It’s been a busy 12 months for us here at ZenSports!
After launching our sports betting app in March 2019, we closed $675K in October 2019 as part of a broader a $1M+ Seed Round raised in 2019. With our continued rapid growth, we 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. In just 10 weeks since then, we syndicated and closed an additional $770K+ in funding across multiple angel investors.
While we felt more than comfortable that we had enough funding to execute on our growth strategy for 2020 after we closed the funding that we did in 2019, we decided that it would make sense 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.
The new funding will be heavily invested into paid customer acquisition channels. 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, we recently hired an experienced marketer, Mark Saldana, to become the company’s new 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 the app have been made using SPORTS tokens, even though ZenSports also offers the ability to bet with Dollars and Bitcoin. The company is proving out a real use case for cryptocurrencies in its customers’ everyday lives.
ZenSports is available for download in both the App Store (iOS) and the ZenSports website (Android), and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
