Betable today launched its real-money gaming platform in private developer beta. In addition, it announced a seed round from investors including Greylock Discovery Fund, Founders Fund’s FF Angel, True Ventures, CrunchFund and Yuri Milner.
The company declined to give further specifics about the investment except to say it was one of “2012’s largest seed rounds of funding.”
Angels like these investing in Betable, which already is a licensed gambling operator in the U.K., gives some credence to a growing belief that the U.S. is warming to the idea of legalizing some form of online gambling.
Christopher Griffin, founder and CEO of Betable, said providing a platform that enables developers to legally offer real-money gaming solves the problem of how to monetize social games in a way that significantly boosts the current extremely low level of per-player revenue. “By partnering with Betable to enable real-money gaming, developers will see huge increases in their average revenue per user and average customer lifetime value,” he said.
Betable provides the license, support and infrastructure that allow developers to legally integrate real-money gaming into new or existing games and applications, as it provides players with things like security and identity verification.
“We believe real-money gaming will make the social games industry more successful and has the potential to catapult games that offer it to the top of every app store on the planet,” said Tony Conrad, partner at True Ventures. “While awaiting the U.S.’ legalization of online gambling which could take years, the overseas markets represent billions of dollars in opportunity for developers located anywhere in the world. Betable is in a great spot to help those developers participate in this emerging market.”
Betable is headquartered in London with an office in San Francisco.
Related links:
Betable – press release
Betable – https://betable.com
True Ventures – http://www.trueventures.com
Venture Beat – Betable’s potential jackpot: Bringing real gambling to social casino games
Forbes – Betting On Betting: Gaming Play Betable Raises Big Seed Round
