Q&A: Unikrn’s CEO on the esports boom and the virtual future of horseracing

“If you think about esports…there’s just a huge window of opportunity,” Rahul Sood, CEO of dedicated esports betting site Unikrn tells EGR Technology. The Washington State-based firm put esports at the forefront of its operation when it launched back in 2014 and now, with traditional sporting fixtures wiped out due to the global pandemic, esports betting has grabbed the limelight.

Indeed, Unikrn has seen traffic to its site more than double since the outbreak, while the phone has been ringing off the hook of late as operators seek B2B partnerships in order to offer esports betting to their customers.

As well as discussing Unikrn’s latest products and offerings, Sood details the company’s partnership with ZED, a platform allowing players to own, breed and trade virtual horses on a blockchain. “It is the future and it is a pretty compelling one,” Sood remarks.

EGR Technology: What is the competitive advantage of embracing esports?

Rahul Sood (RS): I think the big thing is that it’s not just about esports, because betting on esports means betting on live tournaments and we do much more than that. The cool thing about esports and video games is it offers a lot of at-home opportunities that you normally wouldn’t get with typical sports, where you can bet against your friends in video games.

We have a few distinct products. Number one, we offer tournament betting on professional esports. Number two, we’re the only provider in the world that offers virtual esports betting 24 hours a day where we take historical esports matches, repurpose them and run them through a regulatory approved RNG.

We are also the only company in the world with live streamer betting. You can watch your favourite streamer 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the Unikrn platform and bet on them. It plugs into Twitch and it automatically puts odds on them using computer generated algorithms and AI.

There are also two skill-based products. The first is called UMode where Unikrn allows customers to connect their favourite video games to the platform and we give you betting markets on your own gameplay. The second is cross-platform, peer-to-peer gameplay where you can bet against other players across titles.

EGR Technology: Why did you want to develop an esports-first betting operation?

RS: When we first started the company back in 2014, we saw the advent of the growth of esports in terms of the total addressable market. We combined that with the changing dynamics in the sports industry, where in traditional sports the fan base is getting older for the most part and then we have this huge blue ocean space where we could build competitive wagering experiences on games that people love to play.

EGR Technology: Why do you think that some major operators aren’t tapping into the esports vertical with the same drive as smaller operators?

RS: It is a big investment; it has taken us years to build what we have built. It is a huge investment for traditional operators which are very comfortable with their revenue lines. Now that the world has changed, we are getting a lot of calls. It has been kind of beyond a nightmare in terms of the incoming calls. We’ve got B2B operators that want to partner with us now and we are sifting through the opportunities.

I think the reason that traditional operators haven’t gotten into it is because they just don’t have the DNA to do it and the amount of investment was pretty high for them to jump into it because it is something completely new.

EGR Technology: How has coronavirus outbreak impacted operations? Have you seen an uptake in traffic following the cancellation of traditional sports?

RS: We’ve seen our traffic more than double, which is insane. We are getting a big spike in new accounts. In terms of B2B opportunities, there is a number of them. Some of them involve doing things in the US on a state-by-state situation. Some of them involve companies that are running out of content which want to think about offering some sort of scalable product to their customers.

Coronavirus has also affected us in terms of the number of esports tournaments as they have moved online, which is fine, but it changes the nature of the betting. What we have noticed is a spike in betting on virtuals. It has been an interesting dynamic to see the changes.

EGR Technology: Esports has a young demographic audience – is there a risk that esports betting could encroach on under-18s and what is being done to mitigate that?

RS: No, not at all. In fact, our average customer is 27 years old. They are very much in line with people who play fantasy sports and that sort of thing. We have very sophisticated KYC on our site. We don’t get young people trying to bet; they are just not interested in betting yet. If they do try, they get rejected immediately. It is no different than traditional sports. Young kids play football, baseball and soccer but they don’t gamble.

EGR Technology: Can you explain a bit about the partnership with ZED and how that works – is this the future of virtual sports?

RS: Firstly, we are experts in the blockchain space. We have built advanced technologies around wallets and tokens. We found ZED in Australia were building NFTs, which are non-fungible tokens or digital collectibles on horses. We came together with them, made an investment and now we are partnering on this platform.

These horses are limited, have certain bloodlines and some have a higher chance of winning than others. We can also build racetracks that people can only dream of. Instead of racing 15 horses at a time, we can race 1,000 horses at a time. If you want to run a race on the Sydney Harbour Bridge or Las Vegas Strip, you can.

We wanted to create the future of horseracing. We wanted to bring it down from a 60-year-old to a 26-year-old and make it fun and interesting. With virtual horses you have no attachment to the horse but with this you own the horse. You can own horses, breed them and trade them via a marketplace.

You can also enter them into races and the more races your horse wins, the more valuable it becomes. On top of that is the gambling component where people from across the world can watch the races on Twitch and bet on them. The first races are being run in beta now, but we are going to see real races very soon. It is the future and it is a pretty compelling one.

EGR Technology: What are the short- and long-term aims for Unikrn? What new products has Unikrn got lined up over the next 12-18 months?

RS: The next 12 months is about building B2B relationships and selling our B2B product. We are looking for partners that have a large customer base and that want to grow their business with us around esports and the future of horseracing. It is just about surviving this incredible moment in time. Things are challenging, things are challenging for everybody. We’re being careful about how we spend our money.

Even though we have something unique and our business is growing, all these partners who want to establish B2B relationships are feeling the pain right now. Many of them are in distress so we have to be careful about who we work with and how quickly they are willing to move.

Rahul Sood is the CEO of Unikrn, a global esports entertainment and sports betting platform built on cutting edge blockchain and gaming technologies. Previous to Unikrn, Sood created the first incubation fund for startups at Microsoft, and eventually he consolidated their global startup activities.  In June 2013, he launched Microsoft Ventures.