YouStake is a marketplace that enables fans to invest in their favorite 'skilled game' players.
Traditionally, players competing in events like eSports and live poker have let their friends and family back them by purchasing a 'stake' in the tournaments they entered.
YouStake is an End-to-end Marketplace for Player Crowdfunding, Fan Engagement, and Tournament Event Registration Portal. Invest in your favorite sports players, share the winnings! YouStake's original offering opened on September 13, 2017 and was completed on January 31, 2018. The 25-year-old who won $8.15 million at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) last week got to the final table with support from his friends — both emotional and financial.
Crowdfunding a Nuclear Poker mega-hexa-yurt at Burning Man. Cory Doctorow 1:00 pm Tue Aug 12, 2014. Vinay Gupta, creator the Hexayurt, is selling decks of the Nuclear Poker card game to raise. Crowdfunding is a way to raise money for an individual or organization by collecting donations through family, friends, friends of friends, strangers, businesses, and more. By using social media to spread awareness, people can reach more potential donors than traditional forms of fundraising.
If the player they backed won, they'd earn a cut of the profits. This is known as “staking.”
Historically, staking has been unofficial. But handwritten notes, back-room deals, and word-of-mouth agreements led to investors not paying their commitments, and players not honoring their deals.
But now YouStake has modernized staking, making it safe and secure. For the first time, investors like you can invest — and potentially profit — by taking part in more than 250,000 skilled game events each year.
“What sets YouStake apart is their vision to become an infrastructure that all skilled games benefit from,” said Jason Robins, company advisor and CEO & Co-founder of DraftKings, which is one of the world's leading sports contest providers.
To invest, simply visit YouStake.com and see which competitors are looking for investors (or “backers”). As the company notes on its website, its players have lifetime earnings of more than $100 million.
From there, just like investing in a start-up company, fans purchase equity stakes in their favorite player and earn a share of any potential winnings.
YouStake makes money by adding a 5-10% fee for every investment a backer places on a player.
Meanwhile, players looking for backers pay a 'listing fee' of either $1.99 plus 5% of the total amount raised, or $14 plus 2.5% of the amount raised.
This business model has enabled YouStake to become profitable from day one, and has translated to considerable success in the company’s two-year history.
After its first year, the company had more than $2.3 million in player listings. After its second year, that number grew to $7.4 million.
Those figures could rise even higher in the near future, as the company aims to take a bigger piece of the $100 billion annual sports sponsorship market.
Currently, the skilled games sector represents $16 billion of the sports market. And eSports is expected to grow by 32% year over year and soon surpass $1 billion in annual revenue.
By 2019, YouStake projects to reach $100 million in listings and $20 million in revenue.
The company will also expand into more sports, including golf, tennis, MMA, NASCAR and drone racing.
The company is backed by the 500 Startups accelerator program, which has previously guided start-ups like Twilio, AngelList, and CreditKarma.
GamCrowd, a crowdfunding company specifically for gambling start-ups, has been launched by Chris North, the man behind London’s Fox Poker Club which he founded in 2010.
GamCrowd seeks to match investors, start-ups and industry expertise for the gambling industry, revolutionising the way that start-ups raise money in an era when early stage funding is becoming harder to source.
“The last start up I did struggled to register any interest from venture capitalists and so I went back to my own crowd,” said North.
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“I didn’t know it was called crowdfunding at the time, but that is exactly what we did and it was a spectacular success”.
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GamCrowd is backed by many of the investors that supported the Fox Poker Club and the crowdfunding platform will go live at the end of January.
“Once we have a sufficient base of investors, start-ups and a crowd, we will begin putting people in touch with each other and allow investments to happen,” added North.
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“We intend to introduce investors with contacts and expertise to start-ups in the gambling industry across the world. As I have already learned, this will add tremendous value to the start-ups that are successful in being funded.'