In this episode of the Naavik Gaming Podcast, host Niko Vuori interviews Nigel Eccles, the co-founder and former CEO of FanDuel, exploring his journey in the online gaming world, the origin story of FanDuel, its competition with DraftKings, and the regulatory challenges faced by the fantasy sports industry.
Nigel shares the inside scoop on the FanDuel multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit and the evolving landscape of sports betting and gaming technology. Transitioning from FanDuel to his new venture, BetHog, he emphasizes the importance of innovation in the online casino space, particularly through social gaming and streaming. They also discuss the intricacies of betting mechanics, the design of engaging games, the challenges posed by regulations, and the future of crypto in the gaming industry.
We’d also like to thank Heroic Labs for making this episode possible! Thousands of studios have trusted Heroic Labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about gametech or scaling for success. To learn more and reach out, visit https://heroiclabs.com/?utm_source=Naavik&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Podcast
This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.
Niko: Hello and welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Niko Vuori. Today, we have an absolutely fascinating episode lined up, one I've been looking forward to quite a bit.
We are diving into the intersection of innovation controversy, which we don't often get to do in this podcast and the ever-evolving world of gaming and sports tech. Our guest is none other than Nigel Eccles, the founder and former CEO of FanDuel, which is with no exaggeration, I'm sure you'll agree listeners, one of the most revolutionary platforms in fantasy sports history.
Nigel's leadership helped FanDuel define and dominate the daily fantasy sports category. But his journey wasn't without its challenges from navigating legal battles to leading FanDuel amid a high-profile lawsuit. His story is one of resilience and reinvention, and I am absolutely delighted to have him on the pod to talk about this.
He is now also leading a new venture called bet hog. com, which promises to disrupt the gaming landscape once again, in its own right. So today we'll explore Nigel's thoughts on the financial lawsuit, the future of betting and gaming and the lessons he's carrying into his latest entrepreneurial pursuit.
Nigel, welcome to the pod.
Nigel: Oh, All right. Well, we're going to get right into it then.
Niko: We always start with our guest backgrounds and there is probably no, no more interesting person on this pod that we've had than you. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey into gaming, where you came from and then how you ended up.
Nigel: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I have been in the online gaming world and by that I mean real money gaming since about 2000. I was a product manager with flutter.com, a startup in London that was trying to create, we always call it an eBay of gaming, where were you eBay of betting where you could bet with each other.
And that didn't really work. And so we ended up, we ended up relaunching as a betting exchange and we merged with betfair and, to cut a long story short, the company today, Flutter Entertainment, is the product of that merger of Flutter and Betfair in 2002. I stayed at Betfair for a while, then launched another betting exchange called BetDak in Dublin, and then, uh, did some more, went into consultancy for a bit, and then launched FanDuel.
Well, actually started the precursor to FanDuel was a product called HubDub, which was a prediction market, which I had to explain to everybody for the last 15, 20 years, what a prediction market was. And now I don't have to do that anymore. It was actually very like poly market, and very successful in the 2008 election.
And then when the election happened, you know, suddenly interest really tapped off very similar to what poly market is saying today. So summer of 2009 is, you know, interesting. Prediction market was tailing off. We pivoted and became FanDuel. Launched FanDuel 2009, grew it 3 to 5x every year for, you know, very, very rapidly.
And then ultimately left FanDuel just about the end of 2017. And then since then I've done about five other startups, mostly in gaming, but a few others in like social media and in the music space. But my big passion has always been sort of, it's all consumer, but it's usually speculation and it's often real money gambling.
Niko: Nice. Yeah. I mean, once you find something that you're both good at and have a passion for, you know, there's nothing better than doing that. And then you just kind of find yourself having to start things over and over again, and I feel you, I have not been as successful as you but nonetheless have a similar passion for gaming as well and starting new things up.
Okay, great. So let's now talk about FanDuel. You know, there's a big story behind it. but let's start with the founding story, really, you know, what, what Where did FanDuel come from other than the fact that you had to kind of pivot away from the prediction markets?
Nigel: That was the start. So the very start was the idea that we were creating this prediction market.
And the, the idea behind it was we felt that the internet was quite flat and boring and we sort of felt that we could make it more exciting by allowing people to sort of bet on new stories. And because at the time online betting wasn't available. We, we were using a sort of play money model and sort of started 2009, it became clear that that just wasn't, we weren't going to get to scale on that.
We weren't going to turn that into a business. And so we looked at our product. We said, look, we're good at building prediction games. There's not really enough demand here, there is an existing framework for fantasy sports. There isn't for sports betting. Why don't we become more of a fantasy prediction game?
And so we spent a lot of time looking at fantasy sports. There was five co founders of the company. None of us played fantasy sports. It's kind of always a very funny thing like…
Niko: That blows my mind,
Nigel: Right? We didn't actually play the game and we didn't even really follow us sports. We sort of, we could, as an outsider, look at the games and go, you know, wouldn't it be better if, and wouldn't it be better if you could just start at any point in the season?
Like that was like a very simple one. Why do the games have to last? So it takes so long, right? Like, why can't we just play this weekend? Why, why isn't there like proper prizes? These prizes suck. Like you, you play a game for six months and you win like a hundred dollars. And then the last one was like, why can't I play on my phone?
That was just, that was our simple set of theses and like, I've been wrong and lots of sort of ideas, but that one we were 100 percent right there was just like there was people love fantasy and the idea that you could take something they love and make it faster, more exciting, give it real money and they could play it on their phone was just like, yes, yes, definitely yes.
And that was the origin story of FanDuel.
Niko: Nice. Nice. And of course, I mean, we, we, we take it for granted that, you know, these devices that we all have here are ubiquitous today, but of course that was 2009, right? That's right. Yeah. And so I thought it just
Nigel: That's right.
And so I thought it just launched, you know, right, exactly. I
Niko: And so I thought it just launched, you know, it just launched and the app store was in its infancy.
And, um, you know, there was really no way to do engage fantasy sports other than sitting at a website and spending a long time doing your picks and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I think we forget how revolutionary it was. Yeah. It was at the time. Tell me a little bit about, so obviously draft Kings.
Actually I have to apologize. I don't know the exact timeline of fan jewel V draft Kings, but of course, those were the two big names. Tell us a little bit about that and the rivalry.
Nigel: Yeah, they didn't, they didn't. So we actually had, the industry was always very competitive from very early on, where being competitive was draft street and draft Kings didn't launch until 2012, they, they were a copy, like, you know what I mean?
Like they, I. And they don't often admit it, but like they were a copy. They were a very good copy. And they basically, you know, by 2012, when they launched, we were already like, you know, our code base was really like four or five years old. And so they should have caught us at a point where our product, they were able to copy and be truly a fast follower.
And so, We were like sort of slowing down because we had the spaghetti code base. And so it took us, you know, it took us, they, they were able to innovate very quickly, whereas we weren't anymore. And that was definitely a big challenge. They also raised a lot more money than we did. So they like came out and raised like, they would raise twice as much money as us.
