Have you ever wanted to bet on two grown men choking each other with a seat belt while in a car?
Enter Pro League Network, which offers obscure sports that bettors can target.
“Pro League Network is a portfolio of niche and emerging sports that we own completely, and we operate for a sports entertainment and betting audience,” co-founder Mike Salvaris told The Post.
The company owns and operates professional sports such as mini golf, car jitsu and slap gighting, and it is even partnered with Kevin Garnett in a three-vs three basketball league called Str33t.
The cornerstone of Pro League Network’s business model is catering to the gambler, who can wager on these wide variety of sports on Bet365 and DraftKings in states including New Jersey, Tennessee, Arizona, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois and more.
“We prioritize gambling because there’s a lot of overlap in the professional sports calendar here [in the United States],” Salvaris said. “There’s not really a lot of good domestic content to bet on, on like a Monday afternoon, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.”
Bettors surely know this feeling, as the beginning of the March Madness Tournament is known as a betting holiday, with an abundance of college basketball games going on throughout the day.
March Madness came to a close Monday night when UConn defeated Purdue to win its sixth national title and finish a perfect 6-0 against the spread during this year’s run.
The American Gaming Association estimated that $2.72 billion would be bet on March Madness in the legal US gambling market.
Pro League Network company is looking to capitalize on the lack of daytime sporting events.
They are producing sporting events that go live on streaming platforms; think of it as the TKO Holdings Group (owners of WWE and UFC) for even more obscure sports events.
“We are even more vertically integrated because we even own the facilities in which we are producing sports,” Salvaris continued. “We have a studio in Branson, Mo., where we produce a lot of our combat sports. From the athletes to the cameraman to everything, we are in control of that distribution.”
It’s a lot of content and something that sportsbooks crave; they want to take bets on anything and everything.
And if you can bet on it, people will watch.
“Everyone thinks it’s kind of crazy that we are filming a couple of guys grappling in a car, but it’s bloody compelling,” Salvaris said.
“We have spent a lot of time on the safety side, perfecting all of the rules with the sanctioning body … A few tweaks here or there and a few pass-outs with the seatbelt choke,” co-founder Bill Yucatonis told The Post.
Get the lowdown on the Best USA Sports Betting Sites and Apps
Between Car Jitsu and SlapFIGHT, the company has used combat sports as a hit on social media.
On April 27, Car Jitsu will have one of its biggest events in the history of the sport when former UFC fighters Mark Coleman and Randy Couture will commentate live from BrinxTV Studio in Atlanta.
