Sports betting marketplace startup Pyckio exceeds its crowdfunding goal of €350,330 to €372.590 in funding with the aim of becoming the world’s largest licensed sports betting fund.
With 25,000 users and 145,000 monthly visits, Pyckio’s investment fund will be dedicated to investing in international sports betting houses for professionals and will offer its investors a monthly liquidity based on the capital accumulated by the fund and the profits obtained.
According to El Referente, the objective of this capital increase is to go a step further and create an investment fund, which would invest in bets recommended by its best experts in different sports.
The capital obtained in the latest round of crowdfunding will go mainly to create the entire legal infrastructure and to create the management office, not to invest in the fund itself.
When deciding what to bet on, three sources are used: the forecasts of Pyckio’s expert punters – known in the slang as “tipsters” – other external specialists, and data from the platform, which accumulates more than six million forecasts.
With Pyckio users gather to share their predictions or picks in different sports. An algorithm designed by two professors in economics and experts in statistical models determines who are the best experts (PRO Tipsters) in each sport.
These experts sell their forecasts on the platform to those punters who seek expert advice to make money by betting.
“Our algorithm will determine who are the best experts. The top Tipsters will earn 50% of the revenue they generate. If you become a PRO Tipster, the more subscribers you have the more money you will make,” the sports betting marketplace website reads.
Daniel Mateos
Pyckio has its origin in the personal experience of CEO and Co-Founder Daniel Mateos, who has carried out his personal career in the financial world managing investment funds and who then decided to take advantage of his ability with sports betting.
“We want to create the first investment fund of regulated bets in the world,” Mateos told EFE Emprende in January.
According to the same January interview, co-founders Mateos and Fernando Montero, Pyckio will not be registered in Spain.
Founders Mateos and Fernando Montero have ensured that their fund will be “super legal,” and will be registered and managed outside of Spain and will be audited by an international auditor.
“Financial regulators generally do not accept sports betting as an asset. We have looked for a jurisdiction whose regulator, upon seeing our project, approved the bets as an asset in which it can be invested, and with friendly game laws,” explained Mateos.
However, the sports betting startup’s funding comes at the same time the Spanish government proposed new tax cuts for online gambling.
According to European Gaming, “The Spanish online gambling market is projected to touch $1.22 billion by 2023,” and, “the suggested tax cut, from the current 25–20% of gross gaming revenue, is intended draw more legal, licensed operators to Spain’s thriving online gambling market as the country continues to battle offshore operators to keep its slice of the tax revenue pie.”
USA Online Casino reported today, “The proposed tax cuts would add significant help in raising existing operator’s bottom lines and could fuel a certain degree of consolidation in the market as it ripens. Chairman of the Spanish gambling trade association Jdigital, Mikel Lopez de Torre, who represents online gaming interests in the country, has said it is difficult to see how the country could accommodate 12 additional brands on the market in the future without some degree of consolidation in the coming years.”