Atlanta startup MoneyLine Gaming Inc. aims to make it easier for young sports fans to play fantasy sports and bet on teams.
With a recent investment of $50,000 from the Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator and $450,000 from other investors, the company has relaunched its platform to provide a more aesthetic and accessible experience for sports gaming.
MoneyLine views itself as the minor leagues for the sports gaming space, targeting a younger demographic as an introduction into the activity. Current sports gaming behemoths include DraftKings, Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts International and FanDuel, which announced an Atlanta expansion last year.
“There's a lot of customers who are more casual sports fans who find sports gaming complicated, so we try to get them into it in a more fun, friendly way that’s also cheaper and more cost-effective than bigger sportsbooks,” said CEO and founder Cole Warner.
MoneyLine has brighter color schemes than other sports speculation platforms and allows people to make picks on simple options such as which athlete will score more points in a given game.
Online sports gaming
The investment and relaunch of the company’s platform comes at a time of growth in the online sports gaming world.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports gambling, giving individual states control over whether to allow the activity. In the years following the ruling, several state legislatures approved or considered legalized online sports betting including Connecticut, Florida, Maryland and Ohio. Sports betting is illegal in Georgia.
The company received over half a million in deposits during that time, said Warner, due to the increase of legalization and thus awareness in the sports betting industry.
The platform offers two options for users. The free-to-play option allows users to earn funds by doing tasks until they cash out at $25. In states where sports betting is legal, users can play on its real-money version. Its free-to-play option is offered in all 50 states, whereas its real money option is an option in 24 states. With proper licensing, Warner says that number could grow to 40.
The company plans to open up a $2 million seed round in the next few months. Former Atlanta Falcon wide receiver Sharod Lamor "Roddy" White is an investor, Warner said.
The company currently has seven employees and 4,000 depositing users. With the funds from the upcoming investment round, it looks to grow to 30,000 depositing users. Funding will also go toward marketing initiatives and building out an ambassador program.
MoneyLine's launch
The inception for MoneyLine came from Warner and his co-founder Jason Schubert while the two were still in college. The two invested a combined $5,000 of their own funds into the company and launched the platform in 2018. The initial version of MoneyLine was a free-to-play app that users could use to make sports predictions and make money. After growing to a customer base of 170,000, people began requesting the company to offer real-money gaming as an option.
Schubert was the CEO and founder of market research startup inBrain.ai and money rewards company Apps That Pay LLC. Both companies were acquired in 2021 by market research firm Dynata.
MoneyLine was one of 10 startups to be accepted from a pool of 800 applicants from 44 countries to the Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator program in 2022.
The company stood out as an applicant because their goal was not to be a sportsbook, and it reaches a younger audience that will watch whole games rather than highlights when their money's on the line, said Jenna Kurath, vice president of startups and partnerships at Comcast.
During the NBA Finals, NBC Sports will push MoneyLine ads to see how traffic to that startup compares to other traditional sportsbooks. That opportunity will expose millions of people to MoneyLine as an easy introduction into online sports gaming, Warner said.
