Follow My Journey: Creating a SportsBook and Casino from Scratch

[Cloaked5]

Hello my fellow Blackhatters!

This is something I want to do because I've always had a passion for getting into this industry and I finally have the means and the appropriate opportunity to take it on with 100% effort. I want to document this journey from starting a sportsbook and casino from SCRATCH, be transparent about the entire process and every move I make along with the reasoning behind those decisions. To clarify before anybody asks, I'm fully aware of the risks, capital requirements, and legalities involved with this venture

There has already been a great amount of time and money invested up until this point, and I will outline that in my very next post. This is just the introductory post so that I can hopefully gather some initial interest before I dive in and go full steam ahead here!

The purpose of this thread is to:

1. Hold my team and myself accountable
2. Provide an entertaining and hopefully informative outlook on an interesting industry
3. Hopefully attract individuals on here who are interested in the space who can provide solid suggestions, offer constructive criticism from an outside party, and maybe even get introduced to some connections in the industry or complimentary resources that can be beneficial moving forward

I would love to refer as much work to BHW members as possible to help the economy here and collaborate with the great talent this community has to offer. I have used many services on this forum over the years and I know there are many highly talented individuals that do so many things. I know my post count is low but I have hired many people in the past for various services.

I will post either tonight or tomorrow with a breakdown of the resources I have built up to this point, some insight to my current team, what we have accomplished up to this point, how much we've spent, and what our goals are as we navigate these waters. My plan is to post as many updates as possible, wmaybe once every 2-3 days and be as open, transparent, and detailed as possible so you guys can really get an inside look into what this process and industry are like and learn some things along the way!

Cheers to a successful journey that I hope many of you join me on!

 

[simbek]

Best of Luck bro..

 

[Cloaked5]

Progress Post #1

The point of this post will be to summarize what my team and I have accomplished thus far, outline the team members and resources we have at our disposal, and the different processes we are currently in. We're about a month in from the day we started putting everything together, so everything in this post will explain everything we have done

The Reason for Being Here

As I mentioned in the intro post, the primary reason we decided to move forward with this venture is that we fell into the perfect vehicle to do so. That vehicle is a cryptocurrency we started back in July of 2021. I'm not here to promote that, but it's important for this adventure because the sportsbook has been a part of our roadmap, we have a pretty strong following amongst our community members, and the vast majority of the funding that is going towards the sportsbook is coming from that coin.

With that said, our coin is esports based (it's a product of my esports organization and my partner is one of the owners of FaZe), so we are going to be highlighting esports betting. We will also have traditional sports like basketball, baseball, football, golf, etc. but to tie it back to the token, we are offering the esports component as well.

Important to note that the sportsbook is a separate entity from the token, and the LLC for the sportsbook has been established in Curacao for license purposes.

Our Team

I firmly believe that if you don't have experience in the field you're going into, then you need to bring an individual or a team in that has the knowledge and success to help make decisions and teach you. Because of this, I have brought in an advisor who has exactly that and has worked with another significant sportsbook in the industry and helped take them public through raising capital and getting licensing. They have helped us in getting our first license underway and submitted and we are working on getting a deck together to send out to some investment firms for funding.

We have 6 developers on this project, a majority of them are the developers of the token as well. There are different developers for different parts of the platform.

My partner (I'll just name him D for sake of keeping his name private) has deep connections in the gambling and casino industries as well. He will also be helping us with capital raising and already has a party lined up to talk to once we get the deck finished. The group has a billion dollars readily available, so they would be a great addition. D is also very very well connected to celebrities and athletes. We had an event in Vegas back in January and he was able to get multiple athletes there to hangout with us. This will be crucial for marketing.

Last but not least is our marketing team which is comprised of 2 individuals who are the most well connected people I've ever met. They have millions of followers on social media and have been a huge part of the success of our token. They know a lot of people with a lot of money, are friends with some of the top YouTubers in the world, and countless celebrities that we will be able to leverage when the time comes.

Where We Are now

Up to this point we have been working with a CSP (Corporate Service Provider) that has helped us establish our LLC in Curacao, get banking there, and apply for the Curacao license. We went with the Curacao one first because of the ease of getting it, it's relatively cheap, and a fairly short turnaround. Isle of Man license is the premium license in this industry so we are also working on getting that, but it's a longer process so we are working on it while we are going through this process with Curacao so we can eventually have both. So far, we have paid around $60,000 in total to the CSP and to Curacao for all of this. The application has been submitted, we are just in the waiting game for it.

