NBA invests in Dallas-based microbetting platform
After Mavs owner Mark Cuban sold a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to Miriam Adelson, the owner of casino and resort giant Las Vegas Sands, experts said gambling seemed to be on the horizon for Texas.
Now the NBA is looking to plant its flag further in Texas by taking an equity stake in Dallas-based nVenue, a microbetting startup company. Though gambling and sports betting in Texas are still illegal, it could be one of the NBA’s first moves to nudge the public further in favor of legalizing it.
“The NBA brings with it a lot of credibility, so this is a huge win for us and this is a huge win for Texas,” nVenue’s CEO and co-founder, Kelly Pracht, said. “We want more for us, for our friends and partners around the state and as we’ve raised funds, just a tiny bit has come from Texas, but we’d love to change that.”
Though Pracht declined to disclose the specifics behind the deal, Scott Kaufman-Ross, head of gaming and new business ventures for the NBA, will become a board observer for nVenue as part of the deal.
Microbetting is when fans can place small amounts on what will happen next in a game, like if a player suddenly hits a home run or a kicker nails a field goal.
“Fans have always microbet since fandom first started. It’s just an interaction between fans on what’s going to happen in the next moment,” Pracht said. “What we’ve done is designed bets around a game of runs where you can make a pick and sit there, wait and root for what you picked. It’s a great engagement mechanism.”
The startup company, whose headquarters are located in Victory Park, uses AI and machine learning to create possible scenarios for the next play. nVenue, as the data provider, doesn’t take the bet itself. Instead, fans can place their bets using sportsbooks like Altenar, SB22 and Vibra.
Though nVenue is still nascent, its technology has already handled billions of microbets, Pracht said.
nVenue also hasn’t wasted time in its involvement with the NBA. The company was accepted into the NBA Launchpad program in early 2023 and with the support from the league, the company went live with the NBA on League Pass during the Finals.
In that time, nVenue generated over 70,000 active users.
Though Texas isn’t one of the states that gets to benefit from nVenue’s technology, it’s not a factor in the company’s success, Pracht said.
“It’s irrelevant to us that sports betting is not available in Texas,” she said. “Our customers are the sportsbooks that provide to the U.S. and internationally. We’re excited about the prospect of bringing sports betting to Texas, but we know that’s a complex story and others are actively working and debating that right now.”
nVenue was founded in 2018 and went through its core development stage in 2019. But since then, its scaled up its operations and now has 20 people developing its tech for other leagues like the MLB, NFL, NASCAR and more.
Though the company hasn’t partnered with the MLB and NFL the same way it has with the NBA and NASCAR, Pracht said there’s a good chance those deals are coming in the future.
This deal with the NBA is the culmination of Pracht’s vision from when she was leading advanced tech teams while working at HP. As an adamant sports fan and former athlete who grew up in West Texas, she noticed a gap in sports betting and knew there would eventually be a market for her tech, she said.
“I think it was always my destiny to wind up here marrying technology with sports,” Pracht said. “I think we all saw the writing on the wall that PASPA would be repealed and we knew that the business needed some serious technology to predict real-time sports.”
With more freedom to expand its platform, Pracht said it’s all driving momentum from this point forward.
“We’re at the precipice of growth right now, So handling demand, getting licensed around the U.S., those are the biggest things we’re looking to right now,” she said. “We need to make sure we can deliver and build a big enough company to support our fans.”
