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Most skill-gaming apps still work the way they did a decade ago: You play alone, then compare your score to someone else’s after the fact. Topdog is betting sports fans want something closer to playing against each other, and investors just put $2.5 million behind that bet.
The seed round, led by Boston Seed Capital with participation from The Raine Group, Bullpen Capital, Versus Ventures, Spoondrift Capital and Permit Ventures, brings Topdog’s total funding to $4.1 million. Co-founder Aman Agarwal walked PlayUSA through how the company plans to use it.
Skill games dodge sports betting’s patchwork state map
Real-money skill games live in a different legal bucket than sports betting in most states, and that shapes where Topdog is putting its energy. “Depending on the format and mechanics, our games are available in 40 to 45 US states,” Agarwal said. The company is concentrating growth on its four biggest markets.
“For growth, we focus on the four biggest markets: California, Texas, New York, and Florida. As our startup continues to grow, these states are where the players and the volume are.”
One market caught the team off guard. “Interestingly, North Carolina has been a surprise, with some of our top players being based there,” Agarwal said.
Shared liquidity cures the empty-lobby problem
Real-time multiplayer only works if enough people are online to match quickly, a challenge that has sunk plenty of earlier attempts at the format. Topdog’s answer is to widen the pool rather than rely on its own app alone.
“We pool players across our own platforms and our partners’ platforms. The bigger pool lets us match players on skill quickly,” Agarwal said. Right now, that means faster games. “Typical wait times are less than 30 seconds.”
Topdog’s 15% cut, shown before kickoff
Topdog’s pricing is built to be visible before anyone plays. “The model is simple. A player comes in, pays a $1 entry fee to play a game. If it’s a two-player game, the winner wins $1.70,” Agarwal said. That works out to 85% of the pot returned to players, with Topdog keeping 15%, or 30 cents per match.
“The economics are shown up front before every game is played,” he said, adding that the company layers in bonuses and rewards on top of that base structure “for sticking with us.”
Hustle games emerge as fan favorites
“Basketball Hustle,” “21 Hustle,” “Tilt” and “Pinfall” look like very different games on the surface, but Agarwal said they share a design philosophy. “
The common thread that ties them all together is that they are all strategy-based real-time games where players play with each other, see what the others are doing, and even have some comeback opportunities,” he said.
Two titles are pulling ahead with users so far. “We have noticed that both the Hustle games, 21 and Basketball, are player favorites,” he said.
FanDuel’s cofounder eyes global real-time play
Topdog’s investor list includes FanDuel cofounder Nigel Eccles and Boston Seed Capital’s Peter Blacklow, who previously led WorldWinner’s skill-games business. Agarwal is candid about what having them in his corner means.
“We’re grateful for our syndicate of investors. Nigel Eccles and Peter Blacklow are exactly the kind of people you hope to build a gaming startup with,” he said. He credited Blacklow’s background directly. “Peter and his team know how hard it is to create real-time skill games and we’ve solved this challenge.”
As for Eccles, Agarwal said his enthusiasm extends beyond the US. “Nigel is excited about how far real-time games can go, in the US and globally.”
The cash goes to growth, not games
Topdog isn’t short on new games in the pipeline, so the seed round is aimed elsewhere. “Our team already ships new titles at a strong pace, and this funding round is to really help us drive distribution and support user acquisition growth,” Agarwal said.
Three new titles are close behind: a real-time, head-to-head version of bingo; a take on Snakes and Ladders that layers skill-based decisions onto the classic board game; and “Headsup,“ a head-to-head card strategy game built around reading probabilities and an opponent’s hand.
Agarwal is most animated about a fourth project.
“The one I’m most excited about is an NFL game we are developing for launch later this year. It’s an homage to Tecmo Bowl and inspired by the classic coach-mode football games. You win by calling better plays than your opponent,” he said.
The hardest problem Topdog had to solve
Real-time, real-money multiplayer lives or dies on connection quality, and Agarwal said that’s exactly where Topdog spent most of its engineering effort. “For us, it has been keeping two players in a live, connected game at scale. Networks drop and latency swings,” he said.
The stakes make a bad connection costly in a way casual gaming never had to account for. “When money is on the line, a disconnect is a bad experience for both players; one feels robbed, and the other wants their win.” That pushed the team toward a specific kind of engineering.
“So we built our games to be extremely lightweight, run on weak connections and handle latency swings smoothly,” Agarwal said. “That platform is what lets us scale real-time play, and it’s the hardest thing our tech team has built.”
Can skill games beat the leaderboard?
Topdog’s pitch comes down to a simple belief: Sports fans who already spend hours thinking about matchups and strategy want a way to compete directly against each other, not just against a leaderboard.
The company has real investor conviction behind that idea, a pricing model it’s willing to show players up front, and four new titles, including an NFL-flavored one, lined up to test whether the audience agrees.
The next few months of distribution and user growth will show whether the format Agarwal is betting on can move from a promising seed round to a mainstay for sports fans.
