Professional football player turned entrepreneur Brenton Bersin has launched a daily fantasy sports app that lets users make small bets to win big.
In October, Bersin, a retired wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, helped launch Outlast, a daily fantasy sports platform that lets users partake in daily contests, but without the complicated rosters and salary caps of high-profile DFS platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel.
Daily fantasy sports, unlike sports betting, are considered games of skill, not chance. Outlast lets users play games that are decided in as little as a single day instead of over the course of a season.
Users can bet as little as $5 and win up to 80 times that amount, depending on the game and the outcome. The platform hosts games for professional football, basketball, baseball, hockey and golf.
Outlast's primary game is a solo over/under parlay challenge in which the user makes picks based on a specific athlete's statistical projections. Outlast Survivor Pool is an over/under game where users compete against each other as a last-man-standing type of competition. Bersin said they're also working on Outlast Purse, a weekly golf pool with options to play against the public or in private pools.
"For the recreational player you risk a little bit of money with the chance of a bigger payout," he said. "We wanted to not just tap into an already big market, but go after people who might be more timid about sports betting and offer a product where you can dip your toe in."
The app is approved for use in 19 states — California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming — and is available for mobile download in the Apple Store or for Android through the Outlast website.
Bersin said those states were chosen for the initial launch because there is no regulatory body or licensing requirements. As the platform grows, he said they'll work to obtain the necessary licenses for the other 25 states that allow daily fantasy sports betting but have regulatory bodies and other requirements.
"As we grow and scale we’ll apply for licenses in those states," he said. "When we started it was just a cool idea, and once we got going we figured out there are a ton of regulatory hurdles to get through to deliver a finished product."
Bersin said the team did its due diligence to make sure users were 18 and older and that the platform was able to safely obtain credit or debit card information. It put safeguards in place to ensure the platform is used properly while in and out of a player's registered state.
