SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Premier Punt, the Aberdeen based DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) challenger, has turned to the crowdfunding site Seedrs in a bid to raise £200,000 in funding for product development.
The firm, which has been shortlisted for next month’s SBC Awards in the category of Best Fantasy Sports Product, made the jump from a web-based game to a soft launch of its new app in August 2016, and has seen paying users increase significantly on last season.
Premier Punt CEO John Gordon explained: “We opened up our Crowdfunding campaign to private investors who had previously shown interest in us – and within one week we had already raised nearly £120,000!
“We have had many offers for private investment well in excess of our crowdfunding goal, but it was important for us to strike the right balance of raising the capital needed to fuel our continued growth in a way that allows us to build on our principals – that this is a UK based product, built by us as football fans, for football fans and that we continue to follow that guiding principal.”
Gordon believes that crowdfunding is the way for the company to achieve that aim as it gives would-be investors clear guidelines about what they are buying into. He added: “They can also see how their support will help us and, importantly, it allows anyone to get involved from large venture capitalists putting in five figures to the casual investor, or even Premier Punt users who like what we do and want to put in a smaller amount and be a part of our journey.”
Premier Punt’s main competition comes in the form of the mammoth US based market leaders in DFS, DraftKings and FanDuel, who are expected to announced a merger any day now. The two firms have brought their marketing strength to the UK, but Gordon believes that won’t beat local market knowledge from a UK-based DFS operator.
He believes the market has failed to bring a noteworthy app to players because DFS operators focus on the 11-a-side game. Gordon argues that there are far too many statistics that go along with picking 11 players to squeeze onto a small screen, not to mention the hundreds of players available to choose from and the budget needed to play around with to ensure you get all the players required.
Premier Punt’s single game does not have any budget constraints and the only limitations on team selection is that at least one player must be chosen from each team in any one match and only one of four ‘star’ players can be chosen.
Gordon added: “Raising this investment will help us to continue to build what we believe is a superior product and, by listening to and acting on the feedback of our users, we want to add the features that our customers want, attract new customers and ultimately create the market leading product where users can compete for big money prizes in an exciting and fun way.”
