ZenSports, the mobile peer-to-peer sports betting marketplace where anyone can create and accept sports bets, announced today the company has closed an additional $770K+ in funding across multiple angel investors.
After launching its sports betting app in March 2019, the fast-growing startup closed $675K in October 2019 as part of a broader $1M+ seed round. With its continued rapid growth, the startup started receiving inbound interest from additional angel investors in December 2019, and decided to open up a new round of funding to accommodate those interested investors.
“After officially closing our $1M+ seed round in October 2019, we felt more than comfortable that we had enough funding to execute on our growth strategy for 2020. However, we had numerous angel investors who approached us about putting more money into our company. We decided to offer a time-boxed raise without a target amount for these investors who approached us and shared our vision of how decentralized, peer-to-peer sports betting using cryptocurrencies was the future. We were fortunate to have a lot of choices in the investors we decided to ultimately bring on board, and we’re thrilled to be working with them as we continue to grow and scale ZenSports.”
– ZenSports Co-Founder & CEO, Mark Thomas
Funding
The new funding will be heavily invested in paid customer acquisition channels.
According to Thomas, “Up to this point, we haven’t spent any money on paid marketing to acquire new customers. Instead, we’ve focused on optimizing the post-customer acquisition and retention funnel through constant product iteration and via our SPORTS Rewards Program. We’ve got incredibly loyal customers who are very active on a daily basis in placing bets in our app. It’s now time to get very aggressive in growing our overall customer base via paid marketing.”
To help accomplish this, the company recently hired an experienced marketer, Mark Saldana, to become Chief Marketing Officer. Mark brings a wealth of digital marketing experience to technology and consumer brands and will be an integral piece to the company’s revenue and growth plans.
ZenSports Product
With the ZenSports app, sports bettors can create bets with their own odds and terms, or accept bets that others in the marketplace have created, all at a fraction of the cost that traditional bookmakers charge. As a decentralized marketplace, ZenSports is eliminating the need for a bookmaker altogether, and giving bettors a cheaper, faster, and more trustworthy experience for wagering on sports.
ZenSports created its own cryptocurrency utility token called SPORTS, which customers can use for placing bets, earning discounted betting fees, and getting cash back, bonuses, and other rewards. Betting with SPORTS tokens gives customers an exciting and rewards-driven experience for wagering on sports that traditional bookmakers don’t offer. ZenSports’ goal is to integrate SPORTS tokens into other access points within the sports ecosystem, such as online merchandise, media broadcasts, event ticketing, in-game food and beverage, and professional sports leagues.
Nearly all bets within ZenSports have been made using SPORTS tokens, even though the app also offers to bet with dollars and bitcoin.