Building an "Expedia for sports betting", with Gino Donati of BetOpenly and OpenMarkets

BetOpenly founder Gino Donati has spent eight years on a self-financed peer-to-peer betting exchange. Now he is building OpenMarkets alongside it, with outside money for the first time. He explains the plan to host Jesse on the Betting Startups Podcast.

In this episode

• Donati says BetOpenly is the only peer-to-peer exchange in the US; the others are peer to market maker, and he claims his model saves two to three points on every trade (2:30, 2:34).

• OpenMarkets is meant to be an "Expedia" for sports betting: an order book showing the best lines and odds across operators, with a universal wallet via a partnership with Edge Boost (9:30, 9:53).

• The raise is against a $50 million pre-money valuation, with the consumer peer-to-peer product credited at $10 million and the institutional product at $40 million (9:05, 10:44).

• Donati says the licence alone costs $2.2 million and the whole build needs at least $5 million (16:34, 16:55).

• He describes a $10 million go-to-market round against $100 million post-licensing and expects full licensing by year end (23:55, 24:47).

• He wants to hand BetOpenly's ownership to 2,000 to 5,000 users, and will decide by the Super Bowl whether to step down as president and run one business or the other (22:07, 29:30).

Episode from the Betting Startups Podcast, published on YouTube.