Spencer & Brad Kronthal, the founders of Alloy Sports, join Ryan Knuppel on the show to discuss their sports betting project.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Ryan Knuppel here, Knup Sports Show Episode 183. We are up to 183. I know it’s been a while, I’ve been traveling it feels like all over the United States. Spent some time at G2E in Vegas. It was awesome meeting several of you at G2E. Uh, I always love several of you saying you listen to this podcast, I mean, it means so much to hear I have a listener or two and people enjoy this show. Uh, so, thank you for that support, we really appreciate the time. You could be anywhere listening to any show, but you choose to come here and digest some of this, uh, sports betting and sports business content that we put out here. Um, and then I went over to SBC in Miami, that was another great event, the SBC Latino American Event. Um, met a lot of people there as well, so awesome to meet all of you guys. Now I’m back at it, first show in a long time, so we have a treat for you guys today. Uh, two special guests on with me today. Typically, I only have one, I know, but I’ve got two today. So, without further ado, I’m gonna go ahead and bring on Brad and Spencer Kronthal. Brad, Spencer, how are you guys?
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Doing great, Ryan. Thanks for having us on this show. Really appreciate it.
BRAD KRONTHAL
Yeah, really excited to be here.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Awesome. Glad to have you guys, and uh, like I said. I get a two for one special today, I got both of the Kronthal boys here to talk a little bit about Alloy, and uh, Alloy Sports. Uh, we’re gonna dive into that here in a bit, but first off, I wanna get to know you guys a little bit and kinda what makes you guys tick, so we’ll start with you, Spencer. Spencer, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re living, your background, all of the above.
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Yeah, so I’m in Chicago right now getting my MBA at the University of Chicago currently, part-time. Um, from Baltimore, MD, went to the University of Maryland growing up. I was in the engineer by trade, always a massive sports fan, though, so that always was taking, you know, always in the back, just trying to figure out a way to use that engineering background and apply it to sports and working with Brad and our third co-founder Seth who’s able to make that happen with Alloy Sports.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing. That’s awesome. Um, Brad, how about yourself?
BRAD KRONTHAL
Yeah, just like Spencer, grew up a major sports fan, and I found myself in the industry. I worked for MASN in sports production, working on the Orioles games for 5 years, and then I moved to Monumental Sports in D.C., working on a sports betting show, so fully entrenched in the sports landscape, the industry, and the betting space.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing. And I gotta ask: brothers, cousins, how are you guys related?
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Uh, we’re brothers.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Amazing.
BRAD KRONTHAL
We’re brothers. We might not look the same, but uh, we grew up same household, so, uh, that’s one thing we say about Alloy, is no stone goes unturned. We are able to solve everything, and there’s nothing that isn’t said that needs to be said. [Laughs].
RYAN KNUPPEL
[Laughs]. That’s true. I love it and I have a soft place in my heart for that as well. As you know, my brother Rodney is, uh, heavily involved in out business as well, so we’re like, we’re hitting together all the time, so you know the challenges and the rewards that both come with that. You guys know that first hand as well. Awesome, well amazing guys. Let’s dive into Alloy Sports. I wanna hear, kind of the pitch about what it is, where it came from, where it came about, uh, so I’ll let one of you guys dive in and kind of give the background on that.
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Yeah, so Alloy Sports, how we started is we’re big sports fans and we were looking for a tool to do our own research. So, basically what we looked to do is we looked to take an engineering process that I had used in my experience as an engineer at Stanley Black & Decker and at University of Maryland and figure out that that applies perfectly to sports and sports betting. Where if you can take the attributes that you think would win a game, you can build a successful betting strategy around that. So what we’ve looked to do is take tears of historical data and make it so easy that anybody can work with and manipulate that data to build a winning betting strategy in under 30 seconds. So we have two platforms, out quick start which gives you a streamlined version to build that first winning strategy. Then Alloy Pro with over 200 stats and filters to pick from. And we’ll basically back-test the factors that you think have been winning, whether it’s a strong passing team or maybe a team that forces turnovers on defence, and run that against the numbers to tell your win percentage, earnings over time…
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RYAN KNUPPEL
…Because, you know, uh, information is power, right? And understanding, you know, what the trends have been, what the data shows. Obviously, you’re not always gonna win those bets, but it just gives you that little edge and that little advantage that you might need, because we all know that sports betting is hard, and even getting up to some crazy percentage like 60% is hard, so any edge that you can get to further your wins is needed. So, you know, let me ask then. You know, you guys must have some sort of data minds and data interest because this is very heavily in the data space around this. Tell me a little bit about your data interest and sports data backgrounds.
