What's new with Wager Score

“What’s New” is a series dedicated to featuring past guests of The Betting Startups Podcast, where we check in on how things have been going since the podcast. This edition of What’s New features Wager Score, who appeared on Ep. 50 of the podcast in December 2022.

Bo Grey doesn’t necessarily want to be the gruff voice of responsible gambling in North America.

But he doesn’t see the legal sports betting industry stepping up and clearing its collective throat with much conviction.

So the founder of Wager Score keeps speaking tough truths. And hoping his sports betting/financial planning app is eventually broadly adopted to intercept what he sees as a growing gambling crisis.

“Our timeline is really based on when the industry wants to adopt some of these safeguards,” Grey told Betting Startups. “You see a good first step with what FanDuel did and the fact that they're at least giving consumers their data and putting it in a dashboard and showing them what they're spending. That's a good start. But what do you do next? When you take that next step, that's when we're kind of in a position where we'll say, ‘OK, we've got this little patent here and this little process here and think you should do something with it.”

Grey, who laid bare his past problems with gambling in a 2022 LinkedIn post, is motivated as a father of two teen sons active in sports and long-since exposed to the introductory or actual forms of wagering.

“They're already playing daily fantasy. They're already doing pools amongst themselves. They're just embedded,” Grey said. “They can't watch sports without gambling ads. And so we really thought about this product as not for people that were betting today because I don't think you change that cycle. You're not going to take someone that's active and engaged and teach an old dog new tricks.

“Really, it was designed for what I thought was the future, these younger kids. We've got to protect them. We've got to put tools in their hands that will prevent them from problem playing, or at least educate them and inform them of what they're doing. And really, the benefit of the Wager Score is its data is simple to come by and show people.”

How Wager Score works: Users enter financial information including transaction history, discretionary income and account balances into the Wager Score app, then link to a legal sports betting account. They’ll then begin receiving text notifications about whether their score has increased - suggesting responsibility and sustainability - or decreased. 

According to Wager Score, a first notification is triggered when a bettor gambles 25% of their discretionary income. A second fires at 50%, then 75% and 100%.

Future iterations of the app, with cooperation from sportsbooks could “pause play,” Grey said, when bettors’ scores portend problems.

Though Wager Score announced official responsible gambling partnerships with the Tennessee Titans and Cincinnati Bengals in 2022, it remains in “pilot mode.” When live, according to the site, it would receive a one-time activation fee “and/or a recurring monthly fee” from gambling operators for each subscriber.

Grey said he’s felt pushback from sportsbooks over the affiliate model and licensing process that would eventually sustain the company. But he considers Wager Score a tech company with the ability and the patents to empower bettors and make the sports betting industry not only more sustainable but reputable.

“We have a product, and we have a technology that we're enhancing,” he said “We want to license this out to other operators to use the functionality that's protected within our patents.

“You have the data on your players. You know the markers of harm. You know the problems at play. What do you do with that consumer? You've got to warn them or give them - at least - the ability to either take a break, get help, or do something about it. And so for us, it's more like saying, ‘Hey, we've got a patent on a process that we think is crucial to you delivering this intervention to the masses. How else are you going to deliver it?’”

While sports betting has spread quickly across North America - into 40 American jurisdictions since the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018 - profitability has proven a difficult proposition for regulated operators. The subsequent tussle for sustainability, even among market-leaders DraftKings and FanDuel, has made responsible gambling guardrails secondary, Grey believes.

“Any time you put something in the way of converting and generating revenue, it’s not the easiest thing,” he explained. “But it's something that's required. So, for us, it's obviously a long uphill battle trying to say, ‘Hey, we've got this idea and we've got this process that I think could be good for a lot of people.’ But when it steps in the way of that bottom line, it's difficult to persuade people to do the right thing.”

With legal sports betting so entrenched in the modern mainstream, and California and Texas the only mega-states left to legalize it, Wager Score could, Grey said, not only benefit current problem gamblers, but those impacted by the industry’s next big ask: online casino.

Gamblers in just seven states currently have mobile casino play available. But numerous state legislatures are debating the topic with sports wagering legalization as a road map.

“When you put a slot machine in someone's computer and let them play 24-7, really, that's what we position the Wager Score for over time,” Grey said. “That's why we're in a slow roll, where we focus really on our technology and more so our patents, on the process of what we do and really position it to where we can test it in sports betting. But I think the industry will need something more substantial if they want to really get iGaming across the desk.”