The news: SportsStack, a unified data layer for sports betting and prediction markets built by ex-FanDuel and Fanatics engineer Amar Rao, has closed a funding round that includes BettingStartups Capital. It’s a stake disclosed publicly for the first time on the BettingStartups podcast, and SportsStack’s Unified API now supports more than 30 data providers across scores, stats, odds, and media content.

Zoom in: The bigger opportunity is a settlement API launched this year, which cross-validates data across sources to catch misgrades before a sportsbook pays out. Rao says operators he’s talked to are “losing north of like five, 10, $20 million a year on just regrades alone,” a cost that hits harder for prediction markets, which can’t claw back a payout at all. Underdog and Novig are both live customers, using SportsStack for mapping and settlement as they expand into prediction markets.

Why it matters: Every sports data provider ships its own IDs and formats, so companies have historically rebuilt the same mapping layer over and over. Rao self-funded SportsStack before this round, prioritizing the right partners over speed of capital, and is chasing what he calls becoming “the default infrastructure layer” between data providers and everything built on top of them. Watch for SportsStack in the Startup Zone at SBC Summit Lisbon this September.