ZenSports has always focused on improving the world of recreational sports. Today, we’ve taken our first step in becoming a full-fledged sports betting app by launching the ability for recreational sports players to play individual and group matches for money.

Since our original launch in February 2017, ZenSports has always had the capabilities to allow players to play tournaments, leagues, and pickup games for prize money in our app. But the addition of allowing players to play individual or group matches for money expands upon this premise and serves a core need that players have when playing sports.

ZenSports has had over 75,000 tournament and league money matches played in our app to date, with several thousand more individual and group matches that have involved money, but were being facilitated using only cash.

Our customers have told us the biggest reason they use our app is to meet up and play sports for money, whether that be via leagues, tournaments, one-on-one, or group matches. Up until this point, we’ve facilitated paying for entry fees and dues via credit card within our app, but we’ve never facilitated payments for individual or group matches. As a result, players that have used ZenSports previously to meet up and play sports for money have always had to do so using cash. With this new feature, all payments to join a money match and all payouts to winners happen automatically, without the need for cash to ever be involved.

The launch of recreational players being able to play individual and group matches for money includes several new features:

Being able to indicate that you want to play for money, along the details of the match, when submitting a request to play a sport match with someone nearby you.

Automatic facilitation of payments and payouts to all players for any money match. This includes collecting player payments before the match starts via credit card, and then making payouts to any winners’ bank accounts.

A revised dashboard for managing all matches, as well as a new match screen for managing the specifics of any particular match (including prize payouts for multiple places for group matches).

On the legality side, this new playing for money feature is available immediately in all worldwide locations (including the United States), since there are no restrictions or laws that prohibit playing sports for money in any jurisdiction. The reason for this is that the sports that people themselves play is considered by all regulatory bodies to be a game based on skill that is controlled by the individual. For example, this is why bowling leagues or pool tournaments with entry fees and prize money are prevalent and perfectly legal.

With our new playing sports for money feature, we wanted to take the concept of entry fees and prize payouts that are so wide spread in most sports leagues and tournaments today, and apply the same concept to individual or group recreational sports matches that people play. Our philosophy is that playing sports is more fun when there’s money on the line.

Traditional sports betting coming soon

With the launch of these new playing sports for money features, the road has now been paved for ZenSports to begin delving into all forms of sports betting, including traditional sports betting on pro/collegiate sports, in-game interactive betting, and even potentially betting on other recreational sports players. The timing of launching any such new betting features is still a couple of months away, because the ZenSports team needs to plan where and how to offer those features, since not all regulatory bodies consider betting on others playing sports a skill (many still classify these types of bets as gambling). Which means in certain jurisdictions, like the United States, ZenSports won’t be able to offer the ability to bet on others playing sports for money until it’s legalized in those states. In the meantime, U.S. citizens can continue to use ZenSports’ existing features to play sports for money themselves.

We’re working with the proper legal counsel to vet out what we can/can’t offer when it comes to betting on others playing sports. We definitely hope to have our first few test markets outside of the United States ready to go in the next 2–3 months, and from there, we’ll continue to expand as fast as we can.

Launching our own cryptocurrency token

But ZenSports has even bigger plans than just offering more sports betting features. ZenSports plans on launching its own cryptocurrency token later this year for customers to be able to have a smoother, more efficient way to place bets than what most sports betting platforms offer using traditional fiat (government) currencies.

We believe that the gaming and sports betting market is one of the best use cases for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies out there. Traditionally, anyone looking to place a sports bet with an online bookmaker has had to take the laborious steps to wire money or use a credit card to fund a gaming account. These methods can take several days and come with high fees. There’s also a lack of trust that the online platform will properly honor your account and pay you out when it’s time. Cryptocurrencies solve for these payment issues.

In addition, through the use of blockchain technologies, ZenSports will be able to offer rapid, real-time betting on specific micro events within a game, which would not be possible using traditional technologies or fiat currencies. For example, you could be watching a basketball game, and in real-time make a bet that a player will make a 3-pointer, or you could bet that the next pitch in a baseball game will be a fastball. You could make several of these types of micro bets within the same game, right from your phone. ZenSports believes that this is the future of how most people will want to place bets. It’s also particularly useful for collegiate and professional sports leagues, which oftentimes have bad matchups, long regular seasons, and blowout games. By allowing fans to bet in real-time on micro events within these larger sporting events, it would keep fans’ interest throughout the game, right down to the last second.

We also believe that most bets through our app will eventually be of the peer-to-peer variety. There are many challenges with the model of having a centralized bookmaker. You have to make sure to set the odds exactly right in order to limit your risk exposure, you need to be able to offer all kinds of bets out there that people want, etc. What makes more sense is creating a peer-to-peer network of people that can propose a bet that they want to offer, and then someone else in the network accepts that bet. This eliminates several of the above concerns, and blockchain and smart contracts can solve for this new way of betting that traditional technologies can’t.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to begin this new path as a sports betting app, and we hope that you’ll share in our enthusiasm by using ZenSports to play sports with someone nearby you for money.