Q&A: Betr CEO Joey Levy on the next phase of customer acquisition

With YouTuber and aspiring cruiserweight boxer Jake Paul as one of its founders, Betr has quickly grown to become an emerging star in the frontier sports betting market of micro-betting. An operator which began with the launch of a media business in August 2022, Betr now has a sportsbook offering in two US states and is estimated to be worth $300m. With its debut NFL season as a sportsbook in full swing, EGR North America talks to Betr CEO Joey Levy about its journey since launch as well as ambitions for future expansion. 

EGR North America (EGR NA): How has Betr progressed since its launch?

Joey Levy (JL): It’s been over a year since we launched Betr Media, and the company remains one of the fastest growing sports betting-focused media companies in the US, with a fast track to being one of the largest sports betting-focused media brands on social media within the next couple of years. We’ve seen significant progress with respect to brand awareness and affinity generated by Betr Media. Now we’ve launched Betr Picks in the US, we’re finally able to take full advantage of what’s a nationwide brand and media audience, and convert them over to the product. Phase one of Betr Media was about brand awareness, affinity, and audience growth. Phase two will be about customer acquisition, retention, and product marketing because now we’re able to extract value from that enhanced level of focus on social media.

On the real-money side, we’ve optimized the business in respect of speed of execution, launching OSB [online sports betting] in multiple jurisdictions while also establishing our leadership position in responsible gaming and then going into fantasy sports. We launched the first real-money gaming Betr product in Ohio and then in Massachusetts, later launching Betr Picks, and we’ve made fast progress over the year. We’re the only sportsbook and fantasy operator to consolidate both in the same app experience. We deliberately optimized our speed of execution to launch our real-money gaming verticals, and with this season’s NFL and the launch of Betr Picks, this will be our first test to understand the extent to which we can convert the audience to product but also understand the extent to which the media company makes that process efficient due to the halo effect around our brand in general.

EGR NA: In hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently?

JL: As a CEO, I’m constantly evaluating past decisions, how they were made, and what we can learn to best execute on our agenda going forward. After this NFL season, I’ll have a far more informed perspective on the state of the business, but the last 12 months were all about building Betr Gaming and Betr Media. Of course, there are things here and there you’d like to take back and do a little bit differently, but overall I think we’ve done a good job in preparing and now we’re ready to execute on our plans.

EGR NA: What was the thesis behind initially launching on a free-to-play basis? How has it informed your strategic direction in the transition to real-money sports betting?

JL: While we were ready to launch our brands and media business in August 2022, we needed more time to build out a nationwide presence in the US, particularly in respect of the launch of Betr Picks. We always knew Betr Sportsbook would be more of a state-by-state rollout, and being everywhere right away was just not feasible from a timing and capital perspective. Fantasy is a skill-based game so it’s different, but all we wanted was a tool and a platform to onboard our audience on our consumer product experience as early in the product and company lifecycle as possible. That’s why we went free-to-play (F2P), so it’s really a platform to onboard and educate users on what is a bespoke, OSB experience. We used simple intuitive multiple-choice questions instead of the standard spreadsheet-style betting market display, educating and providing interactive tutorials showing how we view the future of sportsbook. We already have a quarter of a million downloads of the Betr Media app and we’re converting many of those downloads to active Betr Picks users as we’re now live from a real-money perspective in front of 52% of the adult population of the US.

EGR NA: How crucial is the social media aspect of the business and how does it inform your day-to-day operations?

JL: Our social media efforts have really contributed to best-in-class brand awareness and brand affinity, which has a couple of profound implications. One is that we’ve developed a real audience that we plan on converting to product, and that’s effectively a $0 customer acquisition cost. Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, the brand we’ve developed provides this halo effect we think will contribute to best-in-class efficiency on the paid UA [user acquisition] and retention side. Between that and product differentiation, we’re confident we’ll have the best unit economics in this category. 

EGR NA: What’s Betr’s ultimate plan?

JL: From a product perspective, we’ve always had two core product tenets. Firstly, every product experience that we launch at Betr needs to be simple and intuitive so anyone who hasn’t bet on sports or played fantasy sports before can pick up the product and just intuitively interact with it. The second is an emphasis on instant gratification through micro-betting. We’ve successfully demonstrated that through the F2P product and in a limited capacity the OSB product through a limited number of jurisdictions. Those are the two really core differentiators on product.

With respect to our media strategy, we wanted to create a culture, predominantly through original and short-form content, as well as short-form video content built for TikTok, etc. It’s more of a content strategy than a platform one because we see that most platforms are increasingly looking more like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. We’re looking to differentiate our business across gaming, media, and in those areas.

From an investment perspective, there’s a lot of validation around our ability to create a very ambitious plan and execute against that plan as a reflection of our ability to sufficiently differentiate ourselves from incumbents in the marketplace. Ultimately, we think this will increase our ability to capture incremental TAM [total addressable market] over the long term. The thing that gets us the most excited is the fact FanDuel and DraftKings combined have the highest levels of monthly active users, roughly about four-and-a-half million, but they are currently in front of around 95 million or so gambling-age fans, which could possibly be closer to 200 million at maturity when more jurisdictions open up. There’s a really large incremental TAM opportunity there. I’m not saying all those individuals might be betting on sports or playing DFS but I think there’s a lot of incremental TAM to be captured. I believe in our approach of creating culture to develop a real brand, then differentiating it and winning on product simply and intuitively.