And so even though we had this headstart and we were more efficient, they were spending a lot more money. And that was kind of the. From sort of 2013, 14, 15, you just had this incredible war between those two companies because they were desperate to get to being number one, which is, which we're fond of, obviously when we were, when they, they launched.
Niko: Okay. And I think obviously one of the things that, that I have steered clear my entire career in gaming is regulation because regulation and regulatory environments can be very tricky to navigate and time consuming and painful. And I. I don't like those kinds of environments, but some people seek them out.
So tell us a little bit about how you were able to navigate that space. Obviously it was new. What you were doing was new. We just, you know, very new. How did regulations come into play? How did you navigate that environment?
Nigel: It's an interesting one. And it's actually not unlike crypto today. In fact, it's very like crypto today, which is third.
There was no regulation for fantasy sports, right? There was no, there was, there's laws, there's laws around online betting or betting, and which are applied online. There was laws for games of skill. Generally schemes of skill were legal. Generally games of chance were. Yeah, on illegal or you had to be regulated, but you couldn't offer sports betting because it, there was, you know, a federal law against that.
And so, fantasy sports had in nearly every state being considered a game of skill. And so we operated within that now generally considered These are not legal terms like there's no regulator. There's no and there wasn't even a person could go to and say well What, what defines fantasy sports, right?
Like that was really like an opinion. Everybody had a lawyer. It said, this is fantasy. And so we operated under the definition on the, under the unlawful internet gaming enforcement act, which is a federal law, it didn't have a weight of law, but it had a definition. So we sort of said like, as long as we're like that, and I remember it said that it had to be dependent on.
More than, or had to be at least two of that. And so you were like, okay, you pick players across two events. So some lawyers who were conservative, who were like, no, it really needs to be like five or six. And I'm like, it says two, you know, so you basically had to like, sort of kind of make it up. You had to be like, look, it's, you know, we needed to be skill based.
Like, so if somebody just comes in and picks a random lineup, then that shouldn't really win. And so that was fine until we really started get to scale. By 2015, you know, FanDuel and DraftKings were doing like hundreds of millions in revenue. We had, you know, we were advertising very heavily on TV.
So suddenly everyone's like, how is this legal? And, and, and it was a sort of like, well, this isn't fantasy sports, like fantasy is, you know, the one my husband plays that, you know, he goes to a bar with his buddies and this new type is different. Right, and so that became, and what happened is we sort of brought what came was a sort of regulatory explosion.
Like suddenly everyone's like, we need to do something. Right? And that, that became, so 2015, 2016, sort of through to 2017, mostly 2015, 2016 was sort of a very challenging period where, you know, we're in front of attorney generals who were facing like federal level investigations about what we're doing.
Now we've been operating for at this stage, nearly 10 years without issue, but suddenly they're like, well, you know, we're not happy about this. And very famously, the New York attorney general. sued us to forces to exit New York, and that created a lot of drama and ultimately We were actually very successful.
We actually had the law clarified in 22 states in two years. So we went out and said, right, you know, people in New York want to play fantasy sports. Like it's, this is ridiculous that, you know, the attorney general can just decide that this hobby that's loved by millions of people is illegal based on no weight of law.
And so we went and to the legislators and say, look, this is super popular. You know, why don't we get a law clarifying it? We, we, we want consumer protection. We want the industry to be regulated. Let's just pass a law clarified. And we did in New York, we did it in 21 other states.
Niko: Nice. Nice. Well, and congratulations and thank you on behalf of all the millions of fantasy players in this country.
Not dissimilar as a crypto. I mean, you already made the connection there. You know, it was a kind of came out of nowhere, suddenly exploded into popularity, not dissimilar in the sense that, you know, it's young men who are excited about, but, you know, working in this space and kind of speculating.
Thanks. To a certain degree, what, what parallels do you see beyond that, you know, with the current situation? I know you're actually working in crypto and have worked in crypto for a good amount of time. And we'll talk about that in a second with that hog. But, but tell me a little bit about kind of the macro level of what you're seeing.
Nigel: So a lot of crossover, a lot of people that I sort of became friends with in the DFS world have come over to crypto. It's, that's number one. It definitely attracts a sort of a risk seeking young male demographic. It's, it's definitely much bigger than fantasy sports. I guess the global phenomena it's, and it's also a platform.
On which you could build really interesting products. And so much sort of like deeper, it's a much bigger ecosystem, but it actually has a similarity in that doesn't have relevant laws today, like sort of looking at it, like the. And one of the problems is, you know, the current administration, the outgoing administration, thankfully has sort of taken the view that no, we don't need any new laws.
It's all totally clear. And by clear, they mean everything is illegal. Everything apart from Bitcoin and Ethereum, everything else is illegal. And, and they used to say that Ethereum was essentially illegal as well. And in effect, anyone who operated in the industry was breaking the law. And what does that mean?
Fines, maybe prison, like we don't know. And so you have operators, like you have like operators, like Coinbase, which has gone public as an army of lawyers, trying to keep them compliant with the laws, the SEC is suing them. Saying that they're breaking the law and not even being clear about what laws are breaking.
It's just like you're breaking the laws and saying everything you have on here is security. And when Coinbase says, well, can you tell me what the definition is security and where point us to in the law? Like they won't do that. And so, It's been sort of the most shocking for me, which is to see a U. S.
government administration basically just try and kill an industry. And that's effectively what they try to do. They've done it directly. And they also have done it indirectly through what's known as operation choke point 2. 0, where they basically debunked both people and companies. We also saw that in gaming where, you know, it wasn't like it wasn't a government agency doing anything directly, but suddenly you lost your bank account. And once you started losing your bank account a lot, you started like, wait a second, why is this happening? And it's because there's government agencies behind it said, we don't like this and we don't have any power to stop it apart from we can lean on the banks and the banks, because they want to have to keep a banking license, they have to comply.
And so that's what we've seen in crypto. But we also, we, we saw this, we've seen this in gaming for the last 20 years. So yeah, it's, so lots of sort of similarities, the industry, I think everyone within crypto after the election, it was like a massive sigh of relief because the new administration. It doesn't even have to be good.
It just has to be not the last one, the last one was terrible for the industry and pushed a lot of people offshore because they're like, Hey, why would I stay in America whenever like they are actively at war against this industry?
Niko: Yeah. Being unbanked is, I mean, even though theoretically you could use crypto for payments. Yeah. I mean, you still can't operate it.
Nigel: You can't operate it. Like, how do I, how do I pay my employees? Yeah. Do you go?
Niko: How do you pay your employees? Yeah. How do you convert to fiat currency? You need, you need some kind of OnRamp and off ramp. And if you don't have a bank account, then well, that's it.
That's it's choke point is a very apt, term. Mm-hmm . We actually did a, we've never done a emergency podcast, at Navi, but we did our first emergency podcast, , when the SEC went after NFTs. Right. And open sea. And that was the moment like. , for me, I was just like, this is madness. Like, why, why are you going after digital collectibles and calling them securities?
