What is MetaBet and why did it feel like a natural next step for you after creating ‘Are You Watching This?'
We started Are You Watching This in 2006, and now we're entering our 20th year, which is a crazy thing to say out loud. I hate waking up in the morning knowing that there was a great game on the night before, and I was doing laundry or raking the leaves. Nothing makes me more infuriated. So I started this company to find the great games and tap us on the shoulder when it's time to run to the couch.
But 2006 is very different from 2026. We’re in a time where it's hard to find where the game is on TV. It doesn't matter where you are around the globe, just finding the game, the discovery aspect of it, is very hard. We have more and more games to watch. Right now, we have the Olympics, we have the T20 World Cup, we have basketball, hockey, college basketball, college hockey. One of my favourite stats is one out of every three days of the year has more than 100 sporting events.
I used to be able to turn on the TV, flip through five or six channels, and know that I've looked at every single option I have, but now there’re many options. So we help with the curation of what to watch and the discovery of how to watch it. The third leg on that stool was the monetisation, and that's where the MetaBet angle comes in. We started MetaBet right after PASPA fell in late 2018. It took a little while to get our feet, but it really took off in 2020, when we realised how to combine the curation, discovery and monetisation.
What's your favourite team?
Tottenham Hotspur…
OK, so, tough stretch right now. But it’s almost that when times are toughest, the wins feel the best.
You don't have to remind me when the Knicks are playing, when they're doing well. But the idea is, if I can send you an alert that Tottenham’s up a goal and a man against Arsenal, everyone you know will already be messaging you. You don't need to get that nudge. But if it’s Wrexham and Chelsea in the FA Cup, maybe that game's not on your radar.
If I can let you know the game's getting good, I can give you a one-click link to watch it, and then let you know: either you can pay $1.99 to watch the second half of this match, or place a wager on Wrexham to march through to the sixth round. And if you place a wager, we'll let you watch for free.
Now, the partnership with Catena Media is obviously not new, but it has been expanded. What is this expanded deal going to bring?
In the States, we're still so young when it comes to gambling, and a lot of folks in the industry forget that sport gambling's been going on for centuries. There are so many lessons that we learned from Australia, from the UK and other mature markets.
We first started talking with Catena in 2020, maybe 2019, because they were looking for ways to link their content with the sportsbooks. A lot of our customers, including Catena, can just sort of carve out a little bit of real estate for us on their page. There's no complicated embed codes or trying to copy and paste things in different places. Our JavaScript wakes up, scans the page, understand what's being talked about, and can insert the most complimentary, engaging widget based on that article.
So when we first started working together, a lot of it was blocking and tackling. ‘Can we get an odds board?’ ‘Can we get a futures board?' But over the years, as their industry changed and grew, the overall macro market of SEO changes. AI is coming in and eating the world – they realised that they had to change. They realised that it's not just about: ‘Can I get to number one in the search engine rankings.' Instead it’s: ‘Can I give people a reason to come back?’ ‘Can I give them content that feels complimentary and not like an ad?’ Because even though I work in sports gambling, I tune out from most of this stuff. But if you can make it something that feels like an addition versus a distraction, then things get really interesting. And I think that's why our partnership with Catena has grown so much and why we often work with a lot of performance marketers.
Automation is a big part of the product clearly. But when you’re talking to partners, how do you balance selling that automation with their desire for personalisation? Your clients want to stand out as well, right?
Yeah, and everyone's different. DraftKings is a customer of our widgets, which is one of my favourite examples. We work with them to help engage their own customers. So they have a site called DK Network. They just add our code one time to their site, and we handle inserting widgets throughout the content that fit what they're talking about.
It's really interesting when you start to think about the lift we're able to have for someone like a DraftKings. They saw seven to ten multiples when they started using our widgets versus standard widgets, but that's very different in experience than someone like a Catena, because DraftKings shockingly is only pushing DraftKings lines. That’s versus a Catena, which wants to show you every book under the sun. Now, if you're two kids in a garage and you're first getting started, you probably want DraftKings and FanDuel, top of the list. But if you're a Catena that's maybe working with really experienced bettors, they might already have DraftKings and FanDuel, so maybe you're pushing bet365 and theScore and other options as well.
