Competitive gaming and gambling are bigger industries than you might have realized. Globally, the gambling market is expected to exceed $100 billion annually by 2025. Trivia games, skill games and other quiz games have over 60 billion users. To date, however, gambling sites on the Internet have approached their market differently than competitive gaming applications. For example, fantasy sports sites use a pay-to-play model. In contrast, trivia games and quiz games monetize their sites through ads requiring millions of users. But what if competitive gaming apps adopted the same pay-to-play model as fantasy sports? That is what Proveit is targeting with its bold business ideas.
The Proveit Competitive Gaming Platform
According to Nathan Lehoux, co-founder of Proveit along with Prem Thomas, its competitive gaming application can be nicely summarized. Lehoux describes Proveit as “the world’s first platform where you can play competitive trivia games for cash 24/7.” Of course, Proveit is a bit more than that. In addition to trivia games, various skill games, as well as poker, are part of the platform. It also offers solo, one-on-one, and multiplayer options.
With a 20 to 50 percent win rate where players can gamble to win cash, gamers are flocking to the app. Moreover, while Proveit mainly offers competitive gaming for cash in the U.S., it soon plans to go global. Proveit’s novel concept is quickly catching on.
Proveit’s Road Less Traveled to a Competitive Gaming Business
Given the potential competitive gaming has, it would seem that other entrepreneurs would pursue this industry. However, Lehoux and Thomas describe significant regulatory and banking barriers that they had to overcome in the competitive gaming industry. Most might appreciate regulatory challenges to a gambling venture, but few would have expected capital funding problems. Banks tend not to lend to competitive gaming businesses for cash due to perceived risk. How did Proveit do it? In a word, networking. According to Lehoux, the network effect is massively important. He states, “I always tell young entrepreneurs, it’s not just your network. You can only meet so many people.” By leveraging people that they knew, Lehoux and Thomas were able to access a much broader network. This approach put them in touch with John Morgan, of Morgan and Morgan law firm. Morgan is now one of their largest capital investors.
Addressing the Gambling Addiction Elephant in the Room
Gambling platforms, including competitive gaming for cash, naturally raise concerns about the potential for gambling addiction. Proveit, however, was proactive from the start in this regard. “We’re very solidly an entertainment company, but I think we’re providing entertainment that’s clean,” Lehoux describes. The challenge was to incorporate features in the competitive gaming app that protected users while also providing fun. As a result, Proveit provides users with monthly limits both in terms of contributions as well as stop-losses. Certainly, competitive gaming using cash provides Proveit with strong customer retention, but at the same time, they are committed to offering trivia games and other gaming entertainment safely to users.
A Commitment to Education and Giving Back
Proveit’s mission- is to enhance knowledge and skills among its users. In fact, at its core, Proveit’s games are about knowledge creation. As Thomas puts it,” We wanted to make our games about knowledge.”
Therefore, it should come as little surprise that the competitive gaming company’s mission is to support education. Through trivia games and skill games, Proveit’s app teaches users subject content, skills as well as the benefits of competition. However, Proveit goes a big step further. It also supports various charities that target education improvement as their primary goal. Thomas believes once its competitive gaming goes international, Proveit could realistically provide millions to education charities. This is one of the foundational objectives that Thomas and Lehoux strongly support.
Bringing New Learning Platforms to Life with Quiz Games
Active engagement is the focus of education today, as opposed to passive learning. This is a concept both Lehoux and Thomas support. The competitive gaming platform provides great opportunities for associative learning where players interact with other gamers. This dynamic, relational interaction among Proveit users stimulates skill-based learning. Likewise, it enhances knowledge creation by increasing users’ attention and engagement in the activities. Thomas describes Proveit as a “competitive skills-based arcade”. With Proveit significantly outperforming other game platforms, like fantasy sports, in per-user monthly spending, it truly may be onto something.
