Don't have time for fantasy sports? Lock gives you a quick fantasy fix on your iPhone

While gamers have Dungeons & Dragons, sports fans have fantasy sports. But not everyone can make the time to participate in a fantasy sports league for an entire season.

Lock, a free new iPhone app launching today, aims to scratch your fantasy itch easily by letting you make sports predictions with your friends. Why bother setting up a complicated fantasy lineup when you can bet on a specific player or team’s performance right from your phone?

“We thought the sports space was really missing something,” said Lock cofounder and COO Todd Heyden in an interview with VentureBeat. “We wanted something simpler, wanted something entertaining.”

As you can see in the video, using Lock is as easy as signing in with your Facebook profile, finding a friend on the service (presumably you can wrangle a couple of friends to sign up all at once, and Lock will highlight any of your Facebook friends using the app), and make your predictions. You can also place specific wagers on your predictions, which the app keeps track of. Lock offers notifications to keep you aware of big events during a game, and it also shows you the current score and highlights player stats to help you keep track of your prediction.

I didn’t have a chance to test out the app, but it sounds like a far cry from the complicated, web-based interfaces typically used to manage fantasy teams.

Another plus: Lock doesn’t leave you sore out of luck in the middle of the season if you have a weak lineup.

Lock is based in Chicago and has just raised $500,000 in seed funding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA7ryAyRCHQ