WinView Games brings college football strategy to your phone with a new app

As college football fans, I think it is safe to say, we are at least a little bit underserved in the fantasy football department. I actually run a Pac-12 fantasy football league for the site, but it’s fairly limited.

So, when I heard about a new app called WinView Games which offered interactive, real-time betting during college games, I was intrigued.

How it works, is you download the app, choose a game, join a room with other players (you can invite your friends) and answer yes-no predictions the app asks throughout a quarter of the game. Winners of games earn the app’s WinCoins, which can be redeemed for cash.

I was recently asked if I would like to speak with the inventor, founder and CEO of the app/company, David Lockton about the background of the app and its relation to college football and I jumped at the chance.

*bonus note, if you watched, or are going to watch, the O.J. Simpson: Made In America documentary, David is featured a number of times in the opening episode.

*Also, if you would like to try WinView Games you can find it in the app store and the Google Play store.

The first thing I was curious about asking Lockton was how the app was created. He shared with me a history of the app which actually started out as a technology for broadcasting stock market information into a home handheld unit, but eventually evolved into a handheld unit for sports which allowed sports television watchers to interact with the broadcast. The idea being born out of his love for sports.

Lockton developed the technology out of his garage and first secured investment from NBC, before other major broadcasters also got on board. The technology and company was successful, generating more than 150 million dollars in eight years while working with the world’s largest media companies, but the $190 handset and the interactive idea was ahead of its time, according to Lockton.

After some more years of development, including working with flip phones, Lockton was able to find the perfect format for the original idea of creating an interactive betting technology for sports television with the arrival of smartphones and app stores. He then brought the app to app stores and it is now officially operating and providing sports fans with legal, real-time betting during games on their phones.

Being a huge college football fan and Pac-12 writer, I was most interested in finding out how and why Lockton was able to bring an app of this kind to college sports.

Included below is a Q&A of my conversation with Lockton about WinView Games and college sports:

What was the motivation for making sure you did college games?

“Real simple, I’m a big college sports fan.”

Do you think there is a chance for WinView Games to fill a “fantasy gap” for college football fans who can’t play fantasy sports due to the lack of college fantasy football?

“Yeah, because this is a free and legal app. My feeling is, you have fans of teams who compete against each other and I find the college fans are actually much more rabid about their teams than the pro fans are about theirs.”

Have you encountered any complications working with the NCAA?

“One of the great things that has been true since we started is we don’t legally need the permission of anyone to do what we’re doing and we don’t need the technical cooperation. I kind of stuck my neck out when I first started and I negotiated with Bart Giamatti of Major League Baseball, Paul Tagliabue of the NFL and David Stern of the NBA that we got agreements with them, but it was our position that we legally, don’t need their permission to do this. We cannot use the logos of the teams, we can’t use the league logos or refer to the teams as the Rams, but we can call them Los Angeles, but other than that, we don’t need their permission. The same exists with the NCAA.”

I have to ask you, as a Pac-12 website and with you being a Michigan fan, who are your favorite and least-favorite Pac-12 teams?

“I went to Stanford business school and I moved back to the Bay Area right when John Elway was in his last two years at Stanford, so I’m a died in the wool Stanford fan, and I’m having so much fun watching Christian McCaffrey this year. Also, I lived in LA and was surrounded by LA graduates, so they’re the team I love to beat the most.”

For more information on WinView Games. Check out www.winviewgames.com.