Free-to-play specialist, led by former senior NFL executive, attracts core investment from key heavyweights to accelerate growth

Inside The Pocket (ITP), the leading free-to-play (F2P) aggregation platform, has secured institutional investment of $4m from a consortium of heavy-hitting investors, spearheaded by WinSure Global, as it bids to expand its global footprint.

The core financing will be used to power further development of its proprietary platform for international growth. As a result, Inside The Pocket’s experienced leadership team, led by CEO and former senior NFL executive Hussain Naqi (previously SVP of both Fan Engagement and International Development at the Jacksonville Jaguars) will also be able to draw on the added expertise of senior WinSure Global executives, alongside other notables in this formative funding round, including The Rokker Network and its CEO Andy Rogers.

This strategic funding accordingly positions Inside The Pocket for a defining Series A round later this year, bolstering its reach into untapped territories. There, its proven international scope and flair for localization promises to drive diversified fan engagement around targeted free-to-play sports games. Thanks to its open-aggregation approach, Inside The Pocket already offers the broadest and best-curated mix of games available, with one platform integration acting as a gateway to virtually unlimited content.

As a pioneering free-to-play aggregation platform for the gaming industry, Inside The Pocket is committed to being an agile customer acquisition and retention tool, driving engagement through a range of games whose formats responsibly acquire and retain customers at low cost but also remain fully compliant as regulation continues to roll out across regions from the U.S. to Asia, Africa and LatAm. Its agnostic platform offers a strategic solution which works territory-by-territory, educating uninitiated audiences with fully-integrated games.

Consequently, this pre-Series A round, bolstered by the backing of some of the industry’s most successful proponents in the F2P domain, marks a significant milestone for the company. Inside The Pocket’s technical know-how sets it apart in the crucial F2P domains of game development, player management and, above all, multi-level data. Its dashboards provide clients with the full picture on player activity, thanks to aggregated cross-network player data (e.g. from individual customer journeys to in-play data, and other shared insights on player segments).

Hussain Naqi, Founder and CEO of Inside The Pocket, said: “Inside The Pocket provides the most modular and democratised strategic F2P platform around, assembling the best minds and models for a new era in sports fan engagement, localized to specific global markets. When you’re signed up individually to one or more developers, you can end up with a set of expensive integrations or all your eggs in one basket. Our open-aggregation platform takes the sting out of such outmoded deals by providing the requisite flexibility for maturing markets.

“We’re supremely well-positioned to leverage this opportunity because we can diversify content, leverage consumer data and partition it for our partners as the international markets’ shifting sands coalesce. Harte Hanks, the world’s leading consumer-data provider, also grants us unique consumer insights that will allow us to hyper-segment our audience communication over time, including the World Cup 2022 football.

“It’s a real validation to be backed on our journey by such proven players, many of whom have fantastic track records in building, investing and marshalling innovative digital companies to larger scale and leadership positions in the ever-evolving global gaming landscape.”

Andy Rogers, Founder and CEO of The Rokker Network, commented: “At Rokker, we provide a natural habitat for rapid growth among some of the emerging forces in the igaming sector. We’ve monitored and supported Inside The Pocket’s impressive development, and are keen to assist them in this, a key moment in the evolution of their agnostic F2P platform whose core philosophy is truly democratising gaming for global operators. These game-changing steps cohere with our own vision around the power of tech in digital sports betting.”

James Bridges, Director at WinSure Global added: “We specialise in identifying best-in-breed solutions across a range of asset classes and investment strategies. Indeed, WinSure Global undertakes to generate capital growth by holding long-term strategic investments in companies that can influence the future of industry. Inside The Pocket’s offering, on both B2B and B2C fronts, immediately improves and delivers a step change for F2P aggregation, so it’s another strong story for WinSure to get behind.

“Hussain and his team articulate a simple yet transformative vision: one single integration to open the door to the entire F2P marketplace. So, it’s this highly-flexible platform, combined with their ability to execute, which sets Inside The Pocket up for international expansion – particularly across some formative and fragmented markets which demand localized solutions.”