Splash Sports made … well, it made a pretty big splash earlier this summer when the company announced a record-breaking $21 million NFL survivor contest that could be played online instead of having to schlep to Nevada to get your money down.
Now it’s tinkering with the original formula.
The company has changed the pick schedule for its flagship $1,000 contest after hearing from players who thought the original setup — eight weeks where contestants had to pick two winners instead of one — was a little much.
And Splash has added something considerably more interesting: a marketplace where players can buy and sell live survivor entries during the season.
Let’s start with the rules change.
Splash originally planned double-pick weeks in Weeks 3, 6, 9, and 12 through 16. After talking to players, ranging from casual contestants to veterans of the big Las Vegas survivor contests, the company decided to ditch the Week 3 and Week 6 doubles.
That leaves six double-pick weeks: Week 9, then Weeks 12 through 16.
“We got a bunch of feedback,” Splash co-founder and co-CEO TJ Ross told InGame. “Some people thought that seemed too challenging, especially for a more casual type of player.”
Since the change was made after the contest went live, Splash offered refunds to anyone unhappy with the change.
So far?
“To my knowledge, no one has taken us up on the offer,” Ross said.
Buying and selling
The bigger addition — and what is now really separating Splash from the competition — is the marketplace.
Survivor, as participants are aware, is a simple game to play. Pick an NFL winner each week, without using the same team twice. Lose once and you’re done, and the last player(s) standing gets the money.
Splash’s contest, run in tandem with Polymarket, guarantees $21 million and is available online to players in 35 states and Canada. Unlike with Circa Survivor, the current heavyweight in the space, there’s no trip to Nevada and no proxy required.
As a result, the marketplace is taking advantage of the online setup.
Players will be able to sell surviving survivor entries to other verified Splash users, with the buyer and seller setting the price. Splash facilitates the transaction but doesn’t set the market.
The idea is to put a dollar value on something survivor players have always had but couldn’t monetize: equity.
Say you buy an entry for $1,000. Chaos hits in Week 1, a handful of heavy favorites lose, and suddenly a big chunk of the field is gone. But your entry survived, and maybe you can sell it for $1,500.
“It allows Survivor to go from a game where there is one winner at the end of the year to one where anybody could be a winner as soon as Week 2,” Ross noted.
Players can hold up to 150 entries at a time, including entries purchased through the marketplace.
Splash also added group entries, another feature Ross said players had requested. Up to 10 people can split one entry, with each user going through KYC verification and contributing their own money. Ten buddies who don’t feel like dropping $1,000 each on an individual entry can now throw in $100 each and sweat the season together.
As for how active the marketplace will be, Ross isn’t making any Year 1 promises, but he has a pretty big long-term vision.
“I think there will be a day, whether it’s this year or not, where there will be more money traded over the course of the season in a marketplace than the amount of dollars in the contest,” he said.
For now, Splash has to get everyone to Week 1, and then the trading can begin.