BRAD KRONTHAL
Yeah, so, I would say our data interest really propped up when Statcast became easily accessible and available for baseball in 2015. Uh, working in baseball analytics is the crux of what we do. It’s involved in every game, every aspect, every story, and so that just becomes second nature when you’re looking up a player or a team, you’re looking up the analytics behind it. So for us, when we were getting into the betting space, we were looking for a place to run the stats but also see how they correlated with the odds really quickly, really easily, and there wasn’t a place to do that. What we wanted to do is have big sports fans like us able to understand, you know, the data. Some of it’s not that easily digestible, and find a place to do that. So what we build is an app that lets you run the numbers yourself, you know everything that goes into it, unlike some other sources that’ll push out one algorithm, and games, they’re not gonna tell you what goes into that. We’re giving you the open box to where you know what goes into a strategy. We tell you the games that fit it and how it’s performed in the past, and it’s really easy to use.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing, that’s awesome, guys. And I pulled it up here a bit ago. Um, but tell me a little bit about, I guess, the customer base. Like, because there’s the certain crowd of sports bettors that probably has no interest in actually, like, thinking about what they’re betting, and they’re just out there like, “Oh, man, I heard this is a good pick”, or “I’m watching this game, I just wanna bet on it”. But then there’s another crowd, right? And that’s probably the more of the crowd you guys are after, but I wanna hear your guys’ thoughts on the type of person that would need and use Alloy Sports.
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Absolutely. So, we’re looking at the more casual bettor. Maybe you’re betting weekly, maybe you’re betting with friends. Not necessarily the largest unit size, but the bigger sports fan. So, you have an idea what leads to winning a game. Whether or not you’ve said this out loud, you know, you think that maybe the quarterback play leads to winning, maybe you think it’s a strong rushing team, maybe you think it’s shooting team that plays defense in basketball. You know, whatever those factors are, we all have an idea of what’s most important. With us, we’re looking to bring that mindset to betting. So, you know, people who are a little bit more analytical, who played around with the numbers, will get it immediately at first. What we’re doing is we’re simplifying it so even the more casual, the newer bettor is, well maybe you’ve played fantasy football, everybody’s looking at some stats, we’re making this accessible to them. So, in 20 seconds, you can build a winning betting strategy that’s historically profitable over anywhere from 2-10 years. It’s up to you to make that decision. So, making it easier to use, making it streamlined, and basically condensing millions of data points into a platform where you don’t need to code, you don’t need to even have a statistical background, but you can get that winning strategy, that’s our goal, to target those people.
RYAN KNUPPEL
What sports are you guys currently available with? What sports?
SPENCER KRONTHAL
So we just went live with NFL on our mobile app. We’re looking to roll out NBA in the next month and a half, and then college basketball after that within the following month and a half as well.
RYAN KNUPPEL
I love it. And then, obviously, the sky is the limit as you guys continue to grow and continue to add sports and go through that. Have you guys, you know, what’s funny, ’cause I’ve been in the space before, and I kinda played around with systems and strategies and things of that nature, and I always, I want your guys’ input in this, ’cause I always find it amazing that you start going down this rabbit hole of, like, trying to find something that’s, like, amazing. And a lot of times it kinda shocks you, right? You’re like, “What? What? No, this can’t be right,”, and then you start looking behind and you’re like, “Oh my gosh. That’s a real trend, like that is something that’s really cool”, and then when you really think about the psychology behind it, or like, why it is, you’re like “Oh, kinda makes some sense”. Have you guys found some of those situations as you guys, just, dive into this data, that you’re just kinda like “Woah, that’s really cool”, or like, “That’s really neat,”?
