Pick$
| Name: Samuel Zweifach
NYU affiliation: Stern NYU status: Graduate |
Did you enter last year?: No
Do you have any teammates?: Yes How many, including yourself?: 2 |
Concept Name
Pick$
High Concept Statement
HQ Trivia for free (therefore legal) sports prediction contests. We offer free daily, weekly, and monthly contests, where high scores win real money and bragging rights with friends.
Status Quo
In 2017 an estimated $400+ billion was wagered in the US on sports, with only $4.8 billion occurring legally in Nevada, showing an enormous untapped market for legal contests. Despite the huge demand, there’s no easy way for casual fans to legally win money on sports outside of Nevada, which our app will provide.
Competition
Customers currently address their desire to win money on sports by going to Vegas and betting legally, playing daily fantasy sports (FanDuel, Draft Kings), participating in contests like March Madness office pools, or betting illegally. The primary competition are the contest apps Daily Bracket, ESPN Streak and WinView. ESPN Streak and Daily Bracket reward users based on win streaks of correctly picked outcomes. WinView rewards users for correctly picked live predictions of specific plays.
Solution
Customers will prefer our app because it will be simpler: users predict 7 popular sports outcomes daily and can win cash prizes and easily create groups to compete with friends. Our competitors have complicated interfaces and prize structures, low payouts, and the inability to engage a user’s network consistently.
Revenue Model
Our core revenue model will be sponsored ads and content from strategic partners. We realize that the user experience is a critical element to our success and thus we will focus on integrating advertising that does not deter from the experience but rather enhances it. For users, this will mean there will only be curated ads throughout the platform (i.e. The Bud Light leaderboard, The Seat Geek Daily Recap, etc), brands will do giveaways and distribute discounts for active users (10% off Stubhub orders or 10% discounts at Models) and sponsors will send invites to exclusive events. For brands, this will mean having access to a targeted sports enthusiast audience at a 20-30% cheaper CPM and CPC than competing marketing channels such as social media and adwords. We plan on absorbing the prize money giveaways for the first 3 months via our fundraising and then onboarding sponsors to cover the prize costs with the additional revenue as profit. Currently, our breakeven number of daily active users is calculated at ~45,000 which we expect to hit by the end of month 3 based on our growth predictions. Additional revenue streams will also exist through affiliate sales (game tickets, pay per view, Red Zone subscription, etc) and sponsored content in our daily recaps (i.e. linking game previews or results to ESPN/Yahoo! and integrating sponsored video content into the daily, weekly, and monthly recap).
Which platform would you like to launch your app on?
iPhone
Which category best describes your app?
Games