Business of Betting - BettorEdge Greg Kajewski

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hagrinBPR Review Date: 2024-04-03 18:08:50
Rating: 5.00

Notes:
Bias - I've never used BettorEdge and knew very little about it before this pod.

5:35 - What is BettorEdge? I'm paraphrasing here myself but it's basically an exchange that focuses on the social aspect while trying to make it's revenue not from the vig, but through more traditional tech company means. Launches 2021, about 20k users. Have both operator and non-operator features. Jason very funnily, and I would say accurately, goes "I think I'm more confused after the explanation" because I was too.

Sidenote - Jason's a very smart, good host, who is absolutely #1 unafraid to pushback against the guest. The three best hosts in the space are Pizzola, Drew and Jason and there's a very large gap to #4. The more I listen and grade these things, those 3 are on Mt Rushmore w/one spot remaining.

9:30 - Non-regulated platform. US only. Legal for you to bet against a friend. "We're really a marketplace." No operator licenses in any states.14:30 - You connect a bank acct, money gets put into escrow (a BettorEdge wallet), SportRadar data feed is the oracle.

I'm 18 minutes in and hearing the terms "freemium" and "data collection" and "generating revenue in more traditional tech company means", my bias is that I am extremely privacy focused and this sounds like a very clear "you are the product" company. I would just say to users you probably want to be more diligent than usual as to what information you're providing them, how that data is being stored and what exactly is being sold off. I'm going to guess that the answers to those questions are "Not Great Bob".

19:00 - Premium features - referral system (hmm), but the best feature I heard is seeing exactly the BettorEdge price vs what's available elsewhere. (Don't think he mentioned the API access, but I confirmed on the site this is a premium feature.) 20:45 - How does attracting liquidity work? No institutional market makers. Very high retention rate among users. I checked the liquidity as the pod was going, it's exactly as much as you think it is.

Pod over - here's what I want to know. Venmo/Paypal will nuke accts for gambling, is BettorEdge escrowed transactions whitelisted at all? What protection does a user have from getting their payment acct nuked for betting payments? I'd also like to know about what data is being sold and how the data retention policies. Weird concept, but weird is good when you're trying to differentiate yourself.Curious about their MSB/money transmitter standing as well.