Sporticast 306: Micro-Betting Is the Future. But Just How Micro?
On the latest Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams speak with nVenue CEO Kelly Pracht about the rise of micro-betting, how a playoff trip to Yankee Stadium launched her business, and what she found when she started pouring through the data.
nVenue blends data capture and predictive AI to build products around micro-betting—live betting on small markets like the result of the next NFL drive. The idea for the company came during a 2015 trip to Yankee Stadium, when Pracht founder herself texting with friends and family about what might happen in upcoming at-bats. She started the business on the side while working at Hewlett-Packard, then liquidated her 401(k) to dedicate herself full-time to getting it off the group. That was in 2018, before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting, a decision that paved the way for the state-by-state patchwork that exists today.
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nVenue currently works with leagues like the NBA and NASCAR, and media companies like Apple. Pracht discusses how micro betting promotes fan engagement, and also how the the company decides how micro to build its markets. In the NBA, for example, nVenue can make markets for the result of the next basket, but Pracht said her team found more success on a slightly larger framings, such as who will score the next 15 points the fastest? That might take seven minutes to settle, not 30 seconds, but is more in line with how many basketball fans consume NBA games.
Pracht explains how at-home technology, particularly around digital streaming, has impacted live betting. She also talks about fundraising. nVenue has raised just under $9 million so far, and she echoes sentiment from across the start-up world that it is currently a challenging environment for raising capital.
Lastly, the trio discuss how companies like nVenue and leagues like the NBA ensure that gambling products don’t blend into the experience for young fans that are not yet of age to legally wager on games.
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