Like that's, that's mental, right?
Nigel: So the thing for me that I don't just did not understand was. Who was the constituency that they were trying to serve, right? Like if they protect, right?
Niko: I mean, ostensibly, it's about consumer protections, which in and of itself, I'm like, I'm all for I'm all for that, right?
But who is being harmed? Where is the harm?
Nigel: Yeah. And what in what way were there? What they actually did, did they actually protect any consumers? Cause all I saw was they just pushed fraud to the margins and they didn't investigate any of it. And so, you know, over the last three, four years, and when you work in crypto, like it's not the worst, it's just think like all this bad behavior, all the fraud and rugs, and you're like.
Why is it, why aren't they looking into that? Like, why aren't they stopping that so that that goes away instead? They're suing Uniswap, Coinbase, you know, OpenSea, like, and that was just insane.
Niko: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the lawyers, you know, I've worked in web three and crypto and have been long on crypto for a very long time.
Got, well, not as long as some, but 2016 is when I first got into crypto and got red pilled a little bit, you know, There has been so much bad behavior, which is rightfully condemned. But a lot of the time that doesn't get to your point that actually doesn't get addressed. What gets addressed is the bigger players who are actually playing clean, because the bigger you get, the more clean you kind of have to be by definition, because you have customers, you have employees, you have constituencies that rely on you.
And so ironically enough, the big players like Coinbase who are actually operating by the book, essentially, whatever book exists, are the ones that are, that are The government's going after and the ones that are actually causing the harm and doing the rugs and the scams and the, and the, and the crime, essentially, they're getting away with it.
So anyway, we could do an entire other episode about this, but, but let's, let's move on to, because it is, there's, I wanted to call out the similarities because again, this is your careers is essentially. Operating in this environment, and doing so very successful. So I'm excited to talk about FedHog in a second, but, but let's talk now about the financial lawsuit.
I'm absolutely fascinated. You have a front row seat. I've had a front row seat. Tell us our listeners may not know. I mean, they, they probably know about the lawsuit, but they may not know the details. So let's start from the beginning. What happened and where are we at now? Because it's actually in the news right this very second, like this year, there's finally some kind of movement.
Nigel: Yeah, no, there's, there's a lot of developments at the moment. So essentially where the lawsuit stems from, whenever you start a company and start raising money almost always your investors have a different class of shares. It's usually called a preference shares. And what it means is that they get, they get their money back plus upside.
Right, and in a scenario where you sell the company for less than the money going in, They just get their money back or get whatever, you know, cents on the dollar off their money back. And it's just kind of an accepted practice in this, in the industry that they're like, look, why should, why should founders make money at a scenario where the investors are losing money?
Right. That's, that's. That's kind of the accepted practice. And, and found it was the same. So we raised, by 2017, no, 2018, we'd raised about 450 million. And so we had what's it's called a prep stack. This is the first month amount of money goes to the investors. We actually had a prep stack of 559 million.
Because some of the money we have raised had like a special interest in special firms. So 559 million, that's a good number to remember because that comes up again in the story. So if we were to sell a company, if we were to sell it for under 559 million, uh, The investors would get whatever it is. If we were to sell it above, the investors would get that first 559 million.
And then we would share in the upside with the investors. And by share, I mean, founders, employees, and then some seed investors who were common shareholders as well. Sort of, you've got common shares and you've got, you've got preference to get paid first, and then you could come. So that's kind of the, the, the sort of first part.
Niko: And just to everybody listening, like that is extremely common as almost every single venture deal in the entire world, but certainly the United States, if it's done from Silicon Valley based kind of law firms, that's the structure you're going to, you're going to totally normal. So it's not, not abnormal in any way, shape or form.
Nigel: The second thing then is, by sort of early 2018, So the founders had left the company by this stage, and you remember that's like over 10 years after we'd started it. So again, not that unusual, but the board was dominated by late stage investors, so representative of firms like KKR and Shamrock.
I'd only really won a couple of independents. And then only one investor who was representative of the early stage investors who might be more in line with founders and employees, and that's important because what happened at the start of 2018 was the board was like, look, this company still wasn't profitable.
They wanted to go into a merger or a structure where they would have upside of sports betting because sports betting as this point had not been legalized, but the Supreme Court had agreed to listen to the case and there was, you know, pretty high expectation. It wasn't certain, maybe it was 50 50, that.
That sports betting might get, this law might get repealed and then the states could start offering sports betting. And if they did, everyone knew that it was going to be a huge industry. We had known it for years that like if sports betting becomes online, us is going to be the biggest market in the world very quickly.
And so the board's thinking, okay, how do we, how do we get maximizer upside, but minimize, you know, the downside. So we don't have to put any more money in. And so what they did was they ran a process and they talked to flutter.com or Flutter Entertainments, and said, Hey, you've got this us division , which is a reasonably big business.
It's mostly in horse racing. Why don't we merge the two? And, and you put in, I think they put in 160 million at the same time. So they did that and then they spent a lot of time negotiating the relative values of the two companies and say, well, this is a little bigger, but you're putting in a lot of money.
And so what they settled on was. 40 percent of this new company and the Flutter entertainment share or Flutter entertainment would get 60%. Okay. Okay. I, again, totally normal, and actually, a very good deal, a deal that made a lot of sense because Flutter is, you know, one of the largest sports books in the world, tons of experience in operations.
They brought all of that expertise. Vandal brought brand customer base and, you know, a 500 person team, you know, of engineers, marketeers. So a great combination, particularly if sports betting gets legalized. So that's the first part. This sort of. General 6040 was a great, but not finalized, but it was a great, during that process, what happened was PASPA was repealed.
PASPA was the federal law that said the states can't offer sports betting. Everyone immediately knew while sports betting assets in the U S are, you know, are going to be rocket, they are super valuable and we saw. Not many of these companies are public, but one of them, the score, for example, which was public, which was purely focused on us and Canada, it's share price went up like six X overnight, Flutter Entertainment share price.
And they didn't have a big exposure to the U S very small at this stage, I think they added like 2 billion, 3 billion overnight, right? DraftKings. What a company that was essentially the same size as us immediately raised at a 1. 5 billion valuation. So here we have all of this evidence that yes, everything here is super valuable.
The question is what's the value of that 40%? What's the value to FanDuel shareholders of that 40%? Let's go back to the PREV stack. Well, if the value was, if the value was, say, under 559 million, well, all of those preference shareholders, and remember the board, the board, , the people on those board are actually from all those preference shareholders, right?
If it's under 559 million, they get all of the upside. That 40 percent goes all to them. If it's more Then, uh, five and 59, they have to share it with the common shareholders, right? They, the employees, the founders, people in the building, people who've worked there for 10 years, sitting in the building, they would have to share it with them.