BRAD KRONTHAL
We have. So, we ran a data in the spring with NBA, and the first thing we ran was three-point percentage, looking at the better team, and we honestly thought the system broke because the way we break our results down, we break it down into buckets. Instead of just giving you all the results at once, we tell you how heavy favorites, close favorites, close underdogs, and then heavy underdogs perform. All of them were in the negative. All of them were in the red. They all were losing money over time, and we thought the system broke because when I’m looking at NBA, the first thing I’m thinking to bet on is a team that shoots well from a three-point percentage. Well, that’s what the sportsbooks and the oddsmakers are factoring in. So, that was the first “aha” moment, and just coincidentally, we just, we literally just looked at the inverse, saying, “Let’s look at the worst three point shooting team coming into a game head to head”, and the heavy favorites were hitting at 57% of the time, which was just crazy to us, just one stat, one knowledge, knowing that here’s what a sportsbooks are factoring in and maybe over valuing, and that’s what a lot of people are betting on, so just taking that option and looking at that for five seconds might change you’re entire strategy.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s awesome. Yeah, I love that type of stuff. I geek out over that stuff. Like, [inaudible], and then I’m obsessing over when that scenario is gonna hit, but it sounds like your app is gonna tell me, it’s gonna tell me exactly when that hits, so that’s perfect, right? I mean, that’s the point of what you’re doing.
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Absolutely. And we saw something similar with the NFL bit, where just going back the last couple of years, underdogs have been crushing it against the spread. Where, we found different profitable strategies, especially close underdogs have been very profitable recently. Obviously, you can look back and see how is this affected over 10 years versus 2 years. What’s great about our platform is we give you the [inaudible] money for both, so if you want to look at that larger sample size, and that’s more important, great. If you wanna look at recently, if maybe you think the game has developed and changed over time, and ten years ago isn’t as relevant, you know, you can do that as well.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing. That’s awesome. So what’s the future look like for you guys? I mean what, I guess a multi-bolded question here, you know, what’s the future look like, what’re you guys looking to do? And maybe what are you looking for help with? People watching this show are leaders in this industry, they’re people in iGaming and sports business. What type of help do you guys need to get you to the future, and what’s that future look like?
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Absolutely. So, that future, we see, you know, analytics pervading this space. Make it easier to have data come into play. You know, we saw that trend come around with the stock market, and different industries as well, but it hasn’t yet crept into sports betting, especially in the analytics space. What we’re looking to do is make analytics easy, you know, make it accessible for the casual fan, the casual sports bettor, and make it commonplace. You know, similar to what Moneyball did for sports as a whole, we’re looking to take that to sports betting. So we’re looking for different partnership opportunities right now with different companies. We can integrate our platform on site, you know, to further that reach and help drive revenue for any partners. We’re also looking to roll our additional sports; so across every sports, you know, that’s where we look to be able to bring that data-driven approach. Our goal is to make our app as easy and intuitive as possible while also being the most powerful system that you can go to.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Amazing answer. Thank you. Thank you for that. So let’s talk a little bit about the economics of it, or how somebody would sign up. How somebody would get to using this, um, we’re actually gonna pull back up the website and kinda walk through that, I think that’s probably the easiest way to look at it. But I’ll let one of you guys explain a little bit about how it works and how people can sign up, where they would go.
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Yeah, so Alloy currently is live, free to download on the app store. When you download our app, you have access to our quick start platform as well as our content, which is strategies that we’ve built. We also start you off with two preloaded strategies. One is our keynote, our strategy focusing more on defensive turnovers, and others our road grader strategy, teams that are running the ball while playing on the road as well, I think we had a nice pun on that one coming from [inaudible]. So, both strategies have been profitable over time, so we’ll start you off with that. Now, once you get acclimated to having this power at your disposal, our Alloy Pro subscription is currently $15 a month, per month, or $120 for a year, and we’ll start you off with a 30 day free trial. So you can check it out, you have access to basically our entire database of 200 stats and filters to build that ultimate winning strategy. But if you don’t like it within 30 days, you know, feel free to go back to quick start and keep using the system for free.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s amazing. AlloySports.com, all that information out there, download the app, check it out. It’s pretty awesome. I’ve been playing around with it a little bit, you know, these guys are awesome. Speaking of these guys, Brad and Spencer, I want to put you on the spot a little bit here before I let you go. You guys are young entrepreneurs, cofounders of a company, of a start-up that’s obviously looking to make big strides in this space. Each of you give me one of the biggest challenges that you’ve had, you know, you or you as a company have had, um, going through this journey. And I call it a journey because we all know it is a journey, starting a company. So, Brad, I’ll start with you. Give me one of the biggest challenges that you guys have seen as you went down this path.
