Will Tighe, the co-founder of BettorFantasy joined the show to share what they are doing bringing sports betting into the fantasy sports world. He also has some big announcements regarding DFS and funding.
RYAN KNUPPEL
What’s up, what’s up, what’s up everybody? How is everybody doing today? I’m Ryan Knuppel, this is Episode 179 of Knup Sports Show, super excited for this one, and I’m more excited that it’s Thursday, September 8 as I’m recording this, and guess what that means? It’s NFL season, it’s officially here. Thursday night football kicks off tonight, I don’t know if this will go out before that game happens, but Bills Rams tonight. I’m super excited for that. We all love football, so I’m excited to watch that game tonight and, uh, maybe place a few bets or a few props or something on that tonight. But first and foremost, that’s not why we’re here, we’re here to talk to our special guest today. Today we have Will Tighe the co-founder at BettorFantasy, I’m gonna bring Will on here and chat. Will, how are you, my friend?
WILL TIGHE
What’s up dude? Yeah, just so pumped for tonight, I mean…It’s like, I just think about the NBC, like, football theme song coming on and I get chills just thinking about it.
RYAN KNUPPEL
[Laughs]. Yes, I know. It’s, uh, it’s the highlight for all of us, you know, being in this industry, we all love NFL, the football season. It’s just, uh, it’s the best. There’s nothing better than, uh, kicking back and having a few snacks, having a few drinks, watching some football, having a few bets out there, so awesome, my friend. And you’re in Ohio, so I’m assuming you’re what? You’re a Browns fan?
WILL TIGHE
So actually not, no I’m from New Jersey, Ryan, so I’m a Giants fan. But it’s hard not to root for the Browns here, like, the community here is just so passionate about their football team. Um, they’re right up there with Buffalo, you know? So, if I can see any team besides mine win a Super Bow, I would choose the Browns or the Bills cuz their fans would just go crazy, it would mean so much to them.
RYAN KNUPPEL
You know, it’s funny. I found myself, like, adopting the Bills over the last, maybe like, 3 years, I kind of jumped on the Josh Allen train early, and just, I went to a sports bar here in Orlando, called, like the Harry Buffalo, and this is a side note, but at Harry Buffalo, and it was like a Buffalo Bills themed bar in the middle of Orlando, down out in Orlando, and I went to a game there, and I was like, “Oh my gosh. This, like, culture of this is, like, fanatics”, and I was in love, I was like, “This is amazing, ah yeah let’s go Bills!”, so I’ve kind of adopted them. I’m excited to watch them this year.
WILL TIGHE
Absolutely. It doesn’t even matter, like, how the game is tonight, like if it’s a bad game, that’s totally irrelevant. Just the fact that football’s back is everything.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Absolutely. Well, cool. Well let’s jump right in, Will. I’m excited you’re on here, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for quite a while, and I really wanna learn more about BettorFantasy. But first, uh, tell me about yourself and, uh, some of the career paths you’ve chosen to kind of get to co-founder at BettorFantasy. What led up to that?