And so how would you, how would you find out? Well, there's lots of ways you could do it. You could, you could go to a banker. You could, you could, or what you should do is you should say, look, this board is conflicted on this question. We're going to recuse anybody who's conflicted. And then we're going to have a board vote on, you know, on this process, we're going to do a shareholder vote because wait a second, we're all conflicted.
We can't, we can't like negotiate with ourselves. That's clear conflict of interest. And. One of the really important things in corporate governance in the UK, in the U S really anywhere in the world is the board members represent the interests of the shareholders. They can't be in there sort of lining their pockets.
Like that's just a very principle of English law that they are there representing the interests of shareholders. So what did the board do? Well, but the board did was they decided that the value of that 40 percent was exactly 559 million suspicious, suspicious, right? Where did that number come from? A little bit, a little, a little suspicious.
And that's essentially it, that's the very simple version. So what did that mean? It meant that founders and employees, employees literally in the building at that point, We're got an email or I got a letter saying the value of your equity, the value of your contribution as company, all the blood, sweat, and tears you've put in over the last 10 years is zero.
Now, two years later, that's that 40%, which they said was worth 559 million. , they sold to Flutter for 4. 2 billion. So our suit is very simple, which is this was never 559 million. You did not represent the interests of the shareholders. What you did is you represented your own interests and you'd looted the company.
You stole company assets to pay yourself. And, and they did, they made, these investors made. Billions of dollars at the expense of employees like their secretaries who would have made a couple of thousand dollars that was stolen from them. Like you can't really put it like a clear terms and that and that's essentially what they did.
Niko: I mean, this is one heck of a story and I really appreciate you coming here and telling you, I've been reading about it in the news and have been following this, but hearing it firsthand is special. So thank you for, for sharing that now, where are we at now? It's, it's, it's been, it's been in the courts for quite a while now.
It's been wending its way through where, where, where do we currently stand?
Nigel: Yeah. So to start at 2020, uh, I filed a case, so we previously filed a case in the U S in Scotland where the company was incorporated and said before the case, before the deal even closed and said, look, and the case was basically stopped.
This is, this is distinctly like, you know, you're breaking. Your fiduciary duties here, this is fraud. Like, like we need to stop. They went ahead with it. So we refiled the case in Scottish, in New York Court in 2020. The defendants, which is the private equity firm's, principally KKR in Shamrock filed, a motion to dismiss claiming that under Scottish law they did not owe a fiduciary duty to.
So, so that case actually, , went and for the judge, the judge found in the favor of the plaintiffs us. , Oh, I'm sorry. The plaintiffs in this case are not only the co-founders of the company, but over a hundred former employees. So this is not just a case of, you know, Nigel or Nigel and his buddies felt bad.
This is everybody in the company knew. The deal, the day the deal was done, that something really wrong had happened. And so that's why, you know, this is who we represent. The case then went, they then appealed that decision because the, the trial court found in favor of the plaintiffs. They appealed it and remarkably, it got reversed.
We then took it to the New York Court of Appeals. It's kind of the Supreme Court for the state of New York, which is the highest court, and the New York Court reinstated in our favor and basically said, under Scottish law directors owe a fiduciary duty to shareholders. You can't sort of get out of it by saying, we can do whatever we like.
We didn't know a fiduciary duty, and that's where we're at at the moment. And we have several more years ahead of us to actually get to court, get it heard.
Niko: Several more years. Oh, there's, there's your justice system at work, huh? Yes. It's, it's not the fastest system. No, no, no, it's not okay. Now let's say we get a few years now into the future.
If the court hears the case is it going to be a judge that decides it's a, it's a panel, a jury, it's a jury, it's a jury trial. Okay. Jury trial. Okay. And so what could the outcome be at the end of the trial? I mean, who sets the value at that point? Is, is there a formula for calculating like, okay, it clearly wasn't 5 59 million, but is it 1.2 billion? Is it like somewhere in between? Is it 1. 5 billion? Like Kings was raising at.
Nigel: I find that interesting when you ask questions that of lawyers, you kind of have to say, I'm banning you from saying it depends. There is no simple answers. Like I, I think one of my experiences with the legal system is.
I always sort of thought of the legal system as a very clear set of rules that we all sort of operated in. And what I just, and, and, and the legal process was sort of like, you know, navigating it within those roles. I sort of, I've revised that opinion now that it's, that these things are not clear and there isn't just sort of a set.
Formula or a set process, you know things it depends is really the and so and and so i've stopped asking that question because my lawyers have sort of said well, it depends and uh, they are sort of like look And it also, we're not really focused on that right now. We're focused on getting to court.
We're focused on collecting all of the evidence. And, you know, once we collect all of the evidence, once we have all the, do all the depositions, and once we get it to court, then that's the point at which, you know, a lot of those things are going to be asked.
Niko: Well, along the way, the, the lawyers always win though.
Win or lose the lawyers always win. So, doing depositions is not cheap. Are you funding this lawsuit or where's the money coming from? From to pay all the lawyers. Cause again, this has to be a very expensive lawsuit.
Nigel: Yeah. We, we, we have the means to get us all the way through it. So like we're, yeah, we're, we're, we're on track.
Niko: You're on track. All right. Well, I wish you the best of luck. I mean, whenever there's large sums of money involved, you know, unscrupulous players are going to try and break the rules or bend the rules. And it sounds like, yeah, I wouldn't.
Nigel: Yeah, I wouldn't. The only thing is I wouldn't say that. I think what happened to us is, is actually incredibly rare. And I've had founders who have come to me and I've had friends who've had very bad experiences with investors. This one was highly exceptional because normally whenever it's like, normally when you run into situations, it's like when the company has failed, right? Like the company raised a lot of money.
And didn't work out. And so like the founder feels screwed because there was still a chance, but the investor didn't want to, you know, and there is kind of a bad outcome for everyone. It is so rare. And to the extent that I have rare, I don't think I've ever found on the example where you have a company that has a phenomenal success story and the investors used a mechanism to defraud the, you know, the, the founders and employees, like that is just.
So incredibly rare. And also this isn't a story about investors. Like this isn't a story about, so some people have tried to say, this is why you don't raise venture capital. That's not the story at all, because this is not typical. This is a bike, a certain group of individuals. You know, behaved way beyond the norms of business and ethics.
You know, I, I never want entrepreneurs to sort of take a read from this and say, well, this is why I shouldn't read VC. Like that is not, you know, definitely not the lesson.
Niko: Yeah, no, I, and I, I would actually, I would echo that. Obviously I've not dealt with numbers this large myself, but I've raised from many investors over many companies.
And, uh, what I can say is that almost to a person, they have been ethical, good human beings who have abided by the rules and who are mostly, mostly aligned with the founders and the employees. If founders and employees do well, investors do well. If they don't, they don't. Investors don't do well either.
I mean, let's, it's usually very binary. So to your point, it's kind of, it's kind of a weird situation to put it mildly.
