Cory Johnson: Well GameOn, a mobile engagement platform for sports fans, is ramping up its efforts to the next big thing. The San Francisco based startup raised $2 million in its latest funding round, and is backed by some of the biggest names in sports. Earlier, Carol Massar and I, my radio co-host, we sat down with GameOn founder Alex Beckman and, even better, NBA legend "The Glove," Gary Payton. I asked him what the problems GameOn was trying to solve. Take a listen.

Alex Beckman: We're the best way for fans to chat about sports. We're on iOS and Android, and we're growing on other platforms. We realize that fans are on mobile, and there weren't a lot of great mobile apps that actually serve both chat and content, and we're bringing it all in one place.

Cory Johnson: Yeah. There's this experience when you're watching a game and your buddy is like hitting you up. First of all, it can ruin it if you're watching it on a delay, so I'll just put my phone away.

Alex Beckman: Right. Spoiler alert.

Cory Johnson: But you know, even if you're at a game or watching a game, one friend is texting you on WhatsApp, and another friend is texting you on iMessage, and then somebody is posting something on Twitter. I mean, you know, you're a big sports fan as well as a player.

Gary Payton: Well that's fun. You know, our world is going now to this technology stuff. So for when they came and approached me, you know, there's a lot of people that follow me and they want to do that. So if I'm on my couch and I'm hitting somebody and I'm doing emojis and doing things like that and bringing it back to them while we're doing the game, they keep involved with the game and then they're talking to me too. So that's really cool, you know, and that's what it's all about right now in this world with these kids, because they want to do that and they want to stay involved with you like that. So it's fun for you to be on the couch--

Cory Johnson: Kids like us.

Gary Payton: Yeah. We're kids too. You know, we're kids, big old kids.

Carol Massar: Let me just jump in. Alex, let me ask you about the business model. I mean, tell me about-- you know, you guys have been doing this for a little while. Talk to me about how you're making money doing this.

Alex Beckman: Absolutely. So we started out by creating these emojis. Gary has an excellent pack of emojis. We give a lot of them away for free. We're really interested in growing our fan base. But we're also now starting to charge for them, and consumers pay for the high-end emojis. We now, though, are working with sponsors. We just signed our first sponsorship deal. It's a nice-size check for us as a two-year-old startup. And we're seeing that our users are engaged, and they're engaging in both private and public chats, and people want to be involved in that. Brands want to be involved in that.

Cory Johnson: What do the sponsors get out of it?

Alex Beckman: The sponsors get to be in the huddles with these groups. So imagine you have a private group chat with your friends and you're talking about the Thunder or you're talking about the Niners, and it's 10 people who are all within 20 miles of the game. Sponsors can get in there, and it's a natural way to connect. As opposed to Facebook Messenger, where it would be weird to interject a sponsor if somebody is talking about a trip to the stadium, here, they're already talking about the Niners. They've self-selected as talking about the Niners, so it wouldn't be strange to sell them a Niners jersey or tickets to the game, or have one of the existing sponsors come in and show what they're up to.

Cory Johnson: You've tweeted about 8,000 times. You've got 141,000 followers on Twitter, and I would imagine as a verbal player that you were in the league, it's a fun medium for you.

Gary Payton: It's a fun thing. You know, let me tell you. At first, I wasn't on the Twitter and stuff and tweeting now. Now that I've got with GameOn, it is fun now because the people are coming back. Now, I'm tweeting more. You know, I'm trying to get involved with it. And now, my tweet base is going to go up more, because now, I'm involved with it because of this. So it's going to be just fun. It's just a fun thing to do. A lot of us try to get in this technology and we don't know nothing about it, but now, with this GameOn, they make it easier. It's one click, and it's easy. And then once you know a basketball player, a football player or something, we're not really getting into technology and trying to read into it. But if it's easy for us to understand, we can click and it's right there, it's more easy, and GameOn is just like that.