PredictionStrike Raises $1.7 Million In Capital And Launches New Mobile App
PredictionStrike, the only performance-based sports platform where fans can buy and sell virtual shares of professional athletes as if they were stocks, today announces its partnership with MaC Venture Capital and New Age Capital, as well as the launch of the company’s new mobile app.
The partnership brings together an impressive group of like-minded organizations. The PredictionStrike team is excited to bring MaC’s exceptional industry/operator experience and deep relations within the sports and entertainment sector, and New Age’s unparalleled combination of cultural awareness and brand building to the table as they work to scale the company and its user base.
“Over the next 12 months, we’re hyper-focused on using this investment to lay the foundation for PredictionStrike to become the premier platform to connect athletes and fans,” said Deven Hurt, PredictionStrike CEO. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with MaC Venture Capital and New Age Capital to make this dream a reality.”
Since the return of sports after the 2020 COVID-19 hiatus, PredictionStrike has completed over $3M in transactions. After closing a $1.7M funding round with investors MaC Venture Capital and New Age Capital, PredictionStrike is using the influx of cash to expand their team, further build out their technology, and increase their marketing efforts to bring in new users.
“We’re proud to support PredictionStrike through this exciting next chapter as it expands its technological offerings to trade virtual shares of athletes,” said Marlon Nichols, Co-Founder and Managing General Partner of MaC Venture Capital. “We are looking forward to seeing PredictionStrike drive culture forward by bringing sports lovers together while providing opportunities for athletes to further benefit off the field for the performance and brand that they build on the field.”
“The PredictionStrike team is incredibly intelligent and hardworking with a crystal-clear vision of the future of sports fan engagement,” said Ivan Alo and LaDante McMillon, Co-Founders of New Age Capital. “We’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Deven and Brad for over a year before we made our investment. Their ability to organically build a large community of users and execute at the highest level gave us the confidence to be a part of their journey.”
The PredictionStrike app, available for iOS in the Apple App Store, is launching in tandem with this year’s highly anticipated NFL season and will allow users to invest in their favorite athletes from the convenience of their mobile devices. Share prices are determined by a player’s real-world performance as well as the fans’ demand for those shares. PredictionStrike’s share prices provide sports fans, decision-makers, and media with a new way to measure a player’s impact on the game, while also giving shareholders a direct emotional and financial connection to their favorite athletes.
“Our mission is twofold,” said Brad Chabra, PredictionStrike COO. “First, we want to empower fans to turn their favorite athletes into investments. Second, we want to empower athletes to directly connect with their fans and benefit monetarily from this connection.”
In an effort to engage professional athletes as partners going forward, PredictionStrike will give athletes a percentage of their PredictionStrike market cap, so that athletes can continue to gain as the company grows and their share prices increase. Athletes will be free to sell those shares for cash, trade them for shares of other athletes, or keep them and bet on themselves. In exchange, PredictionStrike athletes will use the platform to build an authentic connection with their fans.
“Imagine a world where athletes hold quarterly shareholder meetings over zoom for their PredictionStrike investors or where athletes give their investors access to exclusive content and behind the scenes looks into their day to day lives,” said Hurt.
PredictionStrike also plans to leverage the platform’s data analytics to help athletes and everyone in the business of sports make more intelligent business decisions. PredictionStrike can provide intelligence about how popular athletes are and where they are popular down to the individual level, in real-time. This will be crucial information for athletes, agents, sports retailers, ticket sellers, and anyone who wants to use fan analytics in their decision-making.
Over the next couple of weeks, the PredictionStrike team will be releasing a long list of new updates to the app and web interface, in preparation for an influx of new users throughout the NFL season. In the next few months, fans and users can look forward to the launch of UFC athletes—shortly followed by MLB, European Soccer, and NCAA athletes. Around the same time, athletes, leagues, and organizations can look forward to the rollout of PredictionStrike’s data offerings and features—which will continue to build further and further on the athlete-fan engagement aspect, especially as leagues struggle to maintain/grow viewership and foster fandom amongst the younger generations.
“We envision PredictionStrike’s share prices being used as a key metric whether discussing athletes on the field, in the boardroom, or in the media,” said Chabra. Ultimately, the team envisions PredictionStrike as the central hub for the fan/athlete relationship. Sports updates will be accompanied by stock prices, and any time a fan hears something about an athlete, their first thought will be “How does this affect my portfolio?”
About PredictionStrike
In 2019, Deven Hurt and Brad Chabra used their backgrounds in finance, tech, and entrepreneurship to launch PredictionStrike—with the goal of creating a new way for fans to invest in and engage with their favorite athletes. Today, PredictionStrike is a platform on which users can trade virtual shares of athletes as if they were stocks. The platform operates like a real stock market and allows users to buy/sell shares, build portfolios, and operate in a live market using real money. Share prices are determined by a player’s real-world performance, where each game/match acts like an earnings report, as well as the fans’ demand for those shares. The company has seen enormous growth since the return of sports after the 2020 COVID hiatus, producing over $3M worth of transactions in that time frame alone. Visit https://www.predictionstrike.com/ for more information and follow PredictionStrike on Instagram and Twitter.
About MaC Venture Capital
MaC Venture Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm based in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley that invests in technology startups leveraging shifts in cultural trends and behaviors. The general partners represent diverse backgrounds in technology, business, politics, entertainment, and finance, allowing them to accelerate entrepreneurs on the verge of their breakthrough moment. The firm provides hands-on support crucial for building and scaling category-leading companies, including operations strategy, brand building, recruiting, sales development, and mission-critical introductions. MaC Venture Capital is the result of a merger between Cross Culture Ventures, co-founded by Marlon Nichols, and M Ventures, co-founded by Adrian Fenty, Michael Palank, and Charles D. King. Find MaC Venture Capital online at https://macventurecapital.com/ and @MaCVentureCap.
About New Age Capital
New Age Capital, founded in 2016 by Ivan Alo and LaDante McMillon, is a thesis-driven seed-stage venture capital firm that invests in tech and tech-enabled startups founded and led by Black and Latino entrepreneurs. New Age Capital aims to work with the best Black and Latino entrepreneurs in the U.S. across all industries and sectors at the seed stage where founders have exhibited strong domain expertise and have discovered actionable unique insights to address whatever problem they are solving. Through building an authentic and discernible brand and amassing a wide network, they have honed their ability to source and invest in high potential startups across the country within the underfunded and underserved Black and Latino demographic. Their position in the market coupled with accelerating entrepreneurship within their target demographic strongly positions them to achieve outsized returns.
This article is from Business Insider.
