Betting On Bizarre: How Pro League Network Turns Crazy Ideas Into Sports Gold

The gaming industry is bustling with innovative entrepreneurs ready to gamble on great ideas. In the “Start Me Up” series, Casino Reports explores newer, smaller companies either making it big or showing the potential to do so.

Sometimes the best ideas for new sports come from the strangest places. Take, for instance, the day Pro League Network’s creative director pitched “coffin wrestling” during a brainstorming session.

“We built an 8-foot coffin in our lab in Branson,” recalls Mike Salvaris, co-founder of Pro League Network (PLN). “The idea is two fighters, one starts on top of each other inside the coffin, and you have 3 minutes to escape the coffin, then you swap over.”

Obviously.

“If I was to reflect on my life 20 years ago and say in 20 years’ time you’ll be wondering about the mechanics of people fighting in the coffin, I did not think about that on my bingo card,” Salvaris said with a laugh. “But here I am.”

This kind of innovative — if unconventional — thinking has become PLN’s calling card. The company, founded about two and a half years ago, started with a simple observation from the horse racing industry.

“We know from horse racing that there’s a ton of handle and betting that happens outside of what I call tentpole events or major days,” explains Salvaris, who spent years in the thoroughbred racing industry. “There’s about $12 billion in handle in racing, and 55% of that is basically on claiming races, which are like Monday, Tuesday, afternoon, etc.”

Salvaris and co-founder Bill Yucatonis saw an opportunity: With three of the four major sports overlapping in schedule, there were significant gaps in the betting calendar. Their solution? Create and acquire compelling sports content specifically designed for wagering during these off-peak months — and days, and times.

Numerous brands

Today, PLN operates several brands, including Slap Fight Championship (which they acquired), CarJitsu Championship (which they developed), and Street, a 3-on-3 basketball league produced in partnership with Kevin Garnett. Their sports are now approved for wagering in up to 32 states, with some individual sports reaching 20 state approvals.

But what started as a betting-focused venture has evolved into something broader. PLN now reaches about 25 million impressions monthly across their social media platforms, with 1.1 million followers across all accounts. Their content has proven appealing to casual sports fans, whether they bet or not.

“We’re a sports content company,” Salvaris says. “As we’ve grown, we’re doing more of these sorts of events that are broadly appealing to a casual audience. Some may be wagerable and some may not be.”

Their Branson, Missouri studio serves as a sort of sports laboratory, where new concepts can be tested and refined. Take Ultimate Tire Wrestling, where two grapplers attempt to stuff each other into tractor tires. The sport has evolved in real time, with rules being adjusted based on athlete safety and viewer entertainment.

“Every sport evolves,” Salvaris notes. “The NBA makes rule changes all the time, but because these sports are quite nascent, you’ll see them evolve substantially in the first six months of their life.”

Looking ahead, PLN aims to become “a network of casual, fun sports” across multiple platforms. While they hope some sports might break out and achieve wider popularity, Salvaris maintains a pragmatic approach.

“Hope is not a strategy,” he says. “We’re relatively dispassionate about the success of any particular sport. While we love all our sports, at the same time they have to sustain an audience, much like a show would sustain an audience on a TV network.”

And if that audience happens to be watching two fighters trying to escape from a coffin? Well, that’s just another day at Pro League Network.