"Right now, that means it doesn’t operate in the U.S., but it is working on getting licenses to do so", said CEO Steven Salz in an interview with GamesBeat. Rivalry’s bigger markets include Latin America, Russia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. “We’re an internationally regulated sportsbook and business has growth at 15% per month since we started,” Salz said. “We’re looking to build products for a younger demographic.”
The investors in the oversubscribed round include institutional investors from Canada, the United States, the European Union, and a major land-based casino operator. The Toronto-based company isn’t saying who all those investors are yet, and it sees this as one step toward going public later this year. ESports veterans Billy Levy and Zack Zeldin serve as both advisers and investors.
With the new money, Salz said the company will be able to accelerate our expansion plans through new licenses and gray markets under its existing regulatory regime. It will also enable new product development and help the company reach its ambition of providing the safest and most engaging sports betting experience in the world.
While Rivalry started by focusing on eSports betting, an increasing percentage of its business is traditional sports, and shortly a suite of original casino intellectual property. And Salz said that "while it’s hard to make money in the fledgling market of eSports, betting monetizes much better. So that means that the company can grow profitably as the excitement around eSports itself picks up."
“eSports has not been an area where a lot of people have been able to monetize really well and build businesses,” said Billy Levy, an investor in Rivalry and an adviser, in an interview with GamesBeat. ESports companies raised US$2 billion in 2020 over 200 transactions in 2020, up 116% in value from US$957 million in 123 deals in 2019, according to mergers and acquisitions advisory firm Quantum Tech Partners.
"The challenge of running a gambling company is more regulation, and that’s why the company hopes to enter the U.S. market through a sublicensing partnership with a land-based casino company", Salz said. Many of those casino companies are eager to partner, as their physical casinos are suffering in the pandemic. More states and Canada are moving toward legalization as a way to get more tax revenues.
Rivalry owns all of its intellectual property, and utilizes no white labels, which is a rarity in the world of sports betting and casino. This approach offers total control of the user experience. Its plan is "to become like the Robinhood of eSports and sports betting, making it simpler and easier to place bets as Robinhood has done for stock trading."
Rivalry also has a media strategy. Its social and content properties generate more engagement than any other brand in eSports betting, and the company is still only in the first inning of its media vertical roadmap, Salz said. The social media is key to reaching the target audience, Salz said. Rivalry has 18 different social media properties in different languages, as well as multiple YouTube properties that generate more than a million views a month.
Source: GamesBeat
