Origin Story

I started BettorTakes to fill a need of my own that wasn’t being supplied by the market. When sports betting became legal in the US, I started betting college basketball, which I hadn’t done since the days Villanova beat Georgetown (my first real score). I’m more of a finance guy than sports guy, and from the beginning wanted to know how I was doing in various categories or situations, nothing complicated, such as how was I doing betting faves vs. dogs (I really wanted to know how I did with large underdogs), conferences, teams, etc. I realize that every tiny bit of optimization helps, so I searched the Internet confidently, sure that I would find software or an app that would help me understand my own play better. But to my shock, there was nothing out there, just a handful of poorly designed ‘bet trackers’, which really did nothing to help untangle your play to find out what you are good at. I knew there must be others out there wondering whether or not they were repeating the same mistakes, so I decided to build something myself.

I had a few friends in the sports betting world, and when I told them about my idea, they loved it instantly, also showing disbelief that nothing like that existed. They were also poker bettors, and pointed to some ideas that had been very successful in the poker world, at helping people take a strong look at their pics, so it resonated deeply with them as well.

I recruited a few more friends, and we started working on something that would help level the playing field; anyone can optimize their play, and hopefully compete at a higher level. What we have built at BettorTakes has exceeded anything I could have imagined - I would have been satisfied with something much less robust. But our offerings keep getting better & better, allowing more & more visibility into sports bettors’ previous history, finding strengths & weaknesses, repeated patterns, mistakes, and bankroll leaks that the bettor would have a hard time finding on their own.