Behind an influx of cash and an evolving platform, daily fantasy sports operator Locker is finding footing in the industry.
The company recently announced it raised $2 million through seed funding, led by Hatchery Investments. The capital infusion led to Locker launching its new Leagues product for the NFL season, which allows users to play the trivia-style live fantasy game in a more social format.
“We started Locker to digitize the social experience,” CEO and co-founder Noah Bernstein told Covers.
“We saw friendships growing on the platform, even under these anonymous user names. We had a lot of requests to make private group chats and private leagues so people could kind of separate themselves by their interests. That went in tandem with how we created our Locker Leagues.”
Partnering up
Locker allows users to compete for cash prizes by correctly predicting individual event outcomes, like “Which receiver will catch a pass on the next Kansas City drive?”
Leagues is geared toward helping fantasy news sites, social media influencers, live streamers, and athletes use proprietary technology and DFS games to bring people together in public or private settings.
RotoWire, Fantasy Pros, Ghetto Gronk, and The 33rd Team, among others, are part of Locker’s growing partnerships.
“It’s a really good way for those media outlets to really engage with those NFL audiences that they have,” Bernstein said. “You could go start 1,000 fantasy leagues or you can make one Locker League and develop your whole audience into that pool.”
Target audience
Partners receive a commission of the entry fees from Locker and must have at least six entries. However, Leagues has no limits so social media followers, fraternity brothers, office co-workers or bar patrons can compete during live NFL games each week or through the entire season.
Leagues have chat rooms designed to give entries the social feel and comradery that’s hard to match in traditional, 12-team fantasy leagues.
“I don't see anybody doing exactly what we’re doing in our space right now,” Bernstein said.
Ghetto Gronk, an influencer with more than 300,000 followers combined through X and TikTok, is the kind of partner Locker is targeting.
“It’s a meme page and he has a couple hundred people who play in Locker contests under his brand and socialize in a group chat,” Bernstein said. “He’s made it more of a community.”
The next phase
Locker began offering their unique pick’em-style DFS games late last year. The new, social format kicked off at the beginning of the NFL season and roughly 500 leagues have already been created.
Bernstein couldn’t publicly comment on any pending negotiations, but the company is close to landing partnerships with athletes.
“Our company’s done a really good job of networking and establishing relationships with the athletes in our space, but other than that we set up a big sales campaign,” Bernstein said. “We’re looking for someone who buys into us. We help however we can and we want them to be successful.”
Locker also plans to expand its sports offerings. The NFL is unique to what the DFS operator does because there are stoppages to give users time to make picks before another drive begins.
Other sports are designed the same, but Locker is going to add the NBA and UFC soon so Leagues can bring in even more partners and diverse audiences.
“We’re very excited about that,” Bernstein said.
Continued growth
Locker is available in 25 U.S. states while the pick’em game is offered in 18 jurisdictions.
The company isn’t planning on expanding to new markets any time soon. The focus right now is on the product.
Bernstein said Locker is less than two months from rolling out another version and using feedback to get better at what it's already done.
“As more customers are using it, you start to find holes, more improvements that you can make to make it more enjoyable for your clients,” Bernstein said. "Balancing the iteration instead of expanding to new products is always something that we’re teetering on.”
