Launch HN: Balto (YC W19) – Fantasy Sports People Bet On
With laws changing, sports gambling is becoming a reality in all states. Last year, 60M brackets were filled out with over $10B dollars wagered for March Madness. This is just one subset of the market we’re going after. Despite these figures, games such as brackets, survivor pools and pickems continue to be overlooked while cumulative wagers climb to an estimated $20B+.
Sports run in our DNA. We’re former athletes that come from sports families—Nick’s the son of Hall of Fame Quarterback, Joe Montana. With sports deeply embedded in our lives, we always wondered what happens beyond the playing field the three of us met on.
For years, we ran sports betting pools and leagues for our friends, co-workers and others as a hobby. Things began to take off dramatically, but posed a major problem. The software that we used was outdated and not conducive for managers (ourselves) or the bettors (users). We saw this as a major opportunity to go after due to the gambling laws and space evolving.
Within a few short months we’d built an enhanced platform for managers and bettors to play on: Balto. Not only did we notice high retention amongst our users from game-to-game, but the increased social interaction and engagement amongst peers made our platform more sticky.
Aside from Balto, the current options for users are third-party websites or large antiquated media companies, which aren’t betting or gaming companies. These platforms prioritize content and ads over a great UX, and completely miss on delivering the social interactions inherent to what makes playing these games (with your friends and family) so much fun.
We aim to become the go-to platform that aggregates all betting pool games for casual fans and gamblers. We're putting the user experience at the forefront of the product by enhancing the social experience for users, the management tools for league organizers, and placing all of your favorite games onto one, mobile-first platform. It’s a tall task, especially when factoring in the laws, but it’s a space we’re beyond passionate about.
To test the product, feel free to visit www.playbalto.com. We’re currently running a free to play March Madness Challenge!
Feedback is more than welcome, don't hesitate to share in the comments. We're eager to hear your thoughts, ideas and experiences in this space. Thanks!
62 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadEvery year I do a March Madness pool, a survivor pool, a couple fantasy football leagues, a college pickem, a superbowl grid, and a half dozen NFL game bets.
The idea here is that I should do some of or maybe all of these on this platform, rather then the various other ones I use?
I think the major platforms of these are pretty good, we use a smaller one for a college pick em that is pretty bad but we tolerate.
Is the value add here just the the UI is nicer and doesn't have ads? Or is there something else I'm missing?
I'm doing a vegas march madness with friends and I'll see if we can use Balto for our pools.
Congrats on the launch!
I signed up and made a pool but it wasn't immediately obvious to me that the funds are transacted through them.
To be fair, there's a good reason for that! [0]
But its not clear that's what's happening. Usually with grey area startups there's a section that at least attempts to describe why they are not running afoul of the law. This site under legal information is just a privacy policy, so, yeah I guess they should spend a bit more time explaining how they will make money. Ads?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting
On the flip side, when/if you do decide to go with email sign-up, be prepared that users who once signed-in with their social media account will start signing in with their email address and expecting it to work, even though they never showed a password.
It seems to me users use the same social media service to sign into most services, so they don't get confused between facebook or google login buttons, but give them an email field, and they get confused as to how they have been signing in in the past.
Anyone else seen similar behavior? Or is it just us?
In these cases where social logins are the primary approach most users use, I suggest making the email login look like a social login button, but make it clear it's email (i.e. more than just an icon) and trust only the few I-never-use-social-login users will leverage it while not confusing the others.
Good luck guys!
For Holmes, the dog represented the journey that lay ahead for Theranos. As she explained to colleagues at the company’s headquarters, in Palo Alto, he was named after the world-famous sled dog who, in 1925, led a team of huskies on a dangerous, 600-mile trek from Nenana, Alaska, to remote Nome, Alaska, bearing an antitoxin that was used to fight a diphtheria outbreak. There is even a statue of Balto in New York’s Central Park, Holmes told one former employee. The metaphorical connection was obvious. In Holmes’s telling, Balto’s perseverance mirrored her own. His voyage with the life-changing drug was not so different from her ambition.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/inside-elizabeth-hol...
What is the current status in the US? Isnt it federally prohibit, in addition to state level regulation ?
And i any case, dont u have to be specifically registered (and i guess taxed and fee-ed) for various betting activities ?
Now, it’s up to each state to decide if and how they want to legalize it. New Jersey is actually the reason this went to the Supreme Court, and you can now take wagers within NJ if you have a physical operation in Atlantic City [2]
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf
[2] https://www.nj.gov/lps/ge/sportsbetting.html
Edit: adding a link to the NJ sportsbetting rules
Just saying "Well, we can eventually become a paid host of these games" isn't enough and you haven't done that; just because it's now legal in a singular state doesn't mean that just anyone will be able to get licensed and regulated.
https://www.ycombinator.com/principles/
https://www.ycombinator.com/about/
(For context - I've worked closely with a number of large betting websites like mybookie.ag. 100% of my contact with them has been toxic. My employer explicitly does not fire clients but an exception was made after I recorded a call with them. Similar situations occurred freelancing.)
They'll do anything that potentially makes them money.
