eSports gambling site UNIKRN will likely enter the U.S. market next month, according to founder and CEO Rahul Sood, though it is likely to do so in its current form.
Online gambling is considered illegal in the U.S. Fantasy sports is not.
“If you are in the U.S., UNIKRN Arena will be made available in the next month and it’s going to be awesome,” Sood said.
That quote comes as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban announced a $7 million investment in UNIKRN, a Seattle-based company that currently only offers wagering on competitive video gambling to those living in Australia, the UK and Ireland.
Cuban is also one of five investors (or “sharks”) appearing on the hit ABC television show “Shark Tank”. Reruns of the show air on CNBC.
“I did an interview with CNBC a couple of months ago and within two minutes of the interview, Mark Cuban called me,” says Rahul Sood, co-founder of Unikrn and creator of the gaming PC company Voodoo PC. “We exchanged a couple of emails back and forth and within two days he said ‘I’m in’.”
Should UNIKRN enter the Fantasy eSports space, the competition would be limited but the players tough. Both Vulcan and AlphaDraft, the only two known companies of any value operating in Fantasy eSports, each have already secured millions of dollars in funding since the start of the new year.
– Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com