In an Interview with SBC Leaders Magazine, Paddy Power discusses the ways in which ASX is a step forward for the traditional Daily Fantasy Sports offering in the US.

In an Interview with SBC Leaders Magazine, Paddy Power discusses the ways in which ASX is a step forward for the traditional Daily Fantasy Sports offering in the US.

SBC: Firstly, thanks for taking the time to chat with us! For those of our readers who don’t know, can you tell us a little bit about ASX? What does it involve?

PP: So effectively, what we’ve built is a digital-asset exchange, like a virtual stock exchange. I guess our working slogan at the moment is we’re a place where sports meets stocks. In essence, what we’re doing is gamifying the trading of sports NFTs by using a next-generation fantasy platform. It’s a step forward from the traditional Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) offerings that exist in the United States, which is the market that we’re targeting. We’ve been doing all of our initial testing with the Premier League, but our big launch is going to be a strong push around college football, which is just kicking off now. So, currently, we’re testing with a few NCAA games – and then in the next few weeks, we’ll be launching, which is a real nail-biter! Hopefully we’re finding all of the bugs and ironing out the usual development snags at the minute. It’s part of the process but, as you can imagine, it’s all hands on deck. NFTs are definitely the sexy thing at the minute, and they’re being traded, so we’re gamifying the trading of NFTs and providing a platform for that. There’s definitely an opportunity to do this. That said, there is also a huge demand for our kind of product – we certainly think it’s engaging, and hopefully everyone else comes to agree.

SBC: How will this help bring new forms of sports betting to the US market?

PP: ASX is a step forward from daily fantasy sports. A really clear differentiator between ourselves and what’s already out there for traditional DFS betting is that the latter is almost like a ‘set and forget’ model, so to speak, which diminishes fan engagement. What I mean by that is you pick your fantasy sports team, watch the game and hope that your team plays well, and then you’re allotted your points. However, with our model, it’s more of an ‘always on’ fantasy platform. So, effectively, we IPO the athletes that are playing, then you buy shares in those virtual athletes. Your portfolio then increases or decreases, based on the underlying fantasy scoring system, depending on how those athletes perform (well or poorly) in comparison to the other players on the pitch.

Article Link: https://issuu.com/sbc.global/docs/sbc_leaders_17/25