Deal Dive: Betting on the sports betting market

If you live in a state where online sports betting is legal, companies like FanDuel, Caesars Sportsbook and DraftKings don’t let you forget it. They dominate TV ad slots during sports games and seemingly everywhere else, too. They give the mirage that the market is saturated with no room for startups. Betr, well, wouldn’t bet on that.

Betr co-founder and CEO Joey Levy thinks there is still space for companies that bring a new approach and business model to online sports betting. What makes Betr stand out, though, is that it’s built its user interface to be more accessible for the casual sports bettor as opposed to someone who spends all day poring over stats. It also focuses on microbets, so instead of predicting who wins the whole game, users can bet on things like how many free throws Nikola Jokić will get the next time he’s up at the line.

The startup just announced a $35 million Series A2 round with a $300 million pre-money valuation. The round was led by IA Sports Ventures and Eberg Capital and also included existing investors. Betr was founded in 2022 and is live in two states so far, Ohio and Massachusetts.

This is Levy’s third sports betting startup. His first, Draftpot, was a daily fantasy platform that was acquired in 2017. His second, Simplebet, is still running to provide the back-end infrastructure needed to power microbets. But through those he noticed a problem he thinks Betr can solve: Most online sports-betting apps were designed for sports bettors not sports fans.