In the meantime we are working on the functionality of the platform, working on a design with a design team, and we will be deciding which features we want to add to the site. We paid $50,000 for the source code, and we thought that was the best way to go rather than start from scratch and not have a product until 9-12 months down the road, and way better than using a white label service because we want to have customizability on our end to make changes and make it our own.

Coming in Progress Post #2

Tomorrow I have a call with the entire team to go through which features and options we want to have on the site. I am also hiring someone from my team to create the pitch deck so we can send it out to those investment companies. I will list the different features we decide on, which APIs we will integrate, and the reasoning behind all of that.

Questions for BHW Journey Followers:

If you know of any designers on here who are highly credible that we can use for our platform design, please tag them or link me to them! Also, any suggestions on different APIs or features you think we should have would be greatly welcomed




I will post the next update in the next couple of days as we finalize some more of the details. Thank you guys!

 

[LuckyGamble]

Interesting stuff. I'm doing something similar. Following!

 

[pavxo]

Good luck dude. Hope it's a long interesting read down the line

 

[brucebanner]

damnnn this is a serious high level project!!! I will follow it on daily basis.

You took a smart decision to buy the source code.

Really intrigated to read further more.

Good luck

 

[obirambd]

I also have sportsbook site. i think it will be helpful for me. Following

 

[jerennar]

Can you share more about what kind of budget do you need to pursue a porject like this?

 

[Cloaked5]

Interesting stuff. I'm doing something similar. Following!

Awesome! If there's a collab opportunity, let me know!

 

[Cloaked5]

Good luck dude. Hope it's a long interesting read down the line

Thank you my friend

damnnn this is a serious high level project!!! I will follow it on daily basis.

You took a smart decision to buy the source code.

Really intrigated to read further more.

Good luck

Yes, buying the source code was definitely the right decision I think. We are a crypto project as well, so we have to move faster than most or people lose interest unfortunately. If we programmed the site and everything from scratch, it would have taken 9-12 months and cost so much money in development. Doing a white label solution would have been very quick and cheap, but we have no control over any of the code and can't do anything we want to do and have to abide by everything the company we white label through.

I also have sportsbook site. i think it will be helpful for me. Following

Awesome! I hope this helps you

Can you share more about what kind of budget do you need to pursue a porject like this?

The source code was around $50,000. The Curacao license was around $40-45k. And the company who is helping us establish the business and the license in Curacao (since we are from the United States) has been around $20,000 so far.

 

[Cloaked5]

Progress Post #2

I apologize for the delayed post, I have been traveling and have not had time to provide updates since I don't bring a laptop with me.

We're just under 2 weeks since the last update. This part of the process is the most boring because a lot of it is waiting on Curacao to get back to us about the license and us deploying the source code so that we can get everything locked into a design and functioning appropriately. The source code came with a bunch of extra things we don't need. We went through the full source code and there are 41 third party systems that we need to setup to get the sportsbook running. This includes paid services as well as ones that are self-hosted. There are 5 elements that we will have to setup a server for an host ourselves, so there is a lot of work going into unpacking the source code to make it functional.

Features

We had 2 options when it came to which features to integrate into the site; either stay basic and build on as we go, or roll out a platform that includes all the doable features that our community suggested in our Discord that we made a list of. We decided to start basic, come out with a product in the near future for people to enjoy, and build other features later. So with that said, we will be offering regular betting on esports, traditional sports, and have an online casino. I will make a separate post outlining each sport/game included later.

The primary reason we decide to go this route is because of the time it will take to develop each feature, and we want to make sure each one is rolled out in the highest quality possible. We want to slowly release new additions as they're developed. It will always be a work in progress to continuously enhance the platform over time. Another factor that we took into account was our available funds. Implementing all the different features is not just very time consuming, but costly as well. Because of this, we have visited the idea of bringing in a private equity investor.

