A fresh model for social sports betting

American entrepreneur Steve Smith, co-founder and CEO of a new social gaming online enterprise branded GrabFan, is confident that he has achieved both US legality and a winning business model with his concept, which he describes as a mobile social sports gaming app that will allow users to create real-time sports predictions using a virtual currency. The virtual currency is then redeemable for real rewards.

GrabFan has been developed for iPhone and iPad mobile users, with an Android version due soon, and allows players to test their sports knowledge and wager virtual funds on the result. The action – dubbed ‘Fandom’ – is tracked on team and community leaderboards, and is generated in two primary ways: through answering daily trivia questions based on the outcome of recent games and engaging in real-time custom sports bets using a virtual currency called “GrabBucks.”

GrabBucks are immediately redeemable for a variety of rewards and fan experiences including discounts at participating bars, sports merchandise, and even lower box tickets to a 2012 San Francisco Giants home game. Players are rewarded with GrabBucks and Fandom points (a leveling system to rank players) as they participate in daily in-game challenges.

Trivia challenges are a combination of two types of questions: historical facts and daily-generated questions regarding the outcome of recent games or events. All of these questions are tailored to a user’s selected favourite teams. In this way, GrabFan rewards not only historical knowledge of a team, but active following as well.

Users are also empowered to create customisable challenges in real-time. These custom challenges can be issued to friends or to the community at large, and are based on a statistical category and time period. For example, Joe challenges his friend Jerry that Pablo Sandoval will hit a homerun in the 1st inning, and wagers GrabBucks that this will happen. Challenges are validated in real-time and are tracked on a user’s home screen in an easy to use, intuitive format.

The current app is downloadable here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grabfan/id503983116?ls=1&mt=8