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, so, I mean I’ll give you sort of the abridged version as best I can. Um, so grew up in New Jersey like I just mentioned. Um, my dad has always been an entrepreneur, he’s an independent sales rep, and so he’s always been working with start ups on getting their products to market, and so ever since I’ve been in, you know, middle school and high school, I’ve sort of been just picking up what he’s been talking about, like I kind of learned okay, here’s what an options pool is, just little stuff like that, and it was sort of seeded in my mind that this entrepreneurial thing was kind of interesting, but I never really pursued it up until now, obviously. Um, fast-forward to college, I went to St. Bonaventure, which is just south of Buffalo, go Bonnie’s. Um, jumped around the majors, like I started out in journalism, then I went to a bunch of different things, ended up in marketing communications, and so my first job, uh, out of college was working in marketing on the agency side. So I worked with Susan and Dill Driscoll, who are really, really veterans of the advertising industry. Dill founded Momentum, um, they both founded Ignition, which are big agencies. And so it was great to work with them on a very personal level, like we worked in their basement at their house in Lake Placid, um, and so I got to be with them all the time, and being around those two very successful entrepreneurs sort of seeded that idea to me even further, and I kind of wanted to look into the opportunity of, like, creating my own business where we could, you know, create jobs for people and make an impact on the world in a positive way, and so that was sort of getting into my head a little bit more. Um, and then 2020 hit, and COVID obviously, and then, so my co-founder and I were talking in my driveway, were talking about placing a bet on my fantasy league’s matchups, and we couldn’t do it, we couldn’t come to terms. He was the favorite, so I naturally wanted points, I wanted there to be a point spread, he said no, and we were like, “Okay, why can’t we do this against the house? Why do we need to have 2 people to agree on the terms of bets to make it happen?”. And so in late 2020 we created a very simple web platform that essentially allowed us to manually input all of the, uh, rosters in our fantasy league, and then we let our league mates pick who they thought would win each match up, and then whoever got the most picks right won. We gave them $20, just because we wanted to see if people were interested in this idea. Uh, that spread from our home league to my college league, and [inaudible] Hills college leagues, and it just kinda naturally spread, and people, uh, were interested in it, and so we kind of thought to ourselves, “Okay, is this something that we wanna kind of really jump into?”, and after talking about it for a while, the answer was yes. And so fast forward to, um, 2020, we raised a little bit of money, um, launched our beta version of our app, and now we’re here in 2021 doing some more cool things, so that’s the short of it.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Dude, that’s amazing. I love when a product is born out of like, just passion of what you’re doing, right? And kind of seeing a need, and I totally feel that, like when I’m playing fantasy football over the years, just in general fantasy football match ups, I’m always looking at the Yahoo expected points, and then, yeah going next level, like I’m predicted to win by 30 points, I don’t think I’m gonna cover that, or whatever, right? You’re always thinking in those betting terms even when playing fantasy, so I’m assuming that’s kinda what BettorFantasy, we’re gonna dive into more of all you’re doing here, but sounds like it kinda attacked that problem.
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, exactly. The main issue for us, Ryan, was like, you know, we’re here in the height of fantasy football season, it’s September 8th, you know, kick off is tonight. Everybody is interested in their league, but when you’re 2 and 7 and you’re out of the playoff picture, you know, it’s a little bit of a different animal, and so we wanted a way for people to be able to stay engaged with their league, because fantasy football for me personally is like one of the best parts of my life because it allows me to stay connected with my friends. You know, I live in Cleveland now, everybody’s around the country, but fantasy is what keeps us together in a way, like not to sound too dramatic about it, but it really is, and so the more we can maintain engagement in the fantasy league, I think the better off people’s lives are, frankly. [Laughs].
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, 100% agree with that. So, BettorFantasy, I’m gonna pull it up here. on the screen, and let’s dive in to kind of the meat and the guts of what’s going on here and what you guys are really doing. Uh, so if you wanna kind of dive in, talk a little bit more about the concept, what you guys have, and all of that, that’d be amazing.
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, so you can see on the right, there’s a screenshot of our platform, um, and essentially what we do is we allow fantasy players to sync their leagues, and then we display odds, spreads, moneylines, overs and unders, for the different match0ups and their leagues. So we take their rosters, um, and then we have an algorithm that pops out, spread the moneyline and the over and the under for each team, and then users can go ahead and pick who they think is gonna win, pick the spread, pick the over, pick the under, with our free-to-play currency, which is called Bettor coins. And then if they win their picks, they’re able to cash out in the shop for gift cards, prizes, and then also help raise money for our charity partners, which is pretty cool.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing, that’s super cool. So there’s not real money floating around here, like you said, it’s Bettor coins, is that what you called it, that they’re getting and then they can get prizes. Is the, is the thought in the future to do something around real money, or is that just too much to even attack and tackle?
WILL TIGHE
Um, no, it’s definitely the plan for us moving forward. So, like I said, last year, when. we raised our initial pre-seed round, it wasn’t enough to go after a sports betting license, um, and you know, we weren’t experienced in the industry enough to even think about doing that. And so we launched free-to-play just so we could get the product out there, get peoples’ feedback, and really, Ryan, we want to see if we wanted to quit our full time jobs in pursuit of this full time, um, which we did last November. Um, and so those first few months gave us the confidence and desire to go ahead and do this full time.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Good for you, that’s amazing. So, so how’s it going? How’s the traction been, how’s the interest level been, um, where are you guys at from a momentum side?
