Startup Jock MKT Merges Stock Trading With Fantasy Sports Gaming

Getting tired of riding the NYSE and NASDAQ roller coaster? Has your Dogecoin DOGE/USD distraction gone dry? A startup in Boston may have a solution for those in search of the proverbial next big thing: a combination of fantasy sports gaming and retail stock trading called Jock MKT.

Play Ball!: Jock MKT is an app that allows users to generate cash by buying and selling virtual shares of athletes. Unlike the traditional fantasy sports betting pools, Jock MKT brings an investor-focused vibe to the game with features including buying and selling shares in real-time, using any dollar amount for share purchasing and having the opportunity to either exit early or hold on until receiving fixed payouts tied to final player rankings which are based on an overall fantasy scoring.

Furthermore, there is a Jock MKT version of the IPO, in this case the “Initial Player Offering” that gives users their first opportunity to bid on shares prior to any contest.

According to co-founder and CEO Tyler Carlin, Jock MKT raised its seed round in August 2019 and was set to debut in April 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent suspending of professional sports resulted in a pause button smash. In retrospect, Carlin recognized the delay might have been a disguised blessing.

“We had our free-to-play offering standard contest over the summer, where you just sign up and just play for free, win some money and get familiar with the platform,” he said. “It also gave us a little extra time to just continue to build out the product.

“We were actually fortunate that we had not launched earlier because we had kicked around the idea of doing something for the NFL Draft. But it would have been tougher to launch and then have to turn off our marketing or pivot.”

The app launched in September 2020 with an initial focus on the NFL, NBA and the PGA Tour. Trading activity tied to the NHL and MLB was added earlier this year. Jock MKT does not have direct business deals with the sports organizations, but has licensing agreements through a third-party vendor.

See Also: Benzinga Stock Market Live: How To Find Good Stocks Before Other People

Ground Rules: Jock MKT users, Carlin continued, explained that payout shares are based on the fantasy rankings.

“For whichever player comes in first place in the night, their shares will pay out 25 a share, second place 20 a share, third place 18 and all the way down the payout curve,” he said. “If I have 10 shares and the player that finishes second, I'll get paid up to 200 bucks. So, it allows users to trade throughout the game and have a nice level of comfort that those shares will pay out regardless of how much in game trading is actually taking place.”

All Jock MKT transactions are in dollars, with Carlin opting not to include a cryptocurrency payment option because “we felt like there's already a little bit of a learning curve to our game and we didn't want to add one more hurdle for people to overcome — we want to make the onboarding process kind of as simple as possible.”

Today and Tomorrow: Jock MKT now has more than 25,000 users — the audience is primarily male and spread across 35 of the 44 states that enable online gaming. Carlin is looking to expand into the remaining eight available states plus Canada, but he is not aiming for an expansion beyond North America.

“Sports betting has been around in Europe for so long and it's a much more mature marketplace that daily fantasy sports aren't as prominent overseas as they are here,” he said.
Earlier this week, Jock MKT raised $10 million in Series A funding in a round led by New York-based venture capital firm Left Lane Capital. Ryan Moore, a board member of DraftKings DKNG and founding partner of the venture capital firm Accomplice, was among the investors in the funding round.

Carlin said the company plans to use the new funds to hire developers, analysts and data scientists. Another goal is to expand into a web platform — the app is only available on mobile devices and Carlin envisioned a web platform for users who are “looking for tools that are much more sophisticated, with more data available than what you can provide on the phone.”

As for following the example of DraftKings and aiming for a future as a publicly traded company, Carlin wasn't ready to go that far.

“I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves,” he laughed.