BetHog launches with $6m in seed capital behind it

Nigel Eccles has a firm concept of a future BetHog patron.

They’re young. They’re almost certainly male. They have cryptocurrency in a digital wallet. They’re enthralled by volatility and “love” meme coins.

And their gambling preferences are rooted in some sort of social experience.

“They will play competitive games. So they'll play poker. They will play DFS,” Eccles told BettingStartups.com. “They're now really into crypto, but they would never play casino games because they just sort of view them as sort of mindless.”

Eccles, who with fellow FanDuel co-founder Rob Jones launched the BetHog online casino/sportsbook, views this as the next evolution of online gambling. “They view this as a real source of entertainment,” Eccles continued.

BetHog currently offers player vs. player games HODL Tournament and Liar’s Dice - and four player vs. environment contests. With literally hundreds of online casino choices available world-wide, Eccles said, targeting a niche makes business sense.

“I think DFS brought a whole new group of people into [online gambling], an audience that was somewhat sort of similar to the poker audience,” he observed. 

“And one of the interesting things about DFS was it was a beatable game. People kind of saw it as a game that they could play and they could sort of figure out and win.

“These are games of skill and chance. And so it's something else we want to do with BetHog. It’s something we want to build out and let people become good at it and then build a reputation around that.”

Sweeps and social casinos have proliferated in the United States recently as these gray-area sites attempt to entice users with “free” play and an eventual graduation into purchasing tokens. BetHog isn’t targeting the same customer, but Eccles believes his venture better embodies what social casino-play will entail in the future.

“One of the changes we've seen in online casino in particular is it's sort of become more social,” he explained. “We've seen through Twitch and now more through tech that people are watching other people play. And it's become quite a social phenomenon.”

Interestingly, Eccles said, when gamblers play offline, meaning in a casino, “they nearly always do it socially” with companions, “but online, casino, it just isn't that social.”

The solution, he said, is catering to new customers with games they crave and the experience they want. That means playing and interacting in real-time.

“There's probably 500 online casinos, maybe more than that, but they all carry the same games, which are all designed by third parties,” Eccles said. “Our thesis is that it seems to be an opportunity here to start to develop games, realizing now that people want a social game or want more of a social experience and they want something that works better with streaming.”

BetHog’s interactive, block-chained-supported games - which are variations on “crash” and “mine” themes - are being developed internally and by Pragmatic Play and Evolution. The site accepts Solana, Bitcoin, Etherum and USDT as currency.

BetHog recently announced $6 million in new funding by 6MV, with participation from Will Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Karatage and Advancit Capital. Other investors, according to a release, include Chris Grove, Partner Emeritus at Eilers & Krejcik LLC and Josh Hannah, co-founder of Flutter Entertainment.

BetHog is currently not legally available in several large gambling markets, notably the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. iGaming is lawful and regulated in just six US states, but gambling companies are set to make legalization the next push after the rapid and wide spread of regulated sports betting. 

Even still, U.S. laws governing the use of cryptocurrency for gambling are murky.

It was imperative, Eccles said, that BetHog establish a reputation as a fun place to play. He’s not exactly sure why a bawdy boar works as a mascot. But he’s certain it does.

“With FanDuel - the brand – I think we just played too safe and too conservative,” Eccles chucked. “You've got a spectrum between a bank and something crazy and we were just too close to being a bank.

“I want this brand to be fun and exciting. So the hog, we want to personify this. This is somebody you want to hang out with, that college friend that was a bit crazy and you question whether they'd ever make anything in their life, but they're definitely fun to hang out with.”

Eccles conceded that attempting to gain a license in the U.S. is a long-term goal, but certain to be an arduous task.

“Ideally, at some point, we would love to get there,” he said. “But we're certainly cognizant that it'll take time. And so, in the short term, our focus is much more to kind of prove these games work internationally.

“And then we figure out how in the U.K., which is easier. We probably couldn't do crypto. But the U.S. is probably going to be reasonably hard.”

BetHog is now live at www.bethog.com