Brandon Asherian and Matthew Khorsandi, two 2015 USC graduates in business administration, have created a fantasy sports app called Starting Five which is aimed at players frustrated with current fantasy sports contests.
“For most people, daily fantasy contests feel like rigged lotteries,” Asherian told USC’s student newspaper. “You enter a prize pool versus 10,000 random individuals, most of whom are daily fantasy sports professionals who make a living entering these contests.”
Starting Five users play one-on-one, either with friends or against a random opponent. He said that the app makes it easier for people of different skill levels to play by utilizing pre-set lineups.
“We do part of the heavy lifting by hand-selecting four unique fantasy teams per night,” Asherian wrote. “Players then select the team they feel has the greatest likelihood of success. Think of it as Tinder meets daily fantasy sports in the sense that we have pre-set lineups that players can select by swiping left and right.”
Starting Five focuses on bridging the gap between season-long fantasy sports and daily fantasy sports by bringing the social elements of season-long fantasy into a simplified daily model, he said.
“I started asking many of my friends why they don’t play daily fantasy sports, and the most common answers were ‘It’s impossible to win,’ ‘I don’t have the time’ or ‘I’d rather play with my friends,’” Asherian wrote. “We cater to casual fantasy players that are tired of being taken advantage of by random professional players on FanDuel and DraftKings.”
The beta version of Starting Five was launched in January, and the official app is now available for this NBA season.
