SoBet Bringing Social Betting to the Mainstream
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Cooper Lycan noticed that sports betting was becoming a more integral part of social media. Bettors and fans were posting their winning slips and interacting with followers.
The betting community started utilizing social media to grow its following and share picks on a wide range of sports.
After sifting through the betting community across Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, Lycan, a sports bettor himself, noticed the information was lacking any semblance of organization. Posts weren’t organized and there were no searchable betting categories on any of the apps.
“I realized that everybody in my demographic was going to social media to get our sports betting content,” Lycan said. “But social media is super convoluted and it’s very easy to get caught up scrolling. It’s not very well organized and obviously not made for sports betting, so you have to sift through Twitter, sift through TikTok and sift through Instagram to find that relevant content.”
Lycan spoke with other sports betting influencers and saw them building their communities. As he got to know them, he came up with the idea to aggregate all the social media betting content into one platform.
In June, Lycan launched SoBet with 10 initial content creators with nearly 300,0000 followers and has continued to grow. Currently, the platform has over 2,200 paid users with growth rates over 250% over 250% month over month since it has gone live. Subscriptions for SoBet are $9.95.
“It’s super relevant and super important to people who are into sports betting and sports betting continues to grow,” Lycan said of SoBet’s platform.
Tracking SoBet Content Creators
Unlike social media platforms where transparency with records can be difficult to find to hold bettors accountable, SoBet tracks each of its content creators’ Closing Line Value and Return on Investment. Sharp Rank also tracks each creator’s Bifurcated By Spread metric, which measures how a picker performs in certain sized spreads — both positive and negative — and compares their performance in each to a set of benchmarked peers.
Other metrics, including Princeton Percentile, provide a visual and demonstrate opportunity cost, which is how much a sharp left on the table and opportunity gain, which is the amount a sharp advantageously increases their position.
The alignment metric shows how frequently a pick is made against the public. It’s often referred to as “fading the public”
The volume index measures how often a bettor makes a pick. It displays whether a player narrows their slate to a game or two, or if they make numerous picks across the board. Depending on a subscriber’s betting style, they can find a bettor who most suits their wagering frequency.
Number of Content Creators Should Grow
The spotlight feature displays what teams a certain bettor is good at selecting. Known as the Spotlight Sharp, the larger the glow, the more wins a bettor has secured.
“Sharp Rank tracks the bets of sports betting analysts across the media industry,” Lycan said. “They got Barstool and ESPN and it covers all the major media platforms. Their betting analysts are on there so that is super healthy for the ecosystem. You can see what these guys are betting on and all these cool stats and insights to how they’re kind of betting.”
SoBet has grown to over 25 creators, giving subscribers a large enough catalog to decide which bettors to follow. Lycan doesn’t plan on capping the content creator list, but an ideal amount would be around 100. The platform currently creates over 200 pieces of content per week but is planning to increase that as more bettors join the SoBet staff.
“If we can get to 100 users and kind of like 10x the engagement that we have right now, it’ll just help that long-term vision of kind of building that community aspect,” and cross-pollinating the communities that already exist and to the influencers,” Lycan said.
What Leagues SoBet Creators Reach
SoBet currently features the U.S. betting market and the major sports leagues including the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and college football. Recently, creators have started posting Formula 1 picks as well. SoBet also does tennis, golf and has a bettor who specializes on the English Premier League.
“Eventually we want to cover all major markets,” Lycan said. “But since we’re U.S.-based right now, it’s mostly restricted to the big four.”
Social media platforms have not always taken to new betting content. It wasn’t uncommon for creators to see their content restricted since the social media platforms have yet to install community guidelines around sports betting. Some creators saw their accounts suspended or banned.
“There was a big echoing for live streams behind the SoBet platform so they can take their communities to SoBet and engage them on live streams,” Lycan said. “They can still go live behind the paywall.”
SoBet App is Coming Soon
SoBet is currently available on a mobile or desktop browser. The company is planning to release a full-scale mobile app in time for the next football season.
“We want it to be really creative-centric,” Lycan said. “Our goal in this whale thing is putting resources around our creators and giving them a platform where they can focus on the two things they’re good at, which are sports betting and creating content. We want it very easy to use, from their perspective in terms of engaging with their communities and putting out content.
“From a user perspective, we want to create some sort of engagement around communities, competitions between communities, things like that just to create more engagement and kind of that community aspect similar to what you see on Discord.”
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