With the World Cup now at the knockout stages, things are kicking off for Killian Jones, who left a secure job three years ago to set up a fantasy football betting exchange – PlayON.co
PlayON’s World Cup 2014 game is now in full swing and with in-play games launched earlier this week, we spoke to him about the challenges of setting up an online gaming business.
Fantasy gaming is massive business. And getting bigger. The Premier League’s Fantasy Football had over 3,000,000 teams last season while Forbes estimates that there are 33,000,000 fantasy sports players in the US alone. One Irish man spotted that growth and decided that he would take his love of fantasy sports and create a business.
Killian Jones is the Irish man behind PlayON, a site that promises the ‘best fantasy football experience online’. We asked Killian where he got the idea for this new type of fantasy football.
“The idea was ‘Fantasy Football meets online poker’ two of my favourite things,” Killian, who previously won a seat in the World Series of Poker through an online poker satellite tournament, tells us. “With the current season-long fantasy football games, lots of people join at the start of the season but then lose interest and stop playing during the season. We’ve made PlayON a weekly game so you just pick a team for this weekend’s matches. If you miss a weak or if you do badly one week, it’s not a problem – you’re not playing catch up next week as it’s a brand new game. PlayON is also a betting exchange so you can bet on how your team does against other people in one on one and multiplayer games.”
That’s the difference, there is money involved, and the stakes and payout levels are up to you. With support from Robbie Fowler, and with Opta’s stats providing the data, this is a serious operation that looks set to become a player in the online gaming industry.
So, how did Killian come to be the man behind PlayON?
“I was a big fantasy football fan and a big online poker fan and always thought they would work very well together. After 10 years working in finance, I quit my job to start PlayON.” After three years and his entire life savings, things are now starting to look up: “A number of venture capitalists have approached us about investing but we’ve stayed away from them to date. I’ve been fortunate to have had some very supportive private investors.”
PlayON is licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission and is currently based in London, but Killian has plans to grow the company in Ireland in the future: “In time I’d like to have the business based in Ireland and it is definitely my plan to build a team in Ireland, but for now London is where we are licensed and regulated so that’s where we are based at present.”
In the London office they have a team of developers and a team of online marketers, as well as Dublin based designer Eileen Dunne. However the plans are to add 20 staff in the next 12 months, with some likely to be in Ireland.
Those aren’t Killian’s only big plans either. “In our first year we ran an English Premier League game and we now have the World Cup game live. We are launching a number of domestic European football leagues – Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 – as well as the Champions League in August for Season 2014/2015. After that we’re looking to expand into rugby and cricket, before launching US sports – especially NFL.”
As Killian sees it, PlayON is well placed to become a global fantasy sports hub: “The main providers of fantasy games right now are the sporting organisations – the Premier League or the NFL, as well as media companies. We feel that we have an advantage as we are not aligned to any particular sport – the Premier League is unlikely to run an NFL game, and vice versa. We’re also a licensed and regulated online gaming business so we think our multi-sport offering, combined with enabling people to bet on their team, should give us an advantage over time.
The product is mainly desktop at present but a mobile version is due for release ahead of the new Premier League season. The goal is to enable people to play on mobile and tablet while they are on the go. According to Killian: “Our plan is that you’ll be able to pick your teams even when you are not connected to the internet – on the tube or on a plane – with teams being stored locally on your device. Then once you reconnect, any changes will automatically update on the PlayON system so you’ll be able to fill your down time with something you enjoy doing and potentially win some cash.”
PlayON went live 12 months ago and already has players signed up from over 100 countries. For the World Cup Game, you can pick a new team each round and for the Quarter Finals, there is a guaranteed pot of £2,500 on offer. You can enter up to 3 teams into the game and entries close at 15.00 on Friday. In-Play games, where you can continue entering games while the matches are unfolding, went live this week and are great for taking advantage when your team is racking up the points.
Before we signed off, we asked Killian if he had any advice for budding entrepreneurs. “I was at the Dublin Web Summit last year listening to Elon Musk talk about when he was starting SpaceX and that he only had enough money for three rocket launches. After the first three failed, he was facing failure and seven years of effort gone.
“PlayON has been on the brink of failure before and you have to go so far past what you originally thought you would need to do to keep things going. It’s difficult to prepare yourself for the constant feeling of not knowing if all the effort is going to be worth it in the end. But for anyone who wants to go for it, the most important thing is to keep fighting and don’t give up. If you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
Check out PlayON and the £2,500 game now at www.playon.co