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, absolutely. So, we capped out, um our beta test last year, which was really awesome for us. We wanted to get a few thousand people on the platform, again just to get that initial feedback, see if the market was perceptive to it, see if people stayed on the app during the whole year, right? It’s one thing if people download it and try it out for a couple days, but we saw some really good retention, um, over the course of the fantasy season which was great for us. And so yeah, like I mentioned, that beta test, uh, last year was really to see if we had the conviction, if the market, uh, if the product market fit was there to go ahead full time with it, um, and it definitely was, and so after last year, um, we started to look into how we can really turn this thing up to 100. We looked at the feedback that we got from our community, and the number one thing was folks wanted to bet real money on the platform, right? And so doing that on the fantasy league betting side of things was going to be a little bit more arduous and require a sports betting license, but doing our player prop, over under games, survival, which is an in-game betting experience that we have, and our player prop pools, those can all me done with DFS, and so we spent the last, um, couple months, uh, about 6 months it took us to get our legal opinions for DFS, get all of our vendor partnerships in place, and then actually stand up the product from a technology side to enable real money buy-ins in our DFS contests, which we’re launching today, which we’re super pumped about.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Today! That’s awesome. Good, congrats on that. That’s amazing. That’s cool news. Tell us a little bit more about that, I mean I know you kinda just touched the surface on it, but, I mean, how excited are you for the DFS side of this? I think it has, I think there’s a lot of future there with that.
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, I mean, I’m beyond pumped. Um, it’s hard to explain how much it means, like, to have this accomplishment under our belt. Um, just because this is personally like the first time for me and the rest of my co-founders that we’ve gon out and started a company, and so each milestone we hit is just a huge deal for us personally. Um, we pour, obviously, a ton of time into this, sacrifice a lot in our lives, miss some pretty big life events sometimes to work on this, and so to have this done and to have it wrapped up and to have it launched is really special for us. Um, plus on the other side, it’s just gonna be cool to, like, be on the other side of the bets so to speak. I’ve been betting on the sportsbooks for years now, and so to be on the other side of that is a pretty cool feeling. Like, looking into our admin portal and seeing, uh, you know, what picks people are making, it’s just, it’s so cool. It really is awesome.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing, that’s really cool. Congrats on that. You know, the fantasy, um, journey that we’ve been down, you know, going from standard leagues of fantasy football to there, you know, maybe 3-4 years ago where DFS was just, like, hot as ever. I’m not saying it’s not now, but it was like the thing to do 3-4 years ago. And it was like, ah, what’s season long fantasy football, and all of that. And now, I think, you’re starting to see a little bit of a balance, where you’re getting a little bit of both, now you’re getting a lot of sports betting in, and something you’re kind of mixing all of this together and merging it all together into one really cool experience for people, which I think is amazing.
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, so for the fantasy sports side of things, um, right now we’re only football. Um, but we have player props and survival available for baseball and NBA too,um, that’s a big thanks o our data provider, SportsData, they do a great job in getting us different algorithms and different ATIs that we need to properly stand those different sports up.
RYAN KNUPPEL
You don’t have to plug them, I love sportsdata.io.
WILL TIGHE
Yeah they’re awesome.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Amazing company, so yeah. We’ll give them a little shameless here in the middle of this as well. Um, but anyway, so, um, yeah, so tell me about the future. What’s the future look like for you guys? I’m assuming you got some big plans, but what’s kind of the future look like, where are you headed?
