Unlike other betting exchanges, Novig will not charge any fees to almost all bettors, but there will be small fees for those whose net winnings are greater than $10,000, according to Fortinsky.

The first sports betting exchanges in the U.S., Prophet and Sporttrade, launched last September in New Jersey. In Europe, sports betting exchanges such as Betfair are popular, but that’s not the case in the U.S., where sportsbooks that set the odds dominate.

I felt like there's a lot of opportunity to create a more fair, transparent and efficient system.”įortinsky and Ukah have modeled Novig after a stock exchange like the Nasdaq or an online marketplace like Ebay, where people can buy and sell with each other rather than rely on a third-party to set the price. You're just a pawn in their game, effectively. The game is sort of rigged against the everyday bettor. “The number one reason why people stop sports betting or don’t start sports betting is there’s a fundamental understanding that the house always wins. “It felt very inefficient, outdated, exploitative,” he said. Fortinsky claimed that he was nonetheless making money betting on sports, but the traditional sportsbooks limited the amount people like him could wager. The company raised a pre-seed round of $800,000 in February 2022 from two VC firms (Lux Capital and Innospark Ventures) and a number of angel investors and then went through a Y Combinator program last summer.įortinsky was a prolific sports bettor, but he said he was disappointed using traditional sportsbooks such as FanDuel or DraftKings because they have a “vig,” which is a fee/commission they charge for using the app. Fortinsky launched the company in March 2021 during his second-to-last semester at Harvard, while Ukah joined that fall during his senior year after completing his summer internship at Jane Street.

Betting exchanges in the us