- A new social sports betting platform called Rebet has announced their launch.
- ‘Social sports betting’ has seen a number of companies join the fray over the past year.
- There’s little to suggest that there’s significant interest in the sports betting player ecosystem for this kind of product.
There’s never any shortage of bad investment ‘opportunities’. In fact, there may be more ways to lose money ‘investing’ in companies with dubious prospects than ever before. A ‘uranium mine’ in a Nevada ghost town. Donald Trump’s social network/’pump and dump’ scam. Cornering the market on Beanie Babies and hoping there will be a revival in interest.
All of these are better investments than any company that expects to profit from the dysfunctional US sports betting marketplace. With few exceptions, the regulatory ecosystem is rigged to prevent any type of a competitive marketplace. Many of the hopeful startups have one thing in common–an insistence that there is some huge potential customer base of would-be sports bettors that can be reached with some ‘innovative’ business model. For awhile, there were a number of startups suggesting that there was a massive pool of potential bettors being kept out of the wagering ecosystem because sports betting is ‘too difficult to understand’ or odds, moneylines, etc. are ‘too confusing’.
Another popular misconception that launched another subset of startups–that anyone under the age of 70 doesn’t want to wait for a full game result. Instead, they want something that ‘moves faster’. Thus the concept of ‘microbetting’ was born. Even the most successful ‘microbetting’ focused company–Betr, best known for Jake Paul’s involvement–quickly pivoted to a more traditional sports betting and fantasy sports model. There’s still plenty of interest in in-game betting, in running betting, live betting or whatever you want to call it but it’s hardly anything new. Most experts suggest that the first online ‘live betting’ wager was made at Intertops Sportsbook way back in 2002.
The latest trendy concept to pop up is ‘social sports betting’. I’ve lost count of how many companies I’ve seen advancing some form of this ‘innovation’ over the past year. Keep in mind that I’ve been around since the beginning of online sports betting and still keep my finger on the pulse of the industry. One thing that I’ve never heard from a sports bettor–recreational or ‘sharp’–is that they wanted a greater degree of social interaction with their betting.
