The stereotypical sports bettor is a cigar-smoking, overweight, down-on-his-luck brute who hangs around the race track all day and loses a whole lot more than he wins.
But that stereotype is quickly changing in America thanks to an influx of young bettors and young minds.
Dylan Elder, the 22-year-old CEO and founder of Monster Roster, is one of those people. He is currently on a leave of absence from Georgetown University after creating a sports betting algorithm that has rocked the industry.
“We started with daily fantasy and then pivoted when it was announced that sports betting was going to be legalized last year,” Elder told MetroBet in an exclusive interview. “We had a powerful algorithm that was winning big with DFS and now we’ve transitioned to sports betting. We started betting our own money with the algorithm before making our picks public and we got kicked off three betting sites because we were winning so much with our picks.”
Monster Roster, which was the first company admitted to the Philadelphia 76ers Innovation Lab, makes 33 picks a day on average, with rougly five of those bets being 5-star picks each day. Since last year they’ve made 10,000 bets with a 200 percent ROI on all picks, and over 1,500 5-star bets with a 1,300 percent ROI.
“The algorithm is always improving because it’s taking more data as the season grows longer,” Elder told MetroBet. “In the first two months of the NBA season were were batting about .500. But after the All-Star break we started to really shoot up because the algorithm got data on players on new teams and it takes into account similar teams from previous seasons at certain points throughout each season. We’ve become very confident in our algorithm.”
Elder, who plans on seeing his business through before returning to school, does believe the demographics when it comes to sports betting are changing – in large part thanks to legalization.
“Most of my core group of friends are obviously college-aged and they’re all starting to try betting on sports,” Elder said. “There’s a huge trend out there of young people betting more on sports now that it’s out in the open. Naturally, betting on sports for the first time you’re probably going to lose but we’re trying to provide a service that shows young bettors – and all bettors -that you can get great results.”