If you have a problem with gambling, take that up with your legislators. But I wouldn't expect you to have an issue with gambling, since you, ya know... literally earned a living working with the incumbents.
edited for clarity
Legal != Ethical
It's perfectly reasonable for people to be upset about things that are legal. In fact, almost every new law originates under those conditions.
I'm pretty sure lotteries have destroyed more lives than all of the drugs combined.
0: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotteri...
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/23/per-capit...
If you regulate gambling properly, you actually have tools to control harm. If you don't, then you are increasing harm.
And before that, there were other forms of gambling.
The only difference is where the money goes.
Drugs and alcohol have destroyed far more lives, I can say that with absolute certainty. Drugs are not cheap, plus the drugs affect your judgement/health/family to a far greater degree than just gambling. Just compare the amount of treatment programs for both, etc. It's not even close.
I'm sure there are ways to handle this issue without it leading to the uprising of organized crime.
More to the point though, the absolute worse way to help people who are sick is to criminalise their sickness. By legalising gambling you can generate money to invest in harm prevention.
The way the US approached the issue has led to terrible outcomes for gambling addicts, funding for organised crime, and has led to the creation of a powerful lobbying groups (in Las Vegas Sands/Adelson) that obstructs progress.
It is kind of bizarre to see these comments in the 21st century. For the rest of the world, these issues have been solved.
However, I don't agree with the notion that spending revenue from immoral sources on "good" causes warrants the immoral source.
Edit: Typos
There is nothing immoral about gambling. Smoking and alcohol are infinitely more harmful, are they immoral too? On what basis? If you enjoy gambling, fine...good for you. Addiction affects a tiny proportion of the population, under 1%. And we can reduce this by being adults, and working with operators on harm reduction rather than judging people. The implication that people who gamble or gambling addicts are immoral is quite sad. It is common to most theocracies but these are usually places that will rail against immorality of things like gambling and then drop bombs on their citizens the next week. Moral authorities indeed.
Don’t make it illegal, but don’t encourage it. I support total legalization of all drugs for example, but not advertising them or encouraging people to take a vacation to a shooting gallery.
Every regulated market has removed the incentive completely for organised crime. In addition to substantial harm reduction measures that actually make it easier for addicts to get help (where I am, gambling addiction charities are well-funded to an almost obscene level i.e. probably $100m+ in a country with a population of tens of millions) and work with operators to exclude these people from any form of gambling. Again though: this isn't unknown. Lots of countries are doing this, you just need to know about the world beyond your small corner.
This isn’t about organized crime, it’s not even about private enterprise. This is about taking money from people who predominantly cannot afford it, in the context of shitty educations and stagnant wages. It’s not about “Vinny” breaking legs, it’s Uncle Sam. I’d add that “Harm reduction” is fine in the context parties who don’t directly profit from the harm, and in the context of readily available and high quality treatment.
Getting out and around and learning about the world at large is good, but in the absence of a strong foundation of knowledge about your own “corner” it’s just empty puffery trying to sound worldly.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/3769/lotteries-most-popular-for...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_the_United_State...
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p1221-complexity-dru...
How in the world was this invested in?
1. It's unclear how, at least in the context of March Madness, this is preferable to any number of alternatives. Given that they don't touch money, it's functionally equivalent to either running an offline pool, or using an existing site with years upon years of consumer behavior and content integration like CBS, ESPN, or Yahoo!. Better UX? Yeah, maybe, but there are dozens of companies that have tried and failed on that premise in the fantasy space: FleaFlicker, Sleeperbot, and on and on. Some guy from the Apprentice had a company doing exactly this and spectacularly failed. People go where they already go as a habit, not to some new destination.
2. On the other formats, I'm skeptical that you'd have enough people willing to join pools around The Bachelor or what have you, or else you'd see it already. Even if I'm wrong, you run into the problem of (#3) plus generally a scale problem; that maxes around at a very low total unique visitor count.
3. Under the thesis that this might eventually turn into a platform that accepts and handles money, that seems extremely unlikely if you've seen how skin regulation has gone now that NJ is up and legalized. I can't see a world where an existing license holder would take a flyer on this when you've got the FanDuels and the DraftKings (not to mention the inevitable strong European entry in the market) with vastly larger budgets and user databases to leverage. Further to that, in the event these guys take off, there's absolutely no reason why those companies wouldn't just replicate this functionality. Anyone who follows Europe knows that over time, features diverge to parity.
It's going to be a dickish statement, but I don't see how it's not 100% true: there's no way this gets invested in if this kid's dad wasn't Joe Montana. Literally the only logic I could theoretically buy is that the name recognition of Joe Montana + YC would give them a shot at a license in a multi-skin state where a lower-end holder would be willing to give them a shot. Free to play either as a service (Chalkline, Sportcaller) or as the end game unto itself (#1, #2) is dead on arrival.
I'd be more impressed if you had the sons of Johnnie Cochran and Jackie Chiles. This idea, "Let's make money on internet gambling" isn't novel, it's just been a legal nightmare in the USA. And while it's no longer clearly illegal on a federal scope every state will have their own ideas.
Washington state, for example, made online poker a felony long before the federal government got around to closing all the sites. Even now the Native Americans have introduced a bill making sports books illegal in Washington, except on tribal lands, of course.
Regard
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