A startup sports book based in Vancouver has announced a plan to lower its operator margins on bets through the issuing of its own cryptocurrency.
Highlighted in Forbes magazine, the company FansUnite says it wants to offer a more equitable and fair pricing model for bettors—while still making a profit—by reducing operator margins from as high as 5 percent to a flat 1 percent margin on all bets.
The company says it can decrease its margins through the digital currency and also through building its own risk management platform around machine learning calculations currently only utilized by the most advanced betting syndicates, the report said.
FansUnite is currently a social sports betting network where members are able to track their results and follow other bettors to exchange strategies. The site offers a free virtual currency for use in fantasy wagers with no real money at risk.
The company now wants to use Ethereum blockchain technology to allow its users to place real bets through its virtual currency. The use of blockchain technology would also increase transparency and security for FansUnite bettors by storing all betting information on the blockchain.
The result should be a faster process for depositing and withdrawing funds and a reduction of the risk of bets being reneged or canceled post-match due to the betting record, the company says.
FansUnite also says that while it will compliance with gambling regulatory bodies, it also wants to increase anonymity relative to traditional sportsbooks by only identifying users by their unique blockchain address. It claims to be the first token-based operator to have built a relationship with regulatory bodies and licensing authorities, which serves to stabilize its token better than any competitors in the space, Forbes reported.
“Our years of experience operating our free-to-play virtual sportsbook and listening to our members have provided us with a clear picture of issues with the existing sports betting landscape,” said FansUnite CEO Darius Eghdami. “With blockchain we simply saw an opportunity to address these issues and potentially help improve conditions for sports bettors globally by providing a cheaper, more transparent and secure system for bettors.”
