Part 1: Wagering on customers, software and good marketing

First of all, how did you come to the decision to start WagerStreet.com?
Being involved in sports wagering in some facet or another for much of my adult life, the decision to open up my own Sportsbook was not a difficult one. I have worked as a consultant for many offshore Sportsbooks operating from the Caribbean and it has always been a goal of mine to run my own shop my own way. My main concern was the abundance of Sportsbooks already operating, and the inherently difficult task of attracting customers in an already crowded marketplace.

After consulting with some highly skilled programmers, I realized that the entire Sportsbook industry had been operating their sites using archaic software and telecommunications. Much of this is due to the lack of programming talent in the industry.

In addition, virtually all Sportsbooks are operating from Caribbean locales where telecommunications are extremely poor. I learned that the Kanahwake Gaming Commission intended to license Internet gaming and realized that allowing them to host my site would solve much of the telecommunication/bandwidth issues.

Shortly thereafter I contracted some programmers who were able to design our entire Sportsbook platform to spec, therefore I had alleviated many of my concerns and was able to proceed with my venture.

How did you go about seeking investors for the project?
Seeking investors was one of the easier tasks involved in the entire process. I had access to capital due to my contacts and other business ventures, and once the business plan was in place it became obvious to most that Wagerstreet.com was a worthy candidate for any venture capital.

There is certainly no shortage of gambling sites on the Internet. What are some of the things that separate you from your competitors?
To begin with, we are one of only two Sportsbooks legally licensed to operate from North America. Therefore we have a huge technological advantage that offshore books would never be able to compete with, which includes an abundance of bandwidth.

Secondly, our software is simply easier to use and faster than the rest. We tout ourselves as being the fastest from "pick to click" and challenge anyone to find a faster website with a more intuitive interface.

Also, because our software is proprietary, it is unique and fully customizable, therefore we are able to adapt and change to meet our customer's demands. Operators who purchased turnkey solutions will always be at the mercy of their software provider and in addition will be competing with other licensees who, in essence, have an identical product.

The result of all this is that marketing becomes the most crucial aspect of their business while the crux of Wagerstreet.com is innovation, constantly improving our product and the end-users experience. Marketing is still vital to our success, but it's not to the point where we need to constantly bring in a new influx of customers to keep our business afloat. We have an extremely loyal customer base, who almost exclusively wager with our Sportsbook.

In addition, we offer a wide array of betting options. We offer wagering on all the main sports, but even within those sports we offer unique wager options such as individual player match-ups for professional basketball, auto racing, golf and intermission wagering.

We also offer reality-based television wagering such as, 'Who will win Survivor'? In the future we will be offering community betting, where our customers will, in essence, be wagering with one another and we will be collecting a percentage. This will allow the user to bet on virtually anything he desires with a guaranteed profit margin for us.

Can you tell us more about your marketing efforts?
Much of our marketing efforts are directed towards online placement in search engines and the like, but we also do a great deal of direct mail advertising and key placement on sports related websites. We also focus on affiliate based marketing as it guarantees us a return on our marketing dollar, and finally we rely heavily on word of mouth.

This fall we will focus more on "offline" advertising ventures, as we are fairly comfortable with our online presence. We will likely take on several key ad buys in Men's magazines and the like.

What about the software that runs the site, how did you update the technology?
Our software, in my opinion, is the best in the entire industry. For one, we aren't using antiquated technology. Our software runs on an apache, Linux platform, whereas much of the industry is using NT. In addition, our entire software platform is browser-based, and has features entirely unique to our Sportsbook.

These features include, but are not limited to, the ability to offer live, in-game interactive wagering as well as the ability to accept wagers over and above our posted limits online, thus eliminating the need for phone clerks.

Continued...