Jackpocket Raises $120M To Expand Its Lottery App Into Mobile Gaming
11/09/21, 2:21 PM
Money raised
$120 million
Apps that let people do virtually what they would have previously had to carry out in person have seen a boom in the last 20 months of pandemic living, and one of them today is announcing a big fundraise on the back of its own strong growth. Jackpocket, which currently has 2.5 million active users who use its app to buy tickets to play lotteries in 10 U.S. states, has picked up $120 million in a Series D round, funding that CEO and founder Peter Sullivan said it plans to use to expand from its core business of lottery ticket sales into a wider array of mobile gaming, and to take its business to more markets both in the U.S. and further afield, both on its own and in partnership with others.
Company Info
Additional Info
Sullivan said the company would not be disclosing its valuation with this round, which brings the total raised by the company to just under $200 million. The company has also made a play for being a more “responsible” player in the gambling world. All the same, and even with a clear market opportunity (its biggest competition at the time was the fragmented convenience store market) the startup found it very hard initially to raise money. “It was considered taboo to do real money gaming at the time,” Sullivan said of his experience of knocking on doors in Sand Hill Road in the early days, one reason why the company raised relatively little (around $25 million) before this year’s Series C. The company cites figures from industry group North American State and Provincial Lotteries that estimate that the total annual spend from consumers on lotteries is $85.6 billion. (Jackpocket was founded in New York but also has an operation out of Santa Barbara, CA; that’s where CEO and founder Peter Sullivan is based and was speaking from when I interviewed him for this story.) Jackpocket is part lottery ticket storefront, but also part virtualizer of the whole lottery experience.