Pitch Deck

The past week I have spent putting together a pitch deck for a private equity investor that my partner has access to. This investor created a fund for large crypto companies like Kraken in the past and is putting together another $1 billion fund that we want to tap into. When my partner talked to the lead guy, he didn't care too much about the sport betting aspect of the venture but absolutely LOVED that it was being backed by a cryptocurrency and had a high quality team behind it. We are looking to raise $500,000 in exchange for equity. The reason we are asking for money is:

1 - So that we can spend around $200,000 of it on development so we can start moving away from all of the third party systems above and have our own instead. Rather than relying on 40 different third party companies, we would be much more efficient having just ours. This will also allow us to move forward with the

2 - The remaining capital would go towards marketing dollars that would help us create hype and momentum from the jump. We have a solid marketing team in place already, but the more marketing the better, especially in this competitive industry.

We have a call with the fund organizer next week (day is TBA), but we feel confident we can get something done. I put together a group of 5 people from our crypto community to comprise a "pitch deck" team with qualified individuals to help me with this project. It seems like a small thing but it's so important.

Coming in Progress Post #3

- Design update
- Features list
- Games and sports offering list

Questions for BHW Journey Followers:

We are looking for a payment processor and gateway that takes Bitcoin, Ethereum, BSC tokens (so that we can offer our own), and fiat. We have been working with NowPayments but their communication has gone cold for the past week out of nowhere and it's raising red flags. We want to work with someone who offers something as close to what they do as possible!


I will post the next update in the next couple of days! Thank you all!

 

[jerennar]

Great info, thanks. Looking forward to more updates

 

[pavxo]

will your project be something similar to moon bet? they have a token also and different betting options

 

[KungFuKata]

The Curacao license was around $40-45k

And which countries you can operate with this license? Worldwide?

 

[Cloaked5]

Great info, thanks. Looking forward to more updates

Thank you! Let me know if you have any questions

will your project be something similar to moon bet? they have a token also and different betting options

Kind of similar, but I would say our developers are much more talented and can create a better UX and UI than they have. They seem very very basic and boring design, comes off unorganized when looking at their betting offers, and hard to navigate. But we'll see

And which countries you can operate with this license? Worldwide?

It covers most of the world except random countries like Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao (weird, I know), France, the Netherlands, Saba, Saint Martin, Singapore, and the United States. We are also working on the Isle of Man license which will allow us to get these other jurisdictions much easier. Once you have the Isle of Man license, we can just submit a legal opinion for each state in the United States rather than have to go through each individual application process. I hope that makes sense!

 

[KungFuKata]

It covers most of the world except random countries like Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao (weird, I know), France, the Netherlands, Saba, Saint Martin, Singapore, and the United States. We are also working on the Isle of Man license which will allow us to get these other jurisdictions much easier. Once you have the Isle of Man license, we can just submit a legal opinion for each state in the United States rather than have to go through each individual application process. I hope that makes sense!

Thanks for comprehensive answer.

 

[Yester]

Questions for BHW Journey Followers:

We are looking for a payment processor and gateway that takes Bitcoin, Ethereum, BSC tokens (so that we can offer our own), and fiat. We have been working with NowPayments but their communication has gone cold for the past week out of nowhere and it's raising red flags. We want to work with someone who offers something as close to what they do as possible!


I will post the next update in the next couple of days! Thank you all!

Try coinpayments.net
Their support is quite fast and they accept a lot of cryptocurrencies.
Your journey is looking really well and I'm wishing you best of luck, but it seems like you made your luck.

I'm following your next updates, cheers.

 

[sidsammy]

Thank you my friend

Yes, buying the source code was definitely the right decision I think. We are a crypto project as well, so we have to move faster than most or people lose interest unfortunately. If we programmed the site and everything from scratch, it would have taken 9-12 months and cost so much money in development. Doing a white label solution would have been very quick and cheap, but we have no control over any of the code and can't do anything we want to do and have to abide by everything the company we white label through.

Awesome! I hope this helps you

The source code was around $50,000. The Curacao license was around $40-45k. And the company who is helping us establish the business and the license in Curacao (since we are from the United States) has been around $20,000 so far.

Hello, the betting exchange platform along with the source code is still available?? we have someone who has license for the APIs.

 

[ottomin]

Finally a serious project here on BHW. Can you provide an update?

 

[cockus]

Update?