BuddyBet secures $3m in funding
Sports betting start-up to use funding from private investors to further develop its P2P betting platform
Social sports betting business Buddybet is poised to push on with the development of its peer-to-peer betting platform after receiving $3m in funding from private investors.
The company, which reached an agreement with football news network Footymad to integrate its platform into more than 180 sites earlier this year, aims to target “the much larger gaming industry” following the investment.
Based in Prague, Buddybet was awarded a network licence by the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission in February, with chief executive Jarrod Epps telling eGaming Review at the time “One of our main challenges is making the site really sticky, and we hope to solve this through the integration of a number of P2P games which haven’t traditionally included gambling.”
Those companies who have already integrated BuddyBet’s offering feature ‘Fan v Fan’ sections where punters can challenge peers to a bet by clicking a ‘bet me’ button alongside forum posts.
The company beta-launched for virtual credits last year before moving into the real-money sphere in 2013, and maintains a small B2C offering in addition to its B2B network. it allows players to bet real money or virtual credits, or simply for pride.
Epps has since spoken of the challenge faced by games developers when it comes to monetisation, saying in a statement this week “We believe that skill game betting is an effective way of monetizing games without the negative implications for a pure and user-friendly experience that occur with other popular monetization methods.
“BuddyBet offers a fun and effective way of allowing gamers to support their favourite developers, and this latest round of funding will be crucial to our effort to fulfil this objective,” added Epps.