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, so the future, Ryan, is pretty simple for us. We currently have, uh, a lead investor for our next fundraising round. Um, we’re really pumped about that, it’s a credited VC, which is, you know, a big deal. Last year, when we raised our initial pre-seed round, it was mostly friends and family. Um, so it’s, you know, people that know you, people that have a relationship with you, they’re willing to give you money, um, it’s different when a VC comes in and says “Yeah, we like your business model, we like the team, we wanna give you a ton of money to execute on this,”. And so that’s really big for us. Um, we’re currently looking to close out our round with some more strategic investors. So, we wanna get as much smart money onto our cap table as possible, and so that’s going to be the next few weeks to couple months for us, potentially. Um, and then after that comes in, we’re just going to be looking to scale. Keep taking that user feedback, keep talking to our early adopters, I try to talk to 10 early adopters a day, and just keep getting their feedback, keep iterating on it, and then the product will speak for itself over the course of this football season.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Well congrats on, uh, kinda the next round being started, and kinda headed down the right path there. That’s amazing, I mean, getting funding is, um, never easy and it’s always a challenge and always something that are funding it gotta believe in the product, and so there’s clearly a belief there, which is amazing. So, you know, once you get that, it’s off to the races, like you said, so, uh, scaling, moving forward, and I’m assuming just increasing user-base as well. But I did love what you just said there at the end, you know, always, geez, reaching out to 10 people a day that are using it and understanding it, cuz you really gotta kinda understand what the people like, what they don’t like, how they’re feeling, and I just urge you not to lose sight of that as you continue growing, and I know it sounds like you’re not going to, but that’s a really cool quality to have. I’m glad you said that.
WILL TIGHE
Yeah 100%, man. It’s critically important.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Cause I think that’s, you know, possibly one of the downfalls of companies as they scale, and as they get bigger, you know, they start to get so big that they kinda lose sight of the actual people because there’s so many of them, right? And like, I get it, I understand how that is, but keeping that at the forefront’s amazing, so, very cool, very cool. Man, you’ve probably had quite the journey here, you know. Kinda jumping into the entrepreneurial experience, kinda outta nowhere, outta left field, and kind of jumping in. Give us, I don’t know, just some sort of more on the business side, or the, just running a company side, one of the challenges that you’ve really come across or that you’ve, maybe you downplayed, you’re like, “Ah, I didn’t really see this coming, but it’s been a challenge throughout the last 3 years doing this”. Do you have anything on your mind that might fit that bill?
WILL TIGHE
Um, yeah I think the biggest challenge for me personally, um, is riding the emotional waves of being an entrepreneur. Like you have days, Ryan, you know this, where everything’s coming up aces, it’s just good news after good news after good news, and then the next day, you know, it’s not so good news. And so I think the biggest challenge for me that I’ve started to get a little bit better at thankfully, is riding those emotions, not getting too high, not getting too low, really making sure to prioritize your mental health in a way that I personally wasn’t before hand. Um, so that’s been the biggest challenge for me, is really riding those emotions and learning how to handle them, specifically. Um, which, it’s easier for some than others. Um, goes without saying, but I think that the main thing that I’ve tried to practice is not getting too high with the good news and not getting too low with the bad news.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Did you play sports?
WILL TIGHE
I did, yeah. Yeah.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s a, that’s a common mentality, right? That I know I always brought to playing and to coaching, is, and it’s not something that everybody can do well, but if you’re able to kind of, like, nothing’s too low, nothing’s too high, kind of stay in that middle ground and understand that there’s gonna be goods and bads and you’re gonna be on both spectrums, I mean, you have such a mental edge over others in the sporting, when you’re playing and when you’re coaching things of that nature. In the business world, it translates right over as well. That’s such a great point. I experience it every day as well, with “Yeah, yeah, yeah”, and then “Uhhh”, but, no, you can’t get that way. You kinda gotta be here, right? And move on, so. Not that we can’t celebrate, but, I think that keeping it even-keeled is a great lesson, thank you for sharing that with the audience.
WILL TIGHE
Oh, of course, yeah.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Awesome, well cool. Well, tell us more about how we would get the app. I know you’re on app store, you’re on Google, I’m assuming it’s pretty easy there, I know it’s BettorFantasy, B-E-T-T-O-RFantasy.com, but if somebody listening wanted to get in, dive in, I mean fantasy leagues are starting up, football is starting up, so what’s going on now that they can do it, how do they get it?
