A Phoenix-based startup is taking the guesswork out of sports betting through its data-driven analytics platform that has amassed nearly 30,000 users within a year.
Hall of Fame Bets created a sports betting research platform for everything from parlays to game lines and pick ‘ems. On the company’s website or app, users can research player performance and how teams historically perform against each another.
The platform has a parlay optimizer, allowing users to analyze hit rates for each leg of the bet. Bettors can view data and charts for player props, which is a type of wager on how many points a player will score in a game, and can also rank players and teams by stat averages or hit rates to identify trends.
“We're what we like to call the Bloomberg Terminal or Morningstar for sports betting,” Hari Meyyappan, co-founder and CEO of Hall of Fame Bets, said. “In a similar manner, you can use Hall of Fame Bets to crunch, slice and dice data about sports statistics to help you decide which bets you want to go with.”
Meyyappan and Erik Jones founded Hall of Fame Bets in 2022, a year after sports betting became legal in Arizona. Meyyappan, a longtime sports fan and Phoenix native, met Jones while attending Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
Meyyappan’s idea for Hall of Fame Bets was sparked after seeing a need for an easy-to-use, single platform to research player data.
“It seems like with the sports data that's out there, it would be possible to build that sort of system where people could enter any bet they're considering,” he said. “Our platform would essentially tell them, ‘What's the likelihood of this bet hitting based on historical data?’”
Meyyappan mentioned his idea for Hall of Fame bets to Jones, who has a background in software development.
“He felt like it was feasible and he could actually start building it,” Meyyappan said.
The two co-founders initially started Hall of Fame Bets as a free website in early 2022, mostly sharing it with friends or on Reddit. Hall of Fame Bets quickly gained traction and added a subscription-based model in September of that year.
“We have a lot of great testimonials from people saying that it helps make their research process so much faster and it has all the data in one convenient place,” Meyyappan said. “Before, they were betting based on their gut or intuition, but now they have data to back it up and what their picks are going to be.”
Hall of Fame Bets founder splits time in Arizona and Boston
Hall of Fame Bets has 10 employees with Meyyappan splitting his time between the Valley and Boston, where a couple of team members — including Jones — reside. The company is looking to hire another software developer to continue its growth, Meyyappan said.
Hall of Fame Bets began developing its smartphone app earlier this year and released it in June.
“We’re really excited to finally get it out there. It’s still really new. We're liking the feedback and improving it. The app helps integrate our different tools together, so it's more streamlined," Meyyappan said. "For example, you can browse different players’ stat pages and then add a bet to your betslip, very similar to the sportsbook apps FanDuel and DraftKings. We want to make the experience really similar so it's something that people are pretty familiar with, but that it can be used purely for research and not actually placing the bet.”
The company sees potential to scale its platform as more than than 30 states have already legalized some form of sports betting and others are planning to launch sports betting sites by 2024.
Hall of Fame Bets, which is post-revenue, has raised funding in a friends and family round, but did not disclose the amount.
“We are considering raising a bit more funding just to help us speed things up and move at a quicker pace,” Meyyappan said. “But we're really thankful that we've already started generating revenue. We're seeing some promising signs of being able to build on this.”
Hall of Fame Bets may consider leveraging artificial intelligence to improve the sports betting experience on its platform. It will also continue to add data for more sports in the future, including soccer, which is going live on the app on Aug. 18, Meyyappan said.
“This year is the first where we’ll have a mobile app and our paid offering on the market for the start of NFL and NBA seasons,” Meyyappan said. "We want to become the go-to platform for sports betting research.”
