Ricky Gold’s goal with Juice Reel is to become bettors’ go-to tool for all things betting
Ricky Gold is the Founder & CEO of Juice Reel, an app that bettors can use to sync their bets from active sportsbooks, track performance, watch line movements, and use the proprietary SharpMush tool. Sounded pretty interesting, right? So, we connected with Ricky to learn more about the app and his future plans.
Here is a link to the intro video on YouTube
First of all, congrats on your growth and success. I hadn’t heard about you until this week but you have a strong following on instagram and it looks like your user base has increased lately.
In short, how would you summarize the app for those who are new to Juice Reel? Give me the elevators pitch and tell me what problem you’re solving for your users?
Gold. Thank you Manuel. Why wouldn’t you be using Juice Reel – is really what we are really going after, and we achieve that status by catering to exactly what sports bettors want and need. Juice Reel is not a sportsbook – it’s a suite of tools for bettors to help them bet smarter.
We’re solving a few issues for bettors and for sportsbooks, and we solve all of them using data, automation, and analytics. By making betting more engaging and enhancing the overall betting experience, the net effect of that is more betting activity – so we also become a player retention engine for the operators. We are a one-stop-shop data ecosystem for the betting industry, benefiting both the player and the sportsbook.
Give me some stats: How many users do you have? What’s your goal with the app long terms?
Gold. Over $600M of sports betting handle have been synced into Juice Reel. The goal of Juice Reel is to be the ultimate betting tool sitting between all sports bettors and all sportsbooks in all markets.
There are a few similar betting products and apps in the market today. What makes your solution stand out?
Gold. A few companies do slices of what we do, but no one in the industry offers a comprehensive product that can address a bettor’s needs before, during, and after the game.
Outside of having elevated analytics and visualization, two pieces of Juice Reel that I think distinguishes us from the pack are the breadth of our bet-syncing, which syncs from over 300 sportsbooks/websites while the next highest company offering bet-syncing has ~10.
Secondly, the in-play experience; in real-time we are assessing the value of a user’s bets and offering them a stock-portfolio-like view of their performance, where the value of a user’s bets fluctuate up and down with every play. This creates a really engaging second-screen experience for our userbase as they watch the game play out
I like the Bet with the Best feature where users can tail some of the more experienced bettors. Have you seen that action move the line at all? Expand on this function please – sounds very cool and useful.
Gold. This is one of my favorite features because I think it truly elevates the industry and creates a new way to assess betting activity and make data-driven decisions. Prior to this feature, the strategy some bettors use to “follow the smart money” involves comparing the amount of money on one side of a game to the amount of tickets on a team; More money and less bets = Smart Money.
The critical flaw in that method of “following the smart money” is that its forced to rely on an assumption that high-wagering bettors are superior performers. But that is not the case – in reality, the only barometer for betting success is historical profitability, not bet size. Following historically profitable bettors is much better than following risky bettors. We help our users follow historically profitable bettors because, with everyone in our app synced in their betting data, we are able to profile our users. We show our users what side of a game the best performing users are leaning, and what side the “profit-deficient” users are taking, so that the community can tail winners and fade losers at scale.
We actually invented a new betting metric around this called SharpMush. What is the SharpMush score exactly – its a measurement of the difference between the bets made by the best-performing and worst-performing bettors in a particular game. Lets say the Hawks are playing the Lakers. Looking at everyone who bet on the Lakers Hawks game, if all the best bettors are on the Lakers and all the worst bettors are on the Hawks, that’ll be a SharpMush Strength of 100%. Remember, SharpMush measures the difference between what best and worst bettors are doing. So if all the best bettors are on the Lakers AND all the worst bettors are on the Lakers, thatd have a SharpMush Strength of 0%. The SharpMush insight helps you follow winners and fader losers, at scale.
One of your features is the real-time bet value tracker. How does that work and what role does the live betting option play for your users monitoring these metrics through the games?
Gold. In real-time we are assessing the value of a user’s bets and offering the a stock-portfolio-like view of their performance, where the Live Value of a user’s bets fluctuate up and down with every play.
What do we really mean by Live Value? Let’s say tonight you bet $100 on the Angels. Before the game starts, that bet is worth pretty much $0 in profit and $0 of expected loss. If Mike Trout steps up to the plate in the 1st inning and hits a homer to give the Halos the lead, the value of your bet increases. if he had struck out, your bet would be worth a little less.
All game, with every pitch and every play, the value of your bet is changing. You can use this Live Value to help you decide how much to hedge, double down, or make any other live betting decisions as the games play out. This creates a really engaging second-screen experience for our user base as they watch the game play out. Expect more live betting tools added as Juice Reel becomes the ultimate right-hand man for your sports viewing experience.
What is your customer retention? This sounds like the one and only app you’d need, really, if you want to odds shop and have the flexibility of moving from book to book.
Gold. We are very satisfied with how sticky our product is. Any data-driven bettor tends to be satisfied once they’ve got their hands on Juice Reel
What features are you hoping to build out in the upcoming releases?
Gold. We just launched a brand new built-from-scratch version of Juice Reel so we are working to just continually expand on the offerings in this new product.
Check it out here https://apps.apple.com/us/app/juice-reel/id1527960097