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, so definitely hit us up on the App Store, you can get the links to download our app on our website. Um, would love it, love it, love it, like we said before, if you reached out to our team. You can access us by support@bettorfantasy.com. Um, and if you want to sign up for a 15 minute user research session with me, I would love nothing more than that. Um, also we’re live in 21 states now for our DFS contest. You can see the full list of states there. Um, so we would love it if people started to, you know, just kinda get a sense of what we’re all about and let us know what they like and they don’t like.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing. Yeah, we’ll put the links out there as well, that way people can just click on them in the show notes that we have out here. But yeah, I urge everybody to get out there, check out BettorFantasy, I think it’s a, I’m excited for where you guys are headed. I think it’s gonna be fun. And you know there’s a lot of companies in this space and things going on, but uh, I love seeing, you know, all of you succeed. So this is gonna be an amazing experience, so…Any last words for the audience here, Will? Anything we missed, anything you wanted to touch on, always something I like to ask before we jump off.
WILL TIGHE
Yeah. Ready for this? I’m gonna give you my Rookie of the Year pick.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Oh, I am ready.
WILL TIGHE
Okay. Jerome Ford, Cleveland runningback. He’s gonna be the rookie of the year. This is a long shot, I mean a long shot, like he might not even be available on your sportsbook.
RYAN KNUPPEL
I was gonna say, are there odds, or what are they?
WILL TIGHE
Yeah, if you can find it, um, this guy is super talented, uh he’s just an incredible player. The Browns are obviously gonna have to run him a ton this year without their quarterback, so. Uh, good offense align, just keep that name in the back of your head. If he’s on your waiver wire, go pick him up, uh, if you can sprinkle a little action on him, I like that too. Jerome Ford. Came out of Cincinnati, he’s an electric player.
RYAN KNUPPEL
I love that, that’s awesome. Well we know Cincinnati had a great year last year, so yeah. That’s a, I’ll go look on all my places and see if I can find anything, but thanks for sharing that. Who do you got tonight? I don’t know if this will be published before the game, but, uh, hey, you’ll say it before the game. You got Bills or Rams tonight?
WILL TIGHE
Uh, my mind says Rams getting. 2 1/2, my heart says Bills. Um, flip a coin, I’ll go with my heart, I’m gonna go Buffalo Bills, baby.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, I am too. I, and again, I don’t know if it’s heart or what, but I think the Bills are gonna cover tonight and take care of business. But we’ll see. That’s the beauty of it. Nobody ever really knows.
WILL TIGHE
Yup, you don’t know until it happens.
RYAN KNUPPEL
You don’t know. Well, Will, I really appreciate you coming on. I look forward to you coming on a couple of years down the road having you back on and talking about the success BettorFantasy has had, and kinda where you’re at in the future.
WILL TIGHE
Awesome, thank you, Ryan. It’s been a pleasure, man.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Alright, Will. Take care.
That was Will Tighe of BettorFantasy.com. Super excited to see where they head. Bring the action to your fantasy league. Awesome concept. Well, we’ll put the show notes out, uh, tomorrow, whenever this is released. BettorFantasy.com, so really excited there. Hey everybody, really appreciate you tuning in, appreciate your attention to the show. That was episode 179, so we’re creeping up towards 200. Uh, we’ll see how the rest of this year goes, but if you know anyone that wants to be on the show, please, reach out to me, let me know. I’m Ryan Knuppel, @Knup out on the socials, and we’ll try to get them on and talk about what they’re up to in this awesome, uh, sports business/sports gaming/sports betting industry. Alright, until next time, take care, stay safe, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Relevant Links
- Learn more about BettorFantasy on their website.
- You can connect with Will Tighe on LinkedIn.
More Knup Sports Links
- I refer to Knup Sports often in my show. That’s our sports passion site. Check out KnupSports.com here.
- If you are looking for my services you can find more information on the Knup Solutions website.
- Listen to more episodes of the Knup Sports Show.
- Want to be a guest on our show? Setup a time that works here.
- Subscribe to the Knup Sports Show on iTunes here.
- Knup Sports is a proud part of the Sports 2.0 Network
Contact Ryan Knuppel
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanknuppel
- Email: ryan@knupsolutions.com
