Retail trading meets fantasy sports with Predictionstrike

Predictionstrike Co-Founder and CEO Deven Hurt explains how his new venture combines the stock market and fantasy sports.

Video transcript

Let's talk about betting on athletes as if they were stocks. That's a vision of Predictionstrike. It's one of the startups that we are spotlighting today. Now, this is a platform that lets fans buy and sell shares of an athlete as if they were playing the market. So here to talk a little bit more about that, we have Deven Hurt. He's the co-founder and CEO of Predictionstrike.

Deven, it's good to see you. It's an exciting opportunity for sports fans. It's almost like a dream come true. They're trading and selling shares of athletes as if they were stocks. I guess explain to us just exactly how this works and also I'm just curious how you determine the price of one of these shares for the athlete.

DEVEN HURT: Definitely. First of all, thank you for having me. To answer your first question, how it works. Well, fans can use real money to buy and sell shares of pro athletes. They will deposit money into an account and then from that account they can use that to purchase those shares. Each athlete has a different share value. And the share bell is going to change based on how athletes perform in games, as well as whether other users are buying and selling shares of those athletes.

- So part of this is like a fantasy league kind of experience. But if I'm buying shares traditionally in a company, let's say Verizon, I expect the capital to be reinvested in Verizon, although those shares, by the way year to date are down almost 11%. Someone should talk to Hans Vestberg about that.

Back to your situation. The athlete has a certain lifespan. So how do I as the investor, how do they take the capital? What's going on here? Is this just really a derivatives betting fun game thing to do?

DEVEN HURT: So in many ways, it is an expansion evolution of fantasy, kind of as you alluded. However, the next evolution is actually to bring the athletes on board. And that is something we're launching and piloting with UFC starting with the November 6 card. We want athletes to actually have a percentage of their market cap so you as the fan, you're really investing in that athlete and investing in their future success.

- Deven, how are you going to attract those athletes? I guess, what's in it for them?

DEVEN HURT: For them, I mean, to begin, they get of their market cap. So for the athletes, as their stock price grows, then so does their own value. And then also, it's a great tool for fan engagement. Now for the first time, athletes can see exactly who is literally invested in them and then use that to connect with those fans, form deeper relationships with the fans and then hopefully grow their own brands.

- Now you're doing this with-- correct on the pronunciation-- with VaynerSports and the first players are going to be whom? But then you're going to expand to other leagues right?

DEVEN HURT: Yes. What we were piloting with VaynerSports is the actual future where we will give pro athletes a percent of their market cap. And then yes, we're going to expand that to other leagues. We have already launched for NFL football and NBA basketball, but the athlete engagement piece, we're going to bring that to other leagues soon.

- So Deven, what's that going to look like? Because I know you have 6,000 users now. You're doing the MBA, you're doing the MLB soccer early next year. What do you see that user base growing to over the next year?

DEVEN HURT: Over the next year, we'd like to get that into hopefully to 100,000 or even a million users, right? It's a start up. Things can grow quite quickly. But at least by the end of the year, we'd like to get to 25,000 users.

- How much could an athlete make and would there be any perhaps, expansion for TV streaming personalities? Kidding on that.

DEVEN HURT: Definitely. I mean, there's no real limit to what an athlete can make. As you can imagine, it depends on how good the athlete is and what the demand for those shares reflects. Think about how much money someone like LeBron James has brought to the teams he's played for in terms of ticket sales, jersey sales, things like that. The amount that fans are willing to spend to get closer to their favorite athletes, it's hard to quantify. So we don't quite know.

But yes, to your point about TV personalities, that's something that's come up. So if you'd like us to IPO you, please let us know.

- Another potential source of revenue for Adam. All right, Deven Hurt. Great to speak with you. Co-founder and CEO of Predictionstrike. Thanks so much for sharing your idea and we wish you all best.