Underdog

I couldn’t be more excited about Underdog’s future. We have an amazing community, and nearly 300 wonderful people on our team. BBMIV is the largest fantasy contest ever, with $15m in prizes. Our Pick’em games are wildly popular. Our content network is world-class. We’re building an entirely new vision for sports betting in America, all in-house. But success brings challenges: FanDuel and DraftKings are working to slow us down. You should know what they’re trying to do. They are coordinating their lobbyists, market power, partners and years of political contributions to try to stop us and other fantasy companies. Why? Underdog and other companies innovating in fantasy sports and sports betting threaten their monopoly. They’ve seen our company, and others, produce superior products and challenge them for sports fans’ attention. They can’t raise their own game because they can’t innovate. They’re scared that we’ll challenge their market positions. We’re already bigger in fantasy. They can’t tell policymakers and others they don’t like competition, so FanDuel-DraftKings are using a disingenuous narrative that our fantasy sports contests are illegal. The arguments are ironic, ignoring the law for the same flimsy “feels like sports betting” line that critics have always lobbed at their fantasy sports contests. Despite a year of effort, they’re losing the fight with regulators. A clear, simple fantasy sports legal framework exists because of the laws they wrote. A fantasy sports contest must have three core elements (game of skill, multiple athletes, outcomes based on accumulated statistics), which all of our games fit perfectly. In nearly every state where a sports betting law has been passed, the law makes crystal clear that fantasy sports are not sports betting. Regulators agree that our contests are fantasy and not betting, including regulators who oversee both fantasy and betting in Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana. The North Carolina Legislature and Alabama Attorney General recently said we’re right. This isn’t a good-faith fight on the legal merits; it’s a convenient mask for a pure anti-competitive effort. They want to prevent consumers from playing the fantasy sports they love. They want to quash competition in fantasy and stop innovation, and potential rivals, in sports betting. Unable to innovate with new sports games, they are trying to ensure fantasy sports are limited to a very narrow category of games. They want American sports fans to have only one outlet for sports games: the tired old casino sportsbook. We have a different vision. We’ve shown how innovation can bring about new games that our fans love, and ways for our players to increase their enjoyment of sports. We’ll keep innovating, with many new games for fans in our future. And we’ll win this fight to ensure the future of sports games in America serve the fans and not only the interests of big tech monopolies. https://lnkd.in/ekU5_QPf

Underdog, now the fourth most downloaded sports gaming app in the U.S., was challenged by the manual review processes that led to long waiting times for players. It needed a strategic partner to help balance automation and manual intervention, and create global-bank level security for its KYC controls — all so it can onboard more good users faster. This is where Socure comes in. ?? By partnering with Socure, Underdog implemented global bank-level security for its Know Your Customer (KYC) controls, setting a new standard in the sports gaming industry and ensuring a secure, seamless experience for its rapidly growing user base. Socure helped Underdog achieve: ?? A 300% reduction in manual reviews, from 20% to just 5%. ?? 97% auto-decisioning with ID document verification. In the words of Underdog’s VP of Fraud and Payments Karl Gambin, MA, ACAMS, “Underdog prides itself on going above and beyond regulatory requirements, adopting a player-centric approach where the safety and integrity of the platform are constantly at the forefront. Our partnership with Socure has been instrumental in achieving this goal." Read the full case study here??? https://lnkd.in/gtufDuUi