Nigel: It's very exceptional. Which obviously, and you know, for me, like a huge driver for me is that, when people came and worked for us at FanDuel, A big thing was that we, they put their trust in me to say, Hey, look, big part of your salary is going to be equity.
And what I felt was whatever this happened was less about me, but more about them, which is they were cheated. They were defrauded. I couldn't stop it at the time. And that was enormously frustrating. And so whenever we put together the case, a lot of lawyers were like, look, let's not bother all of them.
They don't, you know, they're, they're not that big shareholders and I'm like, no, I want everybody, everybody who worked for me to have the chance to join this. And almost everybody that I spoke to, like some of them were still employees at FanDuel. So they weren't, didn't feel great about. Suing their current employer, but nearly everybody I spoke to who was in a position to do it joined because they all knew that they all knew immediately and they felt a similar level of grievance that I felt and wanted. Don't see it through.
Niko: Yeah, we're going to get to bed hug in a second here, but maybe one or two more questions around this one of the things that, that I'm curious about is you left after 10 years, understand that 10 years is a long time and, and, you know, it's not that uncommon for founders to, to move on, especially once you get to a certain point where it's like, okay, we built the company into X, my skill set lies doing, you know, zero to one, and now somebody else can run this and I'm going to go off and do a different thing.
But I, I'm curious to hear your, why did you move away? Why did you transition away? What did you learn from that? What could you, was there anything you could have done to prevent what happened here? Do you ask yourself that question or is it, is it futile to do so?
Nigel: I'd like, you know, like I have sometimes not a lot, like I think one of the things you have to understand that is we were, you know, at the time sort of 2008 to 2015, we were raising money for a product that I didn't have clear legality. There was, you know, so we didn't raising money was not easy. We didn't have the peck off, like, you know, Sequoia, you know, Clyde or a 16 Z all sending us term sheet and I was picking the best investor. And so, you know, we, we often did, we had one term sheet, right, and so, as you can see, some of the people on our board.
Like it was pretty clear to me by 2017 or certainly when I left, they were not looking out for the interests of shareholders, employees and that's, that creates a pretty, pretty toxic environment. And so I think that was definitely a big factor in it for me which is, like, is this where I wanna spend the next 10 years of my life? So, you know, that's a big factor. Like another thing is, like I left and what I immediately went back into is sort of early stage startups. Yeah, like, that's, that's what I, I love doing. I'm not saying that there's a, a number at which I would be like, okay guys, I'm done, this is no longer interesting to me.
I, you know, we'll, we'll see my bed hug. Like I guess you got to ask me in a few years time, like, is there a point at which I'm like, maybe we could get a CEO in here? Like, I don't, I don't think so. I think this is, there's so much upside, in, in this space that I, like, I don't, I don't make sort of plans like that way out, but I, like, I, what I will say is incredible finding team about how.
Fantastic investors. Like if you told me that I'm going to be here for 10 years, scaling this, I would be like super happy. Teams like the, one of the best teams I've ever worked with. So like, if you're, if you're building cool products with people you love working with, like. You know, there's nothing better.
Niko: Like I was working with the same team for, for the better part of 15 years now across multiple different companies.
And yeah, I mean, as a founder myself, like there's nothing better than working on something you're passionate about that you are hopefully good at, , and then scaling that with a group of people that you can trust and they trust you. So, yeah, I mean, I, I hear you, I hear you, Nigel.
Nigel: Yeah, no, that's like my, one of my co-founders of Bed Hog co-founded FanDuel with me. So we've worked together well. There you go. So we've worked together for 17 years now. 17 years, yep. And like we've got new people who've come in who we've, I've worked with for the last few years. And it's just, I think one of the things you learn, like when you're a first time entrepreneur, I don't think you.
I like, you don't realize the importance of culture enough and you'd make shortcuts because you kind of feel you have to, and God, do they buy this burden? You do. They really, you really pay for it. And it feels like it sometimes feels like. Your company is the accumulation of all the HR mistakes you made, and there's no, and there's no fixing it.
I always, I'm amazed that, you know, people who build like Facebook and stuff like Mark Zuckerberg, like that, they managed to keep it like fresh and exciting and, you know, or like, so I, that's one thing that I'm just very cognizant of. , second time around, which is there's no, you know, there's the, I would say at FanDuel, you know, if we had somebody who was very good at one thing, but was like culturally not great for the company, they would be given, you know, they would give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe repeatedly over multiple years.
And. It's easy. It's like, look, it's, you know, no, it doesn't work here. And it's actually meant that we have, like, I've just, you know, our previous companies. We struggled to find product market fit. Like this was a company, you know, startup, you know, we've really, really struggled, but as a team, there was never like, I don't think it was a crossword set in two years and wasn't meant that we weren't all fighting to make it work, but we all trusted each other.
We were all working super hard. And it was a, you know, as good as experience at a failing startup could be. And so that's like, that's just culture and that's definitely something that I learned.
Niko: Yeah. I mean, I think culture is so critical for first time founders, you know, it's not about growth at all costs.
It's not, it's scaling. Like, I don't believe in those things that will come if you have the right team and the right culture in place and you find the product market fit, you should. One of the things that I like to say to my team is. It's better, it's more important to not hire the wrong person than it is to like miss out on hiring the right person, right?
Nigel: Yeah.
Niko: Yeah, it's a toxic employee or somebody like the brilliant jerk where we heard it, um, they will, they will ruin your culture. Like they may get you short term results, but they will absolutely ruin your culture. And then you pay, you pay for it, you pay for it. Yeah, absolutely. And also the other thing I would just say, like, I think I've learned, I haven't learned it as, as.
Badly, because you have, but you know, your board matters, who's on your board matters. It's so critical. And I know that first time founders are so desperate to, to get that, that, you know, term sheet. They don't actually think about who they're bringing onto the board. They're just doing whatever they need to do.
Nigel: And they think it's going to be fine down the line. It isn't.
Niko: Yeah. You know, you bring on your board and how much control you have over your board is absolutely critical.
Nigel: Yeah. It's actually interesting when people ask me about, you know, what, what matters more terms or valuation. And I'm always like, neither of them, like neither of them.
I said that the only thing that the first thing that matters, actually, I would even say the thing that matters more than the person that's going to join the board is the fund that's going to invest in you because sometimes board members change all the time.
Niko: Yeah. Especially if you have somebody who's not super senior
Nigel: Fund doesn't have a good culture. It's going to be, it, and it can be a death sentence for your company. And I've seen it so many times. And I'm like, you know, If you optimize for like a 20 percent higher valuation and you have the wrong fund behind you It's you're going to regret that for the rest of your life.
Oh, yes, and so that I always sort of like, you know, and fortunately it's certainly at seed stage I would say the vast majority of funds like certainly any ones of any sort of brand name. They're good Like they have the right intention There's like a long list of them when people Ask me for like references about different ones.
I'm like, like, you know, some of these are brilliant and some of these are funds that I love and I really know them really well. I know the partners, but I said like vast majority of them are good and, and, you know, I think they'll be really supportive. You know, it is a real rare, you know, one or two that you're like, yeah, I wouldn't admit I wouldn't raise from that.
