While most sports betting operators seem to be settling into defined market-share tiers six years after the repeal of PASPA made such gambling a nationwide possibility, the industry is still relatively nascent. And when it comes to the critical sub-genre of responsible gambling, Jordan Bender, a senior equity research analyst at Citizens JMP, feels the industry is still in the “top of the first inning.”

It could be argued that the first step toward becoming a more responsible gambler is being honest about one’s strengths and weaknesses. Sure, you may have just hit on a fat four-leg parlay on last night’s Knicks-Sixers game, but what about the four before that one, none of which cashed?

A handful of sportsbook-adjacent apps have stepped into this void in recent years, including BettorTakes, which has developed an algorithm that comes up with “a numeric representation as to the bettor’s proficiency when it comes to that bet,” BettorTakes CEO Steve Rubenfaer told Sports Handle sister site MI Bets nearly a year ago.

“The real value is when the algorithm says this is something you kind of suck at,” Rubenfaer continued. “Maybe you should think twice about placing that bet. This is how we make better bettors. When you come face-to-face with something you’re not good at, you might add a little mindfulness. Hopefully it will improve your performance and improve your bankroll.”

A more comprehensive version of this model has emerged in the form of Juice Reel, which was founded in 2019 by a data architect named Ricky Gold who “grew up in a New York sports betting household” before the internet was even a thing. Like BettorTakes, Juice Reel tracks a user’s lifetime performance across all betting apps, be they legal or offshore, and breaks their performance down by type of wager.

Among other amenities, Juice Reel also presents the best odds offered by legal sportsbooks in real time, provides access to what other bettors are backing, and aggregates its entire user base’s data into its trademarked SharpMush algorithm.

“What that really is is a better way to identify sharp bets than the current mechanism to do it,” Gold explained. “Currently, people identify bets as sharp when a lot of money is on one side of a game and not a lot of bets are on it and people think that’s a sharp bet. But if Floyd Mayweather puts a million dollars on a random college basketball game, that’s not a sharp bet. A real barometer for what a sharp bet is is what really good bettors are betting on. 

“We know what really good bettors are betting on because of their betting history and where they’re putting their money. Not only do we know where really good bettors are putting their money, we also know where really bad bettors are putting their money. What SharpMush is is a measure of the difference between what the sharps and what the mush are doing. We use that pool of community data in different ways for the benefit of the whole community.”

A darling among analysts

While most domestic service providers steer clear of the offshore market, Gold sees its inclusion as an asset — and a way to push rogue Juice Reel users back onshore.

“While we sync in bets from regulated and unregulated markets, we only present offers or line shopping for the regulated markets,” Gold said. “We only push bettors to onshore and regulated platforms. We think we’re the only company actively reducing offshore betting by catering to bettors who bet offshore and by presenting them offers to move onshore.”

Gold also sees Juice Reel as a way to clean up the unruly pick-selling industry.

“There are huge flaws in the betting advice industry,” he said. “You’re bombarded with fraudsters trying to sell you picks with no sense of transparency. There’s no trust from the buyer’s perspective, and then from the seller’s perspective, it takes a lot — you need to build a following, sell the picks, collect the money. With a product like ours, you’re building an authenticated profile of yourself.”

Since it was unveiled to the public in 2023 after a 2021 beta launch, Juice Reel has become something of a darling among analysts like Bender, who regularly features Juice Reel data in his research notes.

“I was at a dinner at G2E, and that’s where I met Ricky and told him this was the data I’d be looking for,” Bender said. “I told him if you can have this data, you can monetize this — even hedge funds would use it. To have a sample size of 5,000 to 10,000 people on a monthly basis, it gives you a pretty good sense of what’s going on. It’s not that we can use this to make an investment call, but it’s more the inner workings of how this industry actually works — anywhere from bet sizes to how many bets people make per day.” 

“His data helped me say, ‘Here’s how many parlays per leg people are making.’ His information has helped me a lot.”

An asterisk and a prediction

One “asterisk” Bender is quick to acknowledge is that a Juice Reel bettor is cut from a pretty sophisticated cloth, which limits how far some findings can be projected.

“Whatever I put out there [with Juice Reel], I always keep that in mind — these are more mature, experienced bettors,” Bender said. “If you’re linking your sports betting accounts, this isn’t the average Joe who saw a commercial on TV. The average Joe is not doing five bets per day.

“Some of the stuff I get [from Juice Reel] that isn’t out there is how much of the bets are coming from single wagers versus parlays on a dollar basis, on a bet basis. I get international data — how much is being bet offshore versus onshore. You’ll never find that number. I ask him for how many legs per parlay and how has that trended over the past two or so years? It’s a nice combination of stuff that an investor or someone in the industry will never be able to get or see. I feel like it gives me a little bit of an edge for interpreting, ‘This is what it means for Sportradar or Genius or BetMGM.’”

But while Juice Reel has undoubtedly proven useful to folks like Bender, he imagines operators will be slow to embrace the technology — although it may soon be in their best interest.

“From a competitive standpoint, I’m not sure if you’re DraftKings [that] you’d want someone to have a screen full of here’s what other book are doing and odds and tracking,” he said. “They obviously want you on their platform. But from a responsible gambling perspective, I think that’s something they can utilize. We are seeing what happens in the UK when a company doesn’t take action (i.e., cut off problem gamblers).”

Bender went on to mention a discussion he recently had with DraftKings CEO Jason Robins about discussed how artificial intelligence could be used to track people’s bets and identify problematic behavior. Bender proceeded to punctuate his thought by predicting, “A product like Juice Reel is going to be used, whether in this form or some other.”