driving awareness to the platform but has the ambitions on becoming a revenue-generating business.
Levy, a South Florida native who left New York for Miami during the pandemic, is a serial entrepreneur who launched his first gaming startup in 2014. Levy then launched his second startup, microbetting infrastructure platform Simplebet, as part of his Thiel Fellowship. “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,” he said in a previous interview.
Florida Funders has been a backer of Levy’s vision since the Simplebet days and was Betr’s first institutional investor.
“Joey and his team have continued to execute on the larger vision of becoming one of the go-to players in sports betting, and over the last 12 months they have shown that they can continue to hit milestones and execute against their plan effectively,” Florida Funders Partner Saxon Baum told Refresh Miami. “2024 will be a pivotal year for Betr.”
Since being founded, Betr has raised a total of $100 million including this latest tranche of funding. Most recently, Betr raised a $35 million Series A2, co-led by Miami-based Fuel Venture Capital.
“I’ve been in this business for 31 years and I’ve never seen a company that has ‘BETR’ product market fit. It is one of the fastest growing portfolio companies in our portfolio of 33 companies. We are extremely excited to be on this journey,” said Jeff Ransdell, Fuel’s founder and managing director.
“We ultimately plan on being a nationwide sportsbook brand,” Levy told Bloomberg. “We want to build profitable businesses in each state before adding incremental license fees, market access fees, and overall expenses.” Currently, Betr’s sportsbook business is active in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, and Kentucky and the startup is aiming to begin launching its sportsbook product in time for football season. Its real-money fantasy offering, Betr Picks, is available in 24 states.
“This is going to be a very long game,” added Levy. “This industry is going to be in the tens of billions of dollars in revenue by the end of the decade.” Already the sports betting industry generated about $11 billion in revenue last year, up 45% from the previous year.
Nancy Dahlberg contributed to this report.
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