EGR NA: In which ways has the acquisition of the Chameleon platform jump-started the development of the Betr sportsbook app?

JL: From our earliest days, it has been about speed of execution, getting up and running quickly before venturing into other verticals like fantasy sports. Working with Simplebet and obtaining the Chameleon platform from FansUnite was the best way to allow us to do that.

We considered all the different ways we could differentiate ourselves on product, and owning our own technology was a requirement to execute on this strategy. We needed an M&A which would enable us to fully control our betting engine, PAM, front-end, etc. Our existing OSB business is known internally as Betr V0, but we now plan to launch our V1 sportsbook. It will still be focused on micro-betting and still have that simple and intuitive UI and UX, but it will be a cleaner version of what we have now. We’ll also have pre-match and in-play core markets, parlays, same-game parlays, player props, futures, etc, so we needed to buy a platform to help us achieve that. We’re on track to launch V1 in the first half of 2024, so within 18 months of launching our OSB business. We’ve gone from relying on B2B vendors to fully owning and deploying our own product and technology, building a fantasy business while also creating a media business in parallel.

EGR NA: How do you plan to grow your business during the traditionally busy US sporting season?

JL: Two things come to mind. One, rapidly improving the Betr Picks product experience by adding more game mechanics, more features, enhancing the core user experience, and accelerating improvements to Betr Picks. The second, and for the first time, we’re deploying a paid user acquisition and retention strategy. We’re obviously not going to spend anywhere near the amount of what the FanDuels and DraftKings of this world are doing on the OSB side or what PrizePicks and Underdog are doing on the fantasy side, but we will deploy some paid UA and retention spend.  

EGR NA: Betr was the first US operator to ban credit card betting as well as set mandatory deposit limits for players aged 21 to 25. What motivated you to implement these measures?

JL: Sports betting and all forms of real-money gaming should be about entertainment value and enhancing a fan’s consumption of sports, it’s that simple. It’s something that’s reflected in our product vision of making everything simple and intuitive. We don’t think people should be able to gamble with money they don’t technically have. 

EGR NA: How has your expansion of the Betr Sportsbook into Ohio and Massachusetts gone?

JL: We’re a startup that has a multi-vertical strategy and it was vital to launch our OSB business in multiple jurisdictions as quickly as possible. From a speed of execution perspective, to have founded this business with Jake [Paul] in January 2022 and then just 12 months later launch as a day-one operator in Ohio, before launching again five months later in a second state, which in many ways is just as hard as the first state, and to then  be able to launch a nationwide fantasy product within two or three months of that, is very good. If the objective was to optimize for speed of execution with the beta product we have out there now, then I think it’s been highly successful. Of course, people like to talk about market-share numbers but it’s pretty obvious we’re deliberately not playing that game right now. We’re not going to be investing in a market-share grab heavily at all or paid UA for sportsbook until we’re on V1 of the Betr offering.

EGR NA: Betr Picks has launched at a time when certain styles of DFS games are coming under increasing scrutiny for being a form of sports betting. How do you respond to these concerns?

JL: Betr Picks is very clearly a skill-based fantasy sports game. It’s the same form of DFS which satisfies the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) exemption and adheres to the very laws that FanDuel and DraftKings worked with the regulatory community and Congress to author in 2016 and 2017. We were very thoughtful in our approach to rolling out Betr Picks. We’re live in 24 jurisdictions and plan on launching additional jurisdictions for Betr Picks if we are awarded additional fantasy licenses.

We’ve applied the same responsible gaming-focused principles we used in OSB to Betr Picks’ product experience. For example, we still have a 21+ age requirement, which some of the other fantasy operators are not adhering to.

We have also rolled out our ban on credit cards as a depositing method, as well as imposing monthly restrictions on the amount young consumers aged between 21 and 25 years old can deposit. We think our rollout of Betr Picks was done in a very responsible way, just as we did with regular gambling, but this is clearly a skill-based fantasy product.

EGR NA: Would you ever consider expanding Betr internationally?

JL: We’ll consider it at some point, definitely. What we’re building, from a product and media standpoint, can be successful with some enhancements or revisions in other jurisdictions outside the US. It’s also worth noting Jake has a large global audience, so there are some structural advantages we already have that would enable us to potentially compete on a more global scale. But, at the moment, we’re laser focused on the US business, especially Betr Picks this upcoming NFL and NBA season as we have access to 52% of the US adult population for the first time with the product.

EGR NA: What are Betr’s biggest priorities over the next 12 months?

JL: Obviously, this NFL and NBA season is a big priority for us to capitalize on the nationwide media audience and brand we’ve developed through Betr Media. Another priority is to execute the transition from the V0 Betr Sportsbook to the V1 platform following our acquisition of Chameleon. With regard to Betr Media, phase one of our business was about creating brand awareness, brand affinity, and audience growth, and now we are transitioning to phase two, timing it right with the start of the NBA and NFL season. We can look at things like hardcore customer acquisition and retention, more product marketing, community management, and direct audience-to-product conversion. We can do that now we’re able to finally monetize our audience in a way we previously couldn’t prior to the launch of Betr Picks.

It sounds corny but, for me, the development of Betr is going to be a series of David vs Goliath matches. There are very sophisticated operators out there that are very well capitalized in OSB, fantasy, and media, but we’re doing all three at the same time. It’s a very ambitious roadmap and vision but I think our core principles are correct and will enable us to be successful over a long period of time. It’s going to take time and a gradual and methodical approach, but it’s been a very strong journey up to this point.