Mojo, a sports-betting startup from Marc Lore and A-Rod that raised $100 million, is cutting 20% of its staff

• Mojo, a sports betting company, is laying off 20% of its employees.
• A-Rod and Marc Lore’s startup had previously announced a $100 million funding round.
• Mojo is shifting its focus to its B2B division, according to four sources close to the company.

Mojo, a sports-betting startup cofounded by MLB legend Alex Rodriguez and Jet.com cofounder Marc Lore, has confirmed to Business Insider that it is laying off 20% of its workforce.

On Thursday, it announced the layoffs.

Four people close to the company, including one layoffee, described the job cuts as part of a strategic shift away from its consumer-facing business and toward its B2B trading technology. A Mojo spokesperson stated that the company was not selling its B2C business, but declined to comment on whether the company’s strategy had changed.

“Unfortunately, we laid off about 20% of the company today,” a spokesperson said of the layoffs. “It’s certainly a sad day for our company and we thank those talented employees for their many contributions.”

According to a 2022 pitch deck, Mojo had approximately 95 full-time employees as of last year. The company would not comment on the current employee count.

Mojo, which was founded by Lore and Rodriguez, as well as entrepreneurs Vinit Bharara and Bart Stein, had raised $100 million in funding from investors such as Thrive Capital and the NFL Players Association.

Mojo has a player stock market where users can trade on an athlete’s performance as if it were stock in a company. The app will be available in New Jersey in September 2022, and the company will launch a fantasy sports offering in 19 states and Washington, DC later this year.

Mojo is one of the last of a generation of large venture-backed pre-revenue sports-betting operators that raised large sums of money in order to disrupt the US market. It is very expensive to compete in sports betting, and the market for these companies has changed dramatically in the last two to three years. Funding for startups has become more difficult to come by, and investors at all stages want to see a path to profitability as well as significant user growth.

“Mojo was very ambitious, and it was going to take a long time to find product market fit and profitability,” one company insider said. “It’s one of the last dinosaurs of that type of startup.”

The company is one of several startups across the sports betting landscape that have laid off employees this year, in what has been a difficult environment for early-stage companies in general.

Mojo said it would have more information about what’s next for the company soon.

“Stay tuned for some exciting developments coming soon,” said the spokesperson.