So, our bread is buttered by big customers, and our best products have come from customer suggestions. One reason why we've been able to excel is that we just spend a lot of time with our customers. Talking with customers, understanding their problems, and being able to jump in front of the bus, before they cross the street the wrong way, is one of the reasons why we're able to get the products out before they realise they need them. That’s why they stay with us for a long time.
What can you learn from what’s happening in the US, with rising taxes and marketing restrictions? How can that help you prepare for the future of affiliate marketing in the US, where these things presumably might come later down the line?
Everything's so upside down at the moment. It's understandable why these tax rises are happening, but it's also frustrating to see. We can quibble about what it means for pushing people towards unregulated bets. We're dealing with that a lot in the US with prediction markets – for the good or the bad, they're shaking things up. So there's a lot of change everywhere. But when I look at the UK market specifically, And we talked to affiliates who are trying to work in that market. A good friend of mine was working with a prediction market, and he was doing seven figures a month with them.
Too often we are focusing on the wagering before the sports. Sports fandom is all about wagering emotion
I won't name names, but with no notice, they just shut him down. And they shut them down because they are a young, stereotypically Bay Area company that sees money going out the door and says, well, ‘wait a second, why are we paying them to do something that we can do ourselves?' There's an ecosystem here, and if any one piece of this isn't healthy, things fall down. So, if we're going to raise tax rates, OK, got it, but what's the knock-on effect?
Raising tax rates means there's less money that goes to affiliates. If there's less money that goes to affiliates, you're generally not meeting people where they are. The books will market to who they market to, but the sort of average consumer, who maybe is curious about it but isn't ready to jump all in with someone more professional, they don't have that soft place to land anymore. And so you’re upsetting the equilibrium. And when you jack up tax rates this violently, there will be ripple effects throughout various industries. I am trying to stay in touch with as many affiliates as possible to see what they're saying, because I think we're all going to be reacting rather than proactively adjusting for it.
I wanted to touch on sub-affiliation, which is part of this Catena partnership as well. Is that the future of affiliate marketing or should people not get too carried away?
It allows the affiliates to have a little bit more bargaining power. Like I said, a buddy of mine got shut down very quickly, and it was easy for them to do. I don't think I've ever used this word in this context before, but if affiliates were almost to create a union. If they worked together, almost like a labour party to say, OK, here's what the CPAs are gonna be, and sportsbook X, you need to give us those or we're pushing all of our focus to sportsbook Y, that could get really interesting.
I think it’s necessary because the sportsbooks are going to say, ‘Hey, we've got to pay 40% in taxes, we can't give you the CPAs that we used to.’ There needs to be a push and pull, and that's one of the reasons why we're so excited about this Catena partnership.
We do self-affiliation and we're good at it, we’ve done it for a long time, but we're a four-person company, so it's not really our focus. Our focus is on great tech and great engagement for our customers. And so working with Catena is a win-win. They're pros at getting the right CPAs and having the best relationships with the sportsbooks. We're pros at the tech, so it's really just sort of aligning into our various spheres of genius, focusing on what we do best and pushing people in the other direction, either to Catena or to us.
Looking forward into 2026, how do you imagine that you could improve the product itself over the next year?
Sometimes I think I want to get pulled into more bets and more wagers, but I think that's actually the wrong direction. Too often we are focusing on the wagering before the sports. Sports fandom is all about wagering emotion. If you see someone crying at the title parade, I guarantee you it's because they've been crying when their team lost two years before, and it's about a willingness to put your heart on the table. I think often we lose sight of that. So for us, the biggest focus is specifically for our affiliate partners and performance marketers and the monetisation partners, bringing that joy of sport back into the experience.
We're talking with a streamer in the states who is doing micro-payments so you don't have to pay $80 for a month-long subscription to 50 channels. It's just a very quick pass to peek in on a specific match. And so our affiliates are doing great with gambling, but they have to understand that that's decaying just a little bit. But if they were able to marry that exciting wager with that exciting stream, with a ticket for the next game, with a jersey for the player that just kicked the score, the winning goal, it would diversify things a little bit. I think that sports gambling remains the anchor by far, but by sprinkling other things in there, it creates a more robust ecosystem.