Niko: Okay. Well, this has been absolutely amazing. And, and I just really enjoyed listening to you and I know our listeners will as well, this is a really interesting, rare chance to kind of get a first hand, you know, court side seat. , into something that's still ongoing and so many lessons learned here.
There's a lot of lessons here for, for, for especially first time entrepreneurs, but even experienced entrepreneurs and founders about what can go wrong even with the best intentions and even with strong founders and strong team in place. So I thank you for sharing the story and I really appreciate it.
Okay, well, let's shift gears now. BetHog, we spent a lot of time talking about Fanduel. A lot of lessons learned here that you're probably going to do differently at BetHog. So what is BetHog and what are you, what are you working on?
Nigel: Yeah. So BetHog is a, is a new crypto casino, that we launched last month.
A very simple thesis, a little like FanDuel, right? Like we were just like, we were like when, uh, sort of late last year when I was sort of looking at. Online casino. And one of the things that surprised me was, what we've seen over the last five years is the emergence of streaming, social and betting have been something that's been talked about for forever since we've had online betting.
And one of the reasons it's been talked about is offline betting is a very social experience. Like, and I always sort of joke that like. No one goes to Vegas on their own, right? Like it's, I remember they do, but it's, it's not how most people do it, right?
Niko: I used to have to do that. I work in a social casino space. And so I had a, there was one year where I went to Vegas 12 times, always by myself. And Vegas is the loneliest place on the planet to be by yourself because it makes no, unless you're a degenerate gambler, it makes no sense to be there by yourself.
Nigel: Terrible. I've flown in there and gone to bed at nine 30. I'm just like, exactly. With a book.
Niko: There's literally nothing to do other than socialize and you don't have anybody there to socialize with. Anyway. Yeah, yeah. Don't get me started.
Nigel: So it's, it's a, it is a social experience. Like, you know, go to the race course in the uk I always joke, it's the only place in Britain you're allowed to talk to strangers.
Like it's, 'cause it's a fun experience, people are, you know, out having a good time and they, and they, they talk to strangers. Um, but online. It's totally solo, right? Like if you're on a, like, I always joke with the, the, the betting apps, the sports betting apps are like inspired by banking apps.
I just want to get in, get my transaction and get out and casino. It's totally solo. It's just you in front of the screen and you're playing. And one of the things I thought was really interesting over the last five years was streaming just to become a huge phenomena for, well, originally for video gaming, but now for real money gambling, and it's just, it's What I thought was interesting was that the games themselves hadn't default.
So, you would be playing it and you would be streaming with your fans and they could maybe chat to you, but they couldn't participate in the game. They could just watch. And so we basically said, well, isn't it weird? The, this whole social thing has been built around this, but the games haven't changed.
We're like, why don't we build the games with the streamer in mind? Like, why don't we build games with the streamers? Like, Oh, that'd be cool if I could do this. And so one of the, and one of the first titles we have is a great example of that. It's a title called hogger hogger. Like the name suggests, like Frogger, but as a pig, and the, the, the challenge of the game is to get the pig across the road and somewhere randomly, the pig will get squashed.
You have to decide to exit before the pig gets squashed. It's a game format. It's a crash game format. That's actually not that uncommon in, in crypto casinos. But the, the twist we brought into it was. We let the streamer share their game with their fans and then they can jump in behind. So they're betting on the same game.
So basically the streamer is now in charge of a whole, whole ship of, you know, a whole group of people. Their money's riding with the streamer. And so, and one other thing is that the, the, the group that are betting on it, they can also decide to exit early. So if they get a little bit like, I don't know, I think you're going a little far.
I'm getting out. And what, what will happen the way we do it is every. Person who bets on the streamer is represented by a little piglet and say what you see is the hog And then all these little piglets come and patter in behind the hog and and it's it's hilarious and it's really fun and you're like when you start playing it you're like All games like this, this is so much fun.
And then you have the streamer, like starting to like get worried that he's got carried all this responsibility or you get, or you'll get the, oh, the, the fans actually all bailing on the streamer, and so it creates so much sort of rich entertainment. And we have other titles like that where basically, you know, in real time, the streamer and the audience are playing together and that's kind of, we're trying to recreate the online social experience online.
And so that's what we're trying to do. So that was our, that's one of our big thesis.
Niko: It sounds like a lot of fun. So how does the betting aspect of it work then? So you've got, , the streamer, you've got the fans and then you've got some fans or participants. So there's three buckets of, of, yeah. So the
Nigel: streamer can put, you know, what, put down a bet, 5, 10, a hundred dollars on, on, on their hog, the fans then come in behind and then they put down a bet as well as the hog goes across.
So maybe the first lane will pay. 1. 05. So times, so like if you put down 10, you would get 50 cents. They could, they go forward one step. Generally they'll get it and then they can exit and they can say, yeah, I won. I want money. Good. Let's go home, but generally they'll go, no, let's keep going. And then at some point they start to go, Oh, I don't know.
It's starting to get kind of risky. And that's the point at which they cash out. If they go too far, everybody loses their money. So that's the challenge that everybody's playing. It's like, what is the point at which I jump? And what's the point at which I, I stay.
Niko: So how do you, uh, balance a game like this? I mean, you're going to have to pay out, I presume.
Nigel: So, yeah, so we, we, there's a built in margin into the game. So I think for that game is 3%, so the odds that we offer build in and the probability that they, that, that happens just builds in the margin.
Niko: Got it. Okay. So it's basically like, if you were to use a slot machine analogy, it's a seven rtp return to player.
Nigel: That's correct. So it, and that's a game of pure chance. We do have another title, which is called huddle tournament. Again, it's a fun game. That's very social. We, there was actually, we run a game every day at 12 noon Eastern. The way it works is a user turns up, they buy it. And the one at 12 noon is free.
So you don't even have to buy in, but basically you get a hundred dollars in play money and what you have to do is we will launch 10 meme coins, and these meme coins, this is a really fun game, but the tech, the main coins will randomly go between one and a thousand X. And as it goes up, you have to decide it's not like hunger.
You have to decide when to take your, when, how much to bet on each one. And when to take your winnings, but the twist on this one is it's PVP. You're competing to have the most money at the end of 10 rounds. And so in that game, there, you're actually competing with everybody else in it. And it gets really interesting because.
If you start to get ahead, you start playing more conservatively. Cause you're like, well, I'm, I'm in the lead. I don't need to risk anything. Whereas if you're behind, then you start going all in. I'm all in on the next coin and it creates this sort of incredible dynamics where, you know, some people like you, like you see a lot of people chatting beforehand, like what's your strategy.
And everyone's like, I'm going big, early, big, early as definitely strategy, somebody like a big, big game. Big late game is bad because. Unless everybody's blown up, then everyone's going big late game. And so you're like, so you kind of have to like pick your strategy, so it's kind of, it's been a very, very funny game to watch and like, it runs every day.
