Simplebet co-founder Joey Levy and media mogul Jake Paul launch micro betting-first brand Betr

Sports betting entrepreneur Joey Levy and media mogul Jake Paul announced Monday the creation of Betr, described as "the first direct-to-consumer micro-betting focused sports betting company." Levy will be acting as CEO of the company, while Paul will be the President, which has raised $50 million in a Series A round.

As part of the company's efforts, the two are also launching a new media venture "for the next generation of sports fans," according to a press release. Betr is setting out to "disrupt legacy gambling and legacy media," with a mission of making sports and betting "betr."

The brand will focus predominantly on micro-betting, which Betr sees as a differential segment as it introduces instant gratification to the sports betting user experience by enabling the moments that drive sports consumption to become "discrete betting opportunities."

Levy is the co-founder of Simplebet, a B2B technology company that already has micro-betting experience in US sports. A press release claims Simplebet has "pioneered" this segment by building the machine learning and automation infrastructure to enable this new form of betting to exist at scale.

Micro-betting:
Betting on everything and anything in any moment. pic.twitter.com/otfvaePPhD

— betr (@betr) August 9, 2022

Betr will be leveraging Simplebet's technology and is releasing its app in the coming weeks, initially as a free-to-play experience available in all 50 states, with a state-by-state rollout of its licensed real money betting experiences to follow later this year.

The brand has secured market access in multiple U.S. states, unnamed as of now, "through strategic equity-based partnerships that the company will be announcing in the near future."

Influencer Jake Paul, who has 70 million followers on social media, kicked off the launch of Betr's media company with a preview of 'BS w/ Jake Paul,' described as the first of many franchises Betr will release as it aims to become "the primary media platform for the next generation of sports fans."

its not a podcast, its a sports show. New episode of @BSjakepaul with Devin Haney and Sugar Sean O'Malley drops this week. pic.twitter.com/4wrUTM6MOj

— betr (@betr) August 8, 2022

The show will feature Paul along with his celebrity friends "taking fans on a journey across the landscape of sports and sports betting through the eyes of an A-list athlete." In addition to generating brand awareness and affinity for the sports betting brand, Betr's media company is set to independently generate revenue for Betr, with the company evaluating sponsorship opportunities for 'BS w/ Jake Paul' and its other premium content initiatives.

Joey Levy said: "I co-founded Simplebet to simplify the sports betting user experience – to reconsider why sports betting products felt uninterpretable to the casual fan who had never bet on sports before."

"In doing so, we discovered that the technology required to enable a scalable micro-betting platform around the moments that drive U.S. sports did not yet exist, given the global market's focus was on soccer, a fluid sport without a natural start and stop cadence. So we decided to build it ourselves at Simplebet; however, years later, the user experience remains unintuitive for a mass market consumer," he continued.

Levy also stated that Betr will unbundle micro-betting by building an entire company around it and delivering the experience in a simple, intuitive UI layer. He explained that the company believes micro-betting will ultimately emerge as the predominant way consumers bet on the US sports.

WELCOME TO BETR ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/fgijAh3QX8

— betr (@betr) August 8, 2022

This belief comes "given the stop and start cadence of U.S. sports lending itself perfectly to this style of wagering." And similarly to how daily fantasy sports innovated on top of season-long fantasy, "micro-betting introduces an order of magnitude greater level of instant gratification to the current sports betting user experience," he explained.

"We have an opportunity to build the most capital efficient and culturally relevant gambling business in the U.S. – ultimately surpassing other sports betting companies whose primary focus remains on spending heavily on customer acquisition while offering commoditized legacy sportsbook product experiences," Levy stated. 

This will be achieved, according to the CEO, "by introducing superior and differentiated product, while capturing billions of dollars-worth of free marketing via our media company, all while also directly monetizing our media company via sponsorship and licensing revenue."

Alex Ursa has joined Betr as Head of Product from FanDuel, where he helped build their sports betting & casino businesses into the clear market leader. Mike Denevi is now also part of the team as Head of Media, coming from Bleacher Report where he helped build BR Betting into the top sports betting media brand on social.

The company is headquartered in Miami and the team will be working together in person, which it views as a competitive advantage in a post-COVID world that has embraced remote work.

Jake Paul, Founder and President of Betr, said: "I wasn't into sports betting until I was introduced to micro-betting. Micro-betting is the TikTok-ification of sports betting and I am excited to bring it to the masses through Betr".

Our guy @JakePaul turned down $40M for this. 😈 pic.twitter.com/ASZIgdgPoz

— betr (@betr) August 8, 2022

"We are in this for the long haul and are focused on doing things the right way. We are getting licensed state-by-state, adhering to each state's regulatory framework while advocating for important consumer protections and responsible gambling. We want to be the category-defining consumer company in both sports betting and sports media by the end of the decade and are confident we will achieve that goal," he said. 

Simplebet CEO Chris Bevilacqua, added: "We're thrilled to be Betr's technology partner, powering unique in-play betting experiences centered around micro-betting and transforming the way consumers engage and wager on sports."

"The combination of our best-in-class technology together with the reimagined user experience, reach, and influence of Betr's distribution channels will be a powerful force in the market. This partnership features many of the best elements of the rapidly increasing convergence of sports, media, and technology and we are excited to be in the center of it," he concluded. 

Betr has now raised $50 million in funding "from renowned institutional and strategic investors and some of the most influential athletes, celebrities, and sports team owners." Among them are Florida Funders, 8vc, Aliya Capital Partners, Fuel Venture Capital, FinSight Ventures, and more. 

Betr closed a $30 million Series A led by Florida Funders earlier this year in what was the largest investment in that firm's history. The Series A was oversubscribed, so the company raised an additional $20 million Series A1 led by Aliya Capital Partners and Fuel Venture Capital, with its initial closing last quarter and its final closing scheduled for this quarter.