Sports betting might, figuratively speaking, be the Wild West nobody really wants. SharpRank wants to change that.
The Baltimore startup’s story began three years ago with the discovery of just how wild sports betting was. Its founder, Chris Adams, says he heard an “expert” in a radio ad “making statistically impossible claims about his ability to correctly predict outcomes of sporting events.” What struck the investment banker’s attention was the apparent “dissonance” between sports betting, and traditional financial services.
“Financial services, like investment banking, required licensing, exams, background checks, compliance, fingerprints, etc.,” SharpRank says, in narrating its origin. “Acting as a sports betting expert, privately or publicly, required none of this — it was the Wild West and a Sheriff was needed.”
Sporting, Financial Smarts
SharpRank was born at that moment as Adams — who held a day job at Evergreen Capital — began a side hustle. Adams is not only a big sports fan but also began his career in mergers and acquisitions for professional and semi-professional sports franchises at Moag and Company. So he brought to bear sporting smarts, as much as financial smarts. He hired a small team, and collaborated with experts with advanced degrees in statistics to build ratings algorithms, and to evaluate the claims of betting “experts.”
Adams formally launched SharpRank in early 2020. Since then, it has raised $3.9 million in seed funding. Its most recent round was led by Maryland’s state tech fund TEDCO, with participation from Sharp Alpha Advisors, Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, Old Line Capital and Metarail Capital. The company has also built partnerships with media entities like Sports Illustrated and USA Today, as it fashions itself to become the Morningstar of sports betting.
“When looking for oversight, a third party such as Morningstar, or CARFAX are the agencies the public trusts and visits for objective third-party validation,” Adams told US Betting. “Every industry has our equivalent but we’re the first and only ratings agency for sports bettors.”
Just as Morningstar offers a range of services, rankings and recommendations to funds and investors, SharpRank is developing a portfolio of services — ratings for experts who provide sports betting tips, recommendations to sports fans, or as the company says, “verified ratings,…easily digestible data and metrics at the intersection of sports, media, gaming, and financial markets.”
Commercial Real Estate
MacKenzie Companies
Law
Nemphos Braue
Financial Services / Investment Firms
Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
Commercial Real Estate
Monday Properties
Venture Capital
Blue Delta Capital Partners
Internet / Technology
Foxtrot Media
Adams considers “a lack of transparency combined with ongoing accountability as the largest problem” in the sports betting industry. “Sports betting experts and pundits don’t need to qualify their picks. There is no industry standard letting the public know if a picker or pundit is actually good at what they’re selling,” he said.
TEDCO is supportive of SharpRank’s aspiring vision as the Morningstar of the sports betting industry.
“We saw an oversight component opportunity for the sports betting industry,” said Tim Wilson, who serves as a senior director for TEDCO’s Seed Funds unit. “Every industry has a SharpRank equivalent. Given the growing interest in sports betting, we liked the opportunity to help in shaping responsible gaming and consumer protection.”