Niko: And what are the, so you said that one is play money.
Nigel: So that one's not that one's play money to know. So you buy in, it's more like a poker tournament, you know, you buy in a poker tournament, you're like, here's my a hundred dollars, give me my chips. And then I'll win the prize money at the end. So that's play a huddle tournament works like that.
Niko: Got it. Okay. And what are the relevant legislations that cover this category?
Nigel: So, we're licensed internationally. , but we, we don't operate and we geoblock U. S., U. K., most of Western Europe. And so we're operating in Latin America, Far East, Canada, outside Ontario. So a bunch of places. And that's where we operate today.
Certainly our aspiration is laterally to come on shore to like have a product in the uk To come into certain states in the us To launch in ontario. That's what we want to do But you know at this early stage We want to just the speed at which being able we can launch new games test them see if they work you can't do that in a regulated market because every new game takes like six months of Testing and review etc.
And so we want that speed of proving these games and then at a certain point we're like, right, okay, now we're ready. We can start to come on shore.
Niko: Yeah. Yeah. So essentially finding product market fit as right. Almost like being in soft launch. If you were to use a correct kind of a gaming analogy, like soft launch in New Zealand and Australia, and then finally you'd eventually, you know, fix all the bugs and tweak the game and then boom, you're ready to go big.
Okay. That makes, that makes a lot of sense. Now, you mentioned poly market, obviously poly market was heavily in the news for this election. and sounds like their interest has waned off a little bit. Not surprising, but of course, PolyMarket is being looked at just like with a lot of things in crypto and betting and what have you, regular markets for the relative ease with which you can kind of get around geoblocking, just you simply use VPN.
Is that something that's on your mind? What do you, what are your thoughts on that, both for yourself, but also in as it relates to PolyMarket?
Nigel: Yeah, so like, I don't know the details of like PolyMarket. Like they geo blocked the U. S. I'm sure in the terms that you said you weren't in the U. S. , But he didn't really do anything else.
Like, I don't even think he didn't ask for an address, or do any KYC. I don't know whether they knew they had users in the US. I like, I just don't know. I don't like, I know the company. , and I don't know what they're in effect being charged with. , you know, it's very clear. That, you know, they shouldn't have users from the U.
S. and that's very the same for us and we try to do everything we can to ensure that we don't, so we, we, we have VPN protection, it's in our terms, we do different tiers of KYC and so, it is important, like the US, like every country has laws and you want to be compliant with it, and so, yeah, like it's sort of, you know, like I can't really state about what they did, but I, you know, just given the level of interest that they generated in the US, I think there may be questions about like, where are they actively marketing to the U S that they have knowledge of people in the U S are coming in and using it.
So I suspect that's, what's being looked at. And certainly for bed hogs perspective, we do spend a lot of time trying to make sure, okay, we're, we're geo blocking the U S we're not, we don't want to be signing influencers are in the U S we don't, you know, we want to do all these things to try and ensure that we don't aren't getting users from the U S.
And so try to do everything we can there.
Niko: Got it. Okay. At what point are you then thinking, and maybe you can't predict the future, but at what point are you thinking, okay, we've got PMF in these markets here, we're ready to test it out with a more regulated environment, we're ready to spend the time, the money, the, you know, influence campaigns, et cetera, to try and become legal.
What is your first market? What are you looking at as a kind of the easiest air quotes, easiest, uh, low hanging fruit?
Nigel: Yeah. Well, so one of the big challenges is. There isn't a single regulated in the world market in the world that I know of that allows you to take crypto Yeah, which is kind of crazy, right?
Like, you know, and then people and it's amazing when you talk to people who say well, yes, because it's associated criminality and money laundering and i'm like Yeah, cash is kind of the best thing for money laundering. Like crypto is terrible. Like, you know, the fact that so many people are caught.
Niko: For it's on the ledger. Like that's the whole point of it. So
Nigel: Like I will speak to like, you know, regulators and, and, you will hear that repeatedly being said. And so you definitely feel that we have a longer journey to educate them and say, look, this is terrible, terrible technology for money laundering. People have, like what coming to close to 4 trillion in assets. And you're saying that they can't do use it, do something that they should be able to want to do also crypto doesn't just cause it's crypto. It doesn't mean you can't have KYC or you can't have any money laundering. Like you can have all of those things.
And so, yeah, it is certainly a bit a little frustrating today that none of the, none of the regulated entities, because we really want, you know, would we launch in a jurisdiction where we have the product, but no crypto, maybe, but I just wouldn't be as excited about that. Like, I do think the crypto is very deep in our ethos that, that we would want people to be able to play with crypto.
Like one of the big things is like when people deposit with us, say they deposit in Solana. We keep it in Solana. So if Solana doubles tomorrow, your account balance is doubled. Most people in crypto do not want to hold us dollar. Like that's the whole point. And so, I think, I think we would love to see that the regulators start to embrace crypto and realize like, it's just money.
People should be allowed to deposit with it. Like I'd say, if in three years time that hadn't happened, I certainly would be very disappointed, but yeah. You know, maybe we would have to start to say, well, maybe, maybe the crypto isn't as important as the games we're building that are so unique and fun that we absolutely should bring them into regulated markets and, you know, have to accept that regulators are just not going to embrace crypto.
Niko: Yeah. Is just to clarify, is crypto the only way you can right now? Yes, today it is. It is. Okay.
Nigel: Okay. But we do, we take stable coins like USDC. Yeah, sure. But I mean, you still have to, you know, you have to figure out crypto. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Niko: You gotta figure out crypto and Yeah. Which is, stable coin is not very exciting if you're in crypto.
Nigel: Like stable coins are kind of like, what's the, what's the point?
Niko: It’s like, not alcoholic beer. Like wait a minute. We want that. Yes, exactly okay. So that's interesting, do you have any plans to, to add cash?
Nigel: We will do in time. Yeah, we will. You'll in time, we will do, like right now, I'd say our user base are all heavily into crypto and so makes It's not been, no one's asked for it. No one's asked for it.
Niko: Yeah. They're not like, Hey, I wanna spend Nigeria, I wanna spend dollars. I don't know what they used for Nigeria.
Nigel: But I want buy. Yeah. Like, no, we've got, not at anybody ask, but like, in time, I, I can see it. I can see it happening. Yeah.
Niko: Interesting.
Nigel: Okay. And how, and one of, one of the interesting things on that is.
Why cryptocasinos? One of the reasons cryptocasinos make so much sense is when you're an operator, one of your biggest issues, payments, like just actually like, even within the U S like you look at FanDuel, obviously regulated operator, , has checked every box in Q1 of this year. They reported the 12 and a half percent of their revenues went to payments, which is insane, like the fact that Visa and MasterCard get to take 3 percent of every transaction in the world, right?
