Prehistoric Sharks Helped Launch an iGaming Startup in Las Vegas

Las Vegas-based startup Odditt is developing B2B software for sportsbooks capable of automatically generating betting content and pre-packaged parlays. Company founder Matt Bresler funded the project’s launch through revenue from trading fossils, including prehistoric shark teeth, before securing a pre-seed round and relocating to Nevada in 2024.

How a Hobby from a School Trip Became Startup Capital

The story began with a family trip to South Carolina, where a young Bresler spotted giant shark teeth for sale. The discovery sparked an interest that quickly grew into a full-fledged craft. The teenager began collecting and restoring fossils, and when his own funds ran out, he turned to eBay.

The scale grew rapidly. Over time, Bresler was closing deals on complete skeletons for international clients and participating in exhibitions where T. rex remains were sold. The business ran for seven years. At 21, Bresler left Tufts University in Boston and directed the accumulated revenue toward building Odditt.

Odditt: What They Sell and Who Needs It

Odditt positions itself as a B2B company selling automated betting content to sportsbooks, platform providers, and affiliates. The product lineup includes contextual bets, themed collections, and packaged parlays. The company launched in 2021, with full-scale development in Las Vegas beginning in 2024 following pre-seed funding and team expansion.

Product Scale by the Numbers

Odditt’s key metrics look impressive even against major market players:

• More than 100,000 contextual bets and pre-packaged parlays are generated daily.
• Coverage spans 115 leagues across 45 countries.
• Algorithms draw on more than 25 years of historical odds data.

By comparison, giants such as FanDuel and DraftKings often curate only around 50 pre-packaged parlays by hand. Automation allows Odditt to produce volumes that are simply unattainable through manual methods.

Parlays in Plain Terms and Why a Product Is Built Around Them

A parlay is a bet that combines two or more outcomes on a single bet slip, where every leg must hit for the wager to win. The appeal for bettors is straightforward: a small stake opens the door to a large payout. Yet a new user opening a sportsbook app often has no idea which parlay to build.

“The customer who walks into a sportsbook is increasingly just staring at a blank screen. That’s exactly the problem we solve,” Bresler notes.

Competing for the Attention of a Savvy Gamer

Odditt faces competition not only from major sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings, but also from an entirely different segment of the gambling market. Slots, poker, and crash games all draw attention away from an audience that might otherwise be placing parlays. One reason this segment has become harder for sportsbooks to ignore is that games built around instant outcomes, including Lucky Jet Online and Aviator, have moved from niche casino products to fixtures on hundreds of gambling platforms. Their appeal lies in fast, dynamic gameplay and the sense of control they give players. That speed and immediacy make these formats a serious rival to traditional sports betting. Odditt appears to be wagering that story-driven parlays can reclaim a share of that audience by offering a comparable level of engagement, but anchored to real sporting events.

The economics of parlays explain why sportsbooks pursue them so aggressively. The average hold on parlays runs 20–30%, compared with roughly 5% on straight bets. Parlays account for around 30% of the handle at American sportsbooks yet generate up to 60% of profits. The paradox is that despite such high margins, operators typically offer only a few dozen pre-packaged options. Odditt aims to fill that gap through scale and automation.

Story-Driven Parlays: A Different Approach to Content Presentation

Odditt wraps every bet in a “story”: facts, historical trends, narrative threads. The format supports embedding, scrolling, and swiping. “We offer a packaged parlay product where every option comes with interesting facts and trends that the user can interact with,” Bresler explains.

Betflow as a Testing Ground for Hypotheses

To validate the concept, Odditt launched Betflow — an affiliate app that matches bets to a bettor’s interests, risk tolerance, and playing style. The results were telling: roughly 80% of bets sent through Betflow to sportsbooks are parlays, compared with a US market average of around 30%. Bresler attributes the 2.5x lift to one-click bet placement and clear explanations of why a specific parlay is worth considering.

The July Deal with Optimove: Personalization “Inside the Bet”

In July, Odditt announced a partnership with Optimove — the leading CDP (Customer Data Platform) for iGaming and sportsbook operators. Operators can now embed Odditt’s story-driven bets into player messages, tied to favorite teams, leagues, and interests. “Odditt lets us push personalization one step further — inside the bet itself — so that every message carries a choice based on what the player actually follows,” said Meryl Serouya, Senior Director of Global Partnerships at Optimove.

The June Agreement with Amelco: Historical Odds Data for Model Testing

In June, Odditt signed an agreement with Amelco — a platform provider for brands including Hard Rock and Fanatics. Amelco acquired Odditt’s historical odds data to validate its own models. “What Odditt is building is the infrastructure on which the next era of sports betting will be based,” said Amelco COO Leon Winn.

The Team: A CTO from DraftKings and a 25-Year-Old Founder

In 2024, Elaine Milardo joined the project as CTO and co-founder. She was DraftKings’ first data hire and scaled the giant’s data platform team to 100-plus engineers. Bresler himself, now 25, received industry recognition as part of the “20 in their 20s” award at the G2E conference in Las Vegas last year.

Why Automating a “Fun” Parlay Is Harder Than It Looks

Assembling a themed parlay requires accounting for more than 100 attributes per bet. Teams, players, locations, weather, rivalry history — all of it is stored in a linked repository and processed through a series of selection algorithms. “Building this at scale is extremely difficult. You need a massive interconnected data infrastructure and a chain of evaluations to surface a parlay that is genuinely interesting,” Milardo explains. Odditt’s product pipeline already includes additional formats under testing, among them an experimental emoji-to-parlay converter.

A $1.5M Round and Where the Money Is Going

Odditt is raising a seed round of $1.5 million. The funds are earmarked for accelerating integrations with sportsbook operators and scaling both the engineering and sales teams. The immediate focus is on increasing platform deployments and expanding the product lineup around automated parlay content.