A San Francisco start-up company has introduced an app that allows users to hold free-to-play social competitions based on simultaneous live sporting events.
WinView reported last week that it had raised $3.4 million to bring its total fund-raising to $6.5 million. The company named Tom Rogers and Hank Ratner, the investors who founded the venture, as its co-chairmen. Rogers is chairman of TiVo and former head of the NBC cable division; Ratner is vice chairman of Cablevision and former chief of the Madison Square Garden Company.
WinView draws its income from advertising, its free app enabling users to challenge each other in various aspects of a live game. Such synchronized competitions, among individuals and organized pools, are already more popular in Europe than daily fantasy sports.
Rogers and Ratner hold 26 patents covering running an online competition at the same time as a live game.
“This is free to play,” Ratner told the Boston Globe. “This is a far broader audience than a fantasy sports audience. This is for anyone who wants to play.”
WinView announced that it will officially open for business in the United States this fall, to coincide with the start of the NFL season.
