The office pool, taken off the spreadsheet and rebuilt for real money - where every fan is the commissioner.
The whale and the wager: Splash Sports' own promo art, app open to a $1 Million Survivor board. A company that grew up as a spreadsheet, dressed for prime time.
There is a tidy way to make money in sports gaming, and it is to be the house. You set the odds, you build in a margin, and over a long enough season the math does the rest. Splash Sports, a Denver company founded in 2021 by TJ Ross and Joel Milton, decided to do almost the opposite. It does not want you to bet against a machine. It wants you to beat your friends.
That distinction is not marketing. It is the whole business model. In a peer-to-peer contest, players put up entry fees, compete against each other, and the platform takes a rake - a cut of the pot - rather than a position against the bettor. Nobody at Splash is rooting for the Chiefs to cover. The company gets paid whether you win or lose, which turns out to be a calmer place to build a company than the sportsbook trenches where DraftKings and FanDuel spend fortunes acquiring customers and then hoping the results break their way.
The format is the oldest one in American sports fandom: the office pool. Survivor, where you pick one team to win each week and get eliminated when you're wrong. Pick'em. March Madness brackets. These have existed forever, usually administered by a coworker with a spreadsheet and a Venmo request. Splash's insight was that this ritual had real infrastructure underneath it, and that the infrastructure was for sale.
So in 2021 it bought two of them - RunYourPool and OfficeFootballPool, decades-old institutions with roughly 600,000 loyal players between them - and set about turning a habit into a platform. By the company's own count, that base has since grown past 2.3 million active users. Growth by acquisition of an existing ritual is an underrated strategy, and Splash ran it twice more, folding in the stock-market-style gaming app Jock MKT in 2024.
"We've seen countless media companies and leagues invest in new sports rights, but interactivity and engagement is crucial."TJ Ross · Co-Founder & CEO, Splash Sports
The catalog is built around one idea - fans run the contest - expressed in formats that range from the season-long grind to the single-day sprint.
Pick one team to win each week; one loss and you're out. Last player standing takes the pot, including guaranteed versions like the $1 Million Survivor.
Predict outcomes across a slate of games and climb a live leaderboard against a pool of other fans - not the house.
Selections are grouped into tiers, adding a layer of roster strategy to peer-to-peer play.
A fast, single-day peer-to-peer mode with up to 50x payout potential for players who want action tonight.
The two acquired pool-management platforms that seeded Splash's audience and still power commissioner-run contests.
A partner and creator program that pays organizers up to $2M in bonuses to run branded contests at scale.
In June 2026, Splash announced a partnership that makes the model concrete. Together with Polymarket, the prediction-market platform, it launched what both companies call the largest pro football Survivor contest ever run: a prize pool of $21 million, guaranteed.
The numbers are worth staring at. Entry runs $1,000, with up to 150 entries per person and 22,700 total slots. If the whole thing sells out, the rake works out to roughly 8%. Polymarket traders reach the contest through a dedicated "Splash Market" tab; Splash fans get exposure to prediction markets. The contest runs in 35 states plus Canada.
There is a nice detail in how the deal came together. According to Ross, Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan was already a Splash user - and had won Survivor contests on the platform - before the two companies ever sat down. When the person you want to partner with is already your customer, the pitch tends to write itself.
"The next phase of sports engagement will be defined by gamification of live events."Shayne Coplan · Founder, Polymarket
The cap table reads like a sports Rolodex. The $14.5M Series B in October 2025 was led by Dream Ventures, but the more interesting names sit in earlier rounds.
Dream Ventures (lead, Series B), Accomplice, Acies Investments, Boston Seed Capital, Velvet Sea Ventures, Green Wave Ventures, Evolution Partners, and EP Golf Ventures - a partnership between the PGA of America and the Dodgers-linked Elysian Park Ventures.
Angel investors include Red Sox architect Theo Epstein, soccer star Alex Morgan, Patriots president Jonathan Kraft, Phish bassist Mike Gordon, and Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy. When the people who know sports best all write checks, it's a signal.
TJ Ross and Joel Milton launch the company and immediately acquire RunYourPool and OfficeFootballPool.
The peer-to-peer real-money platform emerges from stealth with Survivor, Pick'em and Tiers.
Splash acquires stock-market-style app Jock MKT and closes a $14.1M A2 round, launching Partner Solutions.
Dream Ventures leads the round; the user base tops two million.
A $21M guaranteed Survivor contest - the largest pro football survivor pool ever staged.
Splash's stated aim is to let fans serve as their own commissioners - creating, hosting and joining peer-to-peer real-money contests across formats and jurisdictions, rather than betting into a book.
Skill-based gaming law varies state by state. Splash treats its 44-state-plus-Canada footprint as a deliberate, navigable feature - contest availability shifts with local rules.
The customer became the partner. Polymarket's founder won Survivor pools on Splash before the two companies teamed up.
Phish, quietly. Investor Mike Gordon is Phish's bassist; backer Velvet Sea Ventures is named after a Phish song.
Golf's power brokers. EP Golf Ventures links Splash to both the PGA of America and the Dodgers' ownership group.
Bought, not built. Splash's first audience came from acquiring two decades-old office-pool institutions.
Everyone's a commissioner. The company pays organizers up to $2M in bonuses to run the pools.
500% jump. Guaranteed NFL season contests grew to $6.4M, a fivefold year-over-year leap.
A skill-based sports gaming platform where fans create and join peer-to-peer real-money contests - Survivor, Pick'em, Tiers and daily fantasy - competing against each other rather than a sportsbook.
TJ Ross (CEO) and Joel Milton founded parent company Splash Inc. in 2021, acquiring RunYourPool and OfficeFootballPool at launch.
Across 44 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Canada, with contest availability varying by state due to skill-gaming laws.
It takes a rake on real-money contest entry fees in a peer-to-peer model, plus a B2B partner-solutions business powering branded and commissioner-run pools.
Announced in June 2026, it's the world's largest pro football Survivor contest - $21 million guaranteed, $1,000 per entry - accessible through the Splash app in 35 states and Canada.