Like, and it doesn't like, you're like, well, why is it a 10, 000 transaction? Why is it cost 300? It's the same to them that a 10 transaction is, but it's because it's a duopoly, like they, they, they charge the same amount. And so one of the, I think amazing things of a crypto is like we get away from that.
Legacy payment rails, and we get to payment rails where we actually have a direct relationship for a customer. We give them a wallet address, they send the money to us, we don't have to interact with any third party who charges an exorbitant amount of money. And so that to me is one of the incredibly exciting parts.
Niko: It is, although I would just say that having just, sold a little bit of Bitcoin , and converted to fiat on Coinbase, they also take, oh, they do fairly hefty, fairly. Oh, yes. So, you know, for yes. While the actual transactions themselves, as long as they're on pain is totally.
Nigel: As long as, you know, and that's the problem is if you If you're, if you stay on chain, your grip, it's when you start to touch the traditional payment rails, then you get absolutely hammered.
Niko: Yeah, exactly. And for better or worse, I mean, that's the system we have today. You can't, you cannot live your life. Yeah. On crypto alone. You cannot go and buy milk at the grocery store with crypto. So, at some point you have to convert to fiat. And at that point, that's where everything gets expensive and slow and painful and what have you.
Nigel: So, I said, there's a very funny, I remember a very, funny quote years ago and said, if the finance sector's job was to service industry and consumers, therefore, surely as they get more efficient, it should get smaller. And what we realize is it's, it's not the job they're there. What they view their job is to you know, extract rent from everyone.
Like my bank use it as how do we extract more rent for me? For holding my money, which is insane, right? Like, and that, and that's, and that's, I think crypto, what it's opportunity is to actually totally undercut an industry that hasn't been acting in the interest of consumers or business. They've absolutely been acting like with in their own interests and their success as I success in the finance sector underlines that their success extracting rent.
Niko: Yeah, and I mean, if we want to go right back to the very beginning of our conversation, the reason that crypto has been under scrutiny by the regulators because they're in the pockets of the bankers of, you know, legacy players who've been around for as long as the financial system has been around the way we know it.
They're the ones who still continue to extract rent and just grow bigger and bigger. So, so yeah, it's full circle. So let's, let's see what happens with this next administration and let's see how, how things unfold. Okay, well we're coming up to time here, but I didn't want to have one more question on bed hug, and then I had just like a final fun question, which I'll ask all of our guests, given the gaming podcast.
How are you, like, how are you planning on growing, right? Like distribution is, is always hard for any game, you know, you're operating in jurisdictions and countries that you presumably don't have a huge amount of experience and right? Where does the growth come from? Crypto is notoriously fragmented. It's all over the place. It's very hard to target mass consumer adoption. So what are you guys thinking about that?
Nigel: It's actually very straightforward and it goes back to our product, which is our product started with marketing in mind. Like we started with the channel, which is streaming and we started with, we want to build products for these guys, streamers, and in a lot of ways, I actually said, our team has said, don't think of the end users as a customer.
Think of the streamer as a customer. We're building great products for them. We're going to get end users. That's fine, but let's build amazing products for them. No one else is doing that. No one else is thinking about them. They're just giving them the same slot games that everyone else gets. We're like, why don't we build the products for them and talk to them and have a really good relationship there.
So that, and that, if we, if we do a great job there, marketing solves itself because they have an audience. They, they marketed them.
Niko: I like that. I like that approach. And it's actually really interesting because of streamers, crypto betting. They kind of go hand in hand. I mean, that's your, that's your male, younger male core demographic.
Exactly. It seems like it's a match made in heaven. So I'm very smart. Um, I love the concept. I'm somewhat surprised that nobody hasn't, it's one of those things where it's like, huh? Like, why hasn't somebody thought of that? So, yeah.
Nigel: And which is two, which means two things can happen. That we're geniuses and everybody in retrospect will be like, wow, like they're genius.
Oh, I see three things there. They can say they're genius. Second one. They'll say it was obvious, right? Whenever everybody's doing this, like it was obvious. And the third possibility is it totally fails. It's like, we were like, oh, there wasn't something there. Okay. Of course. I mean, we're, we're hoping it's A or B.
Niko: Yeah. Well, as with anything new, it's, you know, you just, you just never know. And so sometimes it might just take time. I mean, Bitcoin was launched. What? Oh, nine, Oh, eight, Oh, nine. Only now are we kind of talking about it kind of in the mainstream sense and it's obviously had its ups and downs along the way.
Okay. Well, with that, we're, we're coming to time. So my final question to you, which I ask all of our guests, given that we podcast is what three games are you playing right now? It can't be your own, or are you very excited by what's coming?
Nigel: Okay. So number one, we mentioned it where we're chatting before polytopia.
So I'm not playing it right now cause I've had to delete it. And that's a sign of a, of a really good game. It's, I just think it's got a very great balance of, of strategy the games aren't too long. It actually plays very well on the mobile platform. And so I definitely would have polytopia. This is like my desert Island games.
The game that I am playing last night, I actually just started playing it last night is Marvel's rivals, which is, it's, it's kind of like a re skinned overwatch I used to play a lot of overwatch back particularly during COVID, and so I played Marvel rivals last night with my son and, and it's, it's a lot of fun.
It's, it's a, it's a, and if you play overwatch, you immediately get, you're like, okay, it's got payload. It's got six V six. We've got healers, we've got tanks so it's, it's quite a fun title. And my third one, Ooh, that I actually play today the biggest one is probably chess, uh, which I play on chess.com. I like it's met a game. Like it's got a daily puzzle. It's got like an instant PVP. Um, that's a, that's a, that's a pretty big, but I like the. I love this snack element that I can instantly get in. It actually, for me, is it's got a very similar game dynamic to clash royale and to me, clash royale was a game that as soon as you finished, you're like, I want to play again.
You're like, Oh, I lost Adam. I should have won. I got to play again. And I fight the chess. I play blitz chess. I'm like, you know, three minute games, boom. And if I lose, I'm like straight back in it again. So those would be my three.
Niko: Nice. A very eclectic mix. I appreciate that. And eclectic mix usually means good generalist.
So, business. So let's, let's see. So I wish you all the best with, with that hog is a really interesting concept and a really fascinating one, and kind of operating at the, at the forefront of lots of different things. You know, it's not the streaming is super new, but like, you know, it's still not mainstream.
It's still not like, boomers like me certainly aren't really that into streaming. So, okay. Well, Nigel, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I really appreciate you being so forthcoming and open about, you know, what's going on. The FanDuel story is just a fascinating one.
And I know our listeners will, will absolutely love it as well. So thank you. And I wish you all the best. And I want to have you back to talk when there's more developments either on BetHog or with FanDuel.
Nigel: Okay, great. Thank you.
Niko: All right. And then of course, as always, a big thank you to all of our listeners.
We'll be back next week with more conversations, insights, and stories from the weird and wonderful world of gaming. So, feel free to send questions, guest recommendations, and comments to me at [email protected]. Until next time, friends, take care. Keep playing.
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