Sure, the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the big guns aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across eight major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of rising startups from last quarter here.
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Sports fans love their teams and the community that forms around them. Fan purchase jerseys, go to games and some even get a tattoo of their mascots to show their dedication. While there is no doubt hardcore fans will support their team even through losing seasons, tech entrepreneur Evan Kirkham believes that by getting fans to place sports bets, they’ll love the game even more.
“If you put a $5 bet on a random game random like the Detroit Tigers MLB game, you’re going to be so engaged in that game,” Kirkham told Built In. “Having some skin in the game makes it that much more exciting.”
Kirkham launched the Outlier betting platform on Thursday. The platform aims to attract novice sports betters who want to learn more about the industry.
With Outlier, users can learn about sports betting and leverage statistics to place bets on major sports betting books like FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM or Caesars Sportsbook. Outlier’s betting platforms give fans access to data such as injury reports, sportsbooks odds and team performance data. These statistics help users analyze and make smart betting decisions.
Whether it’s betting on a certain player to make a touchdown or betting on a team to win the game, Outlier wants to provide fans with as much information as possible and make it as easy as possible for them to place bets.
“Our general thrust is we want to make people smarter sports betters,” Kirkham said. “Our tagline is smarter sports betting. That means a lot of things; it means that we need to have a really, really strong product, but it also means that we need to have really strong educational tools.”
Kirkham first got into sports startups in 2020 when he launched Colorcast, which rebranded to Outlier on Thursday. Outlier is the parent company of Outlier, the sports betting and educational app, and Colorcast, a democratized sports commentary app where fans commentate via video on any game and stream to other audience members on the platform. Unlike TV commentary, Colorcast commentators did not have to stay team neutral and can voice unique opinions about each team. This has made it a popular app among sports fanatics.
By November 2021, the Colorcast app had reached 6,000 users and had over 24,000 commentary sessions a month. The platform’s success with attracting users and keeping them engaged eventually drew in investors. The company has raised $5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
With the new platform, Kirkham said Outlier is trying to attract novice to intermediate sports betters who want to bet up to $20 on a game or play. The goal is to help users learn the ropes and get comfortable using data to make bets. Part of the company’s launch also includes making educational content intended to lower the barrier to entry when it comes to the sports betting industry.
“At first we built Colorcast, the idea of engaging fans more deeply in the game by chatting. Now, we realize that the more lucrative opportunity is in the sports betting space, but it’s all fan engagement,” Kirkham said.
