- Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has invested in the Wagr app.
- Wagr allows bettors to pick sides of various sports lines, and bet against their friends.
- The idea is to open up betting to people without a sportsbook.
LAS VEGAS - Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, has invested in an app that attempts to meld social media with sports betting.
The app, Wagr, was founded in 2020, and the concept of it is that it creates individual betting pools for friends instead of allowing people to wager at casinos.
The app plans to start with spread bets only, as they tend to be sitting at around -110 odds on each side. This makes it easy for bettors to pick one side, then challenge their social groups to pick the other side using the app.
If bettors cannot be matched with a friend or family, Wagr plans to allow them to match with other Wagr users in the state.
Effectively, the idea is creating an app for social betting, as opposed to sports betting at a casino or online sportsbook.
This could result in better odds for the players, but Wagr does plan to take a cut, just like an online gambling site would do.
“Our app really strips down the betting experience to the bare essentials -- we’re launching with point-spread bets only,” said ario Malave, Wagr’s CEO. “From a user’s perspective, all you have to do is pick a team, decide who you want to bet against, and select how much you want to wager.”
This is certainly an innovative approach to an industry that has modernized in terms of technological access to wagers, but not, perhaps, in terms of the social atmosphere around them.
FanDuel and DraftKings are the closest comparisons, but their non-sportsbook offerings tend to be daily fantasy sports oriented, and Wagr operates in a slightly different space.
Both DFS and what Wagr plans to do could be described as sports gambling aimed at casual wagerers, but they take very different approaches to it.
Wagr’s model is definitely worth examining - and, if you’re Ohanian, investing in.