playDTC builds knowledge games where the sport itself decides the outcome. Our first platform, GoldTickets, is live now — starting with pro football.
Meet the studio Play GoldZone →Who We Are
We didn't start with a pitch deck. We started with a belief — that the greatest games are the ones where the playing field is actually level. Where knowledge, skill, and passion determine who wins. Not luck. Not access. Not connections.
GoldTickets is our first platform: a Verified Sport experience built on real NFL performance data, where your knowledge of the game is the only thing that matters. Every outcome is determined by what actually happened on the field — nothing else.
The First Game · NFL
Pick five NFL players and a defense. Fit them under a $200 salary cap. Lock your ticket before the first kickoff of the week — then do nothing. Six targets, identical for every player in the contest, are set by real statistical projections and settled by what actually happens on the field.
GoldZone launches as a free-to-play game — a deliberate choice. Three free tickets every week, all season. No purchase, no deposit, ever. Clear all six targets in a single week and you earn a GoldTicket — your seat in the season-ending Finale, where the Vault is decided.
The knowledge game comes first. Scale comes next. Paid play follows when the time is right.
The Vault holds the season prize. It starts at a $10,000 floor and it is never reduced — the studio can only add to it, never take from it.
To win it: earn a GoldTicket. Clear all six targets in a single week and one is yours. GoldTickets stack — earn a new one every time you go six for six. At Crack the Vault, the full Vault is paid out: ranked by total score, with a reserved bonus for anyone who clears all seven.
Free to play · 18+ · Where permitted by lawThe Platform
Launching free to play. Weekly slates, a $200 cap, six targets, and a season-ending Finale. Real NFL performance data settles every ticket. Three free entries per week, all season — no purchase required.
Basketball. The second GoldTickets title. Same platform, same wallet, same account. Designed and in development. Coming Christmas Day 2026.
Baseball. The third GoldTickets title. One account carries across every sport we build. Gold Slam is on the slate after basketball.
Soccer. The fourth title on the platform. One category, one platform, four sports. Every title shares the same infrastructure and the same Vault mechanic.
The Studio & Team
Not hires. Equity holders. And not a first time build.
Founder & CEO
As Founder and CEO, Ajay conceived GoldTickets, designed the game mechanics, and built most of the platform himself. Twenty-seven years in the games industry gave him the technical foundation — but he will tell you the game got sharper in the room, with this team. A Founding Partner who played thirteen seasons of professional football. A Head of Production with a PhD and Super Bowl experience. A Strategic Advisor who spent seven years inside the legal architecture of the industry. An Art Director steeped in the visual language of sport. A Head of Engineering who has spent twenty years building payment systems, games, and AI-first platforms. What came out is a product none of them could have made alone.
Founding Partner
Ten NFL seasons and thirteen in professional football as a linebacker — three Pro Bowls, two First-Team All-Pro selections, and a Super Bowl ring with the Baltimore Ravens. Undrafted out of UCLA, Brendon made the league through instinct and work ethic and proved that the underdog always has a fighting chance. That is the spirit behind GoldZone: a game where knowledge and preparation are the only edge that matters, and where the person nobody sees coming can go six for six any week of the season.
Art & UI Director
Carmen designed the visual world of GoldTickets from the ground up — the interface, the identity, and every surface a player sees. A fine arts graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she has spent her career building the visual language of games that feel worth inhabiting, most recently as Lead Character Concept Artist at Limit Break alongside Ajay. Her contribution to GoldZone is the difference between a knowledge contest and a game: the art direction that makes the mechanics feel alive.
Head of Production
Richard brought the production architecture that makes GoldTickets run. A PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins, a strategy consultant at BCG, and the Head of Production at Limit Break who directed the Super Bowl live event that minted thousands of digital collectibles in under sixty seconds — he thinks in systems and executes under pressure. His fingerprints are on every slate, every settlement cycle, and every season-long operation that has to work correctly the first time.
Head of Engineering
A frontline career software engineer, Alan has been building payment systems, games, and other applications for more than 20 years. He helped steer the direction of the engineering architecture GoldTickets runs on — from the security boundary, across the free and money paths, and the scoring engine that settles each ticket against real NFL data. GoldZone is his second AI-first engineering effort; he previously architected and built an agentic gaming platform for Moku (a16z Speedrun SR004).
Strategic Advisor
As Strategic Advisor, Jordan helped shape the legal and commercial architecture that defines how GoldTickets operates — the category framework and the prize design that holds up under scrutiny. An Intellectual Property attorney who spent seven years as Chief Business Officer at Stokastic, one of the most established companies in daily fantasy and sports betting, he has one of the sharpest reads in the industry on exactly what a skill contest needs to be built right. That read is in GoldTickets' DNA.
Now Open
Get ready for the 2026 NFL season — sign up and start building your tickets for Week 1.
Register at GoldTickets →18+. Available only where permitted by law.