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Seth Young ROLR CEO. Image: ROLR From age 12, Seth Young got into competitive gaming. He said it became serious between the ages of 17 and 22 when he rose through the ranks in CS2 and got paid to play.
While he still has a soft spot for esports, it has taken a back seat as he focuses on what he calls the biggest opportunity of his career: prediction markets.
Young became the CEO of High Roller Technologies this time last year and is overseeing the company’s move into event contracts with its platform ROLR .
“We know exactly who we are, and we know exactly who we aren’t,” Young told me over a call this week. “We are not DraftKings, we are not FanDuel, we are not Fanatics, we are not Kalshi.
“We’re not a crypto exchange, we’re not a social network. We’re a pure-play prediction markets business in the US, and we’re not taking a “follow the leader” approach. That’s just a recipe for failure.”
The platform will be flexible, Young said in a press release when announcing a recent deal with mrkts.com to advance the launch.
Esports is attracting growing volume on prediction markets, nearing major league sports in terms of the average trading per match. But Young does not believe it is ready to compete with the nation’s biggest sports just yet.
“It pains me to say that I don’t think the esports market is there yet in the United States,” said Young. “I said this seven years ago, and I’m still saying it now.
“There’s a big difference between seeing everybody piled into an arena to watch a League of Legends game and that activity translating to trading, in this case, on prediction markets. It just hasn’t translated at scale in the US yet. The market has some time before it matures.”
With the launch of ROLR taking up most of Young’s focus, he rarely has time to game these days, but did have a brief spell playing Overwatch on Xbox.
“I quickly cracked the top 500,” he told Esports Insider. “It was maybe two months of playing, and then I realized I had to stop. I was spending way too much time on the Xbox.”
He may not be gaming, but Young’s thirst for competition remains. Prediction markets are expected to reach $1 trillion in volume by 2030, and a growing number of platforms are vying to attract traders.
“This is the ultimate competition,” Young said. “I love that I get to wake up and work in a business like this, on things that I enjoy with people that I like.”
So, what will set ROLR apart from the competition?
“There are many, many things I think that are going to separate us,” Young answered. “We’re doing a lot of work on product, and I think we can lead in that…