Blockchain helps solve many a lot of pain points for many sports betting platforms. For instance, there’s the trust issue that most people have around sportsbooks. Will the sportsbook deposit the user’s funds? Will they pay out the winning bettors? Are they automated enough to ensure that no one will run off with the bettor’s funds?
With blockchain, these pain points are a thing of the past, according to ZenSports co-founder and CEO Mark Thomas.
“With blockchain and smart contracts, everything is automated in terms of the bet contracts and the payments made and the payouts,” Thomas tells CalvinAyre.com. “You can feel confident that everything is going to be done correctly, and technologically be automated so you don’t have to worry about someone else running off with your funds or something like that.”
Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, improve the payment side of things. Thomas explains, “With cryptocurrency, the payments are instantaneous so in a matter of seconds or minutes, maybe an hour at the most, and the fees are negligible. So fractions of a penny or a few pennies at most in terms of what someone will actually pay either on the bettor side or on the sportsbook or operator side.”
In 2016, Thomas co-founded ZenSports, a peer-to-peer sports betting marketplace that promises to put bettors “in control.” The mobile app, available on the App Store and Play Store, isn’t a sportsbook as it doesn’t create or accept sports bets. What they do, according to Thomas, is “bring both sides together.”
“What we do is we actually allow you, as the bettor, to create any kind of sports bet that you want with your own odds and your own terms, and basically, you come up with everything. And so that puts you, the bettor, in control,” he explains. “If you don’t want to create your own sports bet, you don’t have to. You can accept someone else’s bet, and we basically help match people up, makers and takers or bets.”
The sports betting marketplace is built on the Icon blockchain protocol, which Thomas claims is “faster, more efficient,” although the ZenSports CEO acknowledges that there are other blockchains available out there. Bitcoin SV (BSV), for instance, offers a lot of benefits—not just in terms of helping with deposits and withdrawals. With the BSV blockchain, operators can run provably fair games, and in the process, create more security and faith in the industry.
