TopProp-Head-to-Head Fantasy Sports

Creating the most accessible, fair and fun platform to play daily fantasy sports.

The Problem

Daily fantasy sports (DFS) have a problem. On existing platforms, users are required to build complex lineups fit under restrictive salary caps that create high barriers to entry for casual players that want to add extra action to any game. This is because these users are playing against a professional class of players that make up just over 1% of the user base but take home over 91% of the money. Ultimately, almost 85% of traditional daily fantasy sports players lose and many of these users are upset by the adversarial relationship created when their losses turn into profits for existing platforms.

What The Company Does

TopProp Fantasy is a head-to-head single player fantasy platform that is the most accessible, fun and fair solution to ever hit the DFS industry. On the Battleground, the barriers to entry fall because all contests are one player against one player without a complex salary cap — allowing users to create contests in seconds. TopProp acts as the “host” not the “house,” which enables it to offer fair contests that mitigate the professional advantage and give every user a fair chance to win. All contests are head-to-head between two (and only two) users, eliminating the adversarial relationship created between house-based games and their users. Ultimately, sports are meant to be enjoyed with friends and TopProp’s head-to-head model allows users to engage socially in a way that is not possible when they’re playing against the house. The second half of the platform, Leagues, allows users to sync their season-long fantasy leagues from ESPN and Yahoo and play weekly contests against their friends using their existing rosters. This funnel allows TopProp to access the 45 million people who are underserved by traditional DFS offerings and would likely never sign up for existing platforms that lack this additional contest type.

Business Model

As the “host” not the “house,” TopProp is able to offer fair contests to its users with no downside to the platform — regardless of which user wins. House-based games expose themselves to liability from professional players who take advantage of mispriced lines and win big money. Instead of deploying this model, TopProp takes a small fee for hosting each contest between two users. The platform takes 10% from the loser’s entry fee in any contest, which accounts for 5% of the overall pot in that contest. This creates a revenue model based on scale and volume alone.

The Market

When the United States opened the gateway to legalized sports betting in 2018, DFS strongholds DraftKings and FanDuel turned their focus and resources towards becoming legal sports books. In doing so, they left a chasm in the DFS market that has been filled by a new generation of operators. The successful growth of sports betting in the United States has coincided with a boom for the DFS industry as money has filtered into every part of the ecosystem. The DFS market in the United States was valued at $8.4 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow another $5.4 billion by 2025. From a global perspective, the market is valued at $22.3 billion and projected to hit nearly $40 billion in 2025. While no DFS platform offers a similar solution to TopProp, its competitors include new age single-player fantasy operators like Underdog Fantasy, PrizePicks, Thrive Fantasy and StatHero that were founded following PASPA being overturned in 2018. TopProp’s main area of differentiation from these sites is that the head-to-head model pits users against other users — enabling more fair and user-friendly contests.

Traction

Since launching in September for Week One of the 2021 NFL Season, TopProp has seen strong early user adoption. As of the Super Bowl, TopProp has over 550 active users that have been acquired through four major funnels. As a head-to-head platform, the most successful funnel has been word of mouth referrals — speaking to the fact that fans want to watch sports with their friends and TopProp enables them to take that experience to the next level. There is no better proof of this than Leagues — which allow one user to invite up to 11 friends to join TopProp at once — to make the macro experience of playing season-long fantasy into a micro weekly challenge. Once users are comfortable with the manner in which TopProp operates through the lens of their season-long league, they migrate over to the Battleground using players from their existing fantasy roster or favorite professional team. In conjunction with the platform’s launch, Matthew Freedman joined TopProp as a strategic advisor. Freedman is the CSO of FTN Network and COO of BetsMedia and has gained significant respect in the industry as evidenced by his over 40,000 Twitter followers. The relationship with Freedman enabled TopProp to forge partnerships with fantasy advice entities like FTN Network, FantasyPros and FootballGuys to access a user base that was highly engaged and interested in fantasy football. TopProp has also partnered with influencers in the fantasy space on Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok. Finally, the company has invested a small amount of capital into paid advertising on Twitter, Google, Facebook and Instagram that it intends to scale up following its next fundraising round.

Founding Team Background

Co-founders Griffin Kurzius and Michael Zavagno met in 2011 when they lived on the same freshman hall at Wake Forest. They became fast friends through their passion for sports and immediately started a fantasy football league with their hall mates. That league just completed its 11th season and is as competitive as ever. After graduating from Wake Forest in 2015, Griffin moved to Boston to get immersed in the world of tech. He spent five years at Oracle, focused on their fast-growing cloud business, and worked at HashiCorp for one year in preparation for their recent IPO. He went full time prior to TopProp’s launch in September 2021. Michael enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law following his graduation from Wake Forest in 2015. After graduating, he went on to work as a Mergers and Acquisitions attorney for Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in New York City. He quit his job as a lawyer to go full time prior to the launch of TopProp in September 2021.

What They Need Help With

TopProp Fantasy is seeking introductions to investors to help fill out their pre-seed round. Additionally, as TopProp scales its user acquisition spend and seeks to expand to other verticals, it is looking to hire a CMO and a marketing team to assist in this effort. Introductions to people who have experience scaling startup companies — especially if those companies have any relation to the sports industry — would be incredibly helpful! Connect with the TopProp team.

Subscribe To Storied To Get More Startups In Your Inbox