BRAD KRONTHAL
Yeah, absolutely. I would say a big challenge for us, but it’s also a benefit, is working remotely. So, the benefit is we’re able to hire a strong development team that’s all U.S. based all throughout the country. Developers in Colorado and California. I’m in Baltimore and Spencer’s in Chicago. So, you know, that’s great. The challenge is we’re all kinda in our own silo, we communicate on Slack, and not having that physical presence at an office is a little bit different than, you know, say communication. Everything’s just been a little bit more, it’s a little different than if you’re in person. So that’s the one fun challenge that we’ve had to navigate, but it also reaps the benefits of, “Hey, we don’t have to hire specifically in one city, one state, and find the best of the best and maybe overpay”, but we have the access to really anywhere, prioritizing, obviously, U.S. based developers.
RYAN KNUPPEL
I 100% relate with that as well. We do the same thing, you know, our content agency is all over the United States. On one hand it’s great, on another hand it’s like “Man, it would be so nice if we were all just right here talking to each other”. But, there’s gives and takes of that, so thank you, that was…I’m sure that’s a challenge for a lot of people that work remote as well. Um, Spencer, how about you? Do you have anything else that kinda comes to mind?
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Yeah, I think, you know, one thing when you’re working on a startup is, you know, there’s always gonna be the ups and downs as you go forward. The key is, you know, keeping that momentum, pushing forward, and you know, one thing we’ve learned is having a strong team allows you to do that. You know, our development team and our marketing team, we can all lean on each other, you know, as we go forward, as well as an extremely strong board of advisors. We wouldn’t be where we are without a ton of help and support, and just being able to recognize and lean on those that are on the team and even on the team adjacent, you know, is what keeps the ball moving forward, and that’s what we’re excited about. It brings the team together, makes everybody stronger, and keeps it moving forward.
RYAN KNUPPEL
I love it, guys. I love it. Well, keep up the good work. AlloySports.com. I urge everybody listening to go out, check it out, get a hold of these guys, and speaking of getting a hold of these guys, how would they do that? Is there a best way to get ahold of the company or either one of you?
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Absolutely. So, you can email either of us. I’m spencer@alloysports.com, Brad is brad@alloysports.com. Can’t remember that we’ve also got a Contact Us page on the website or on the app, so. Any mode works best for us.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Cool. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you guys coming on for sure. I hope to come back on Episode 283 and have you on in 3 years when this is, uh, in every app, you know, in everybody’s hands, and it’s helping people, you know, helping people make money betting on sports, because we all know it’s hard, and so this is just a tool, another tool in the toolshed to kind of help you, uh, win and make money. This game we all love, the game of sports betting, so hope yo have you on, I appreciate your time today. Any last words, anything we missed that you wanted to touch on before I let you go.
BRAD KRONTHAL
No, really appreciate it Ryan, and I would say to all the sports fans and sports bettors out there, if you’re betting, you wanna win, right? So, come on to our app, we let you build a strategy and in under 30 seconds, you’ll have the data to back your bets with it, you’ll feel confident and win over time, so, when you bet, you wanna win, so let’s help you do that.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Amazing. Sounds good, guygs. Spencer, Brad Kronthal of Alloy Sports. I really appreciate you guys being here. Until next time, take care guys.
SPENCER KRONTHAL
Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate it.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Alright everybody. That was Brad Kronthal and Spencer Kronthal, the co-founders, uh, two of the co-founders of Alloy Sports. Super excited to have those guys on. Really appreciate you guys all tuning into this as well. We’ll have full show notes with this episode that we’ll actually have links to all of this that we talked about. We’ll have the emails and everything in there in case you were trying to hurry and scribble those down. We’ll have all of those in the show notes. Um, and we’ll go from there. So, hopefully everything going with you, this was Episdoe 183. I’m Ryan Knuppek, you can find me out on any social media if you want to get ahold of me. Until next time, stay safe. I know I am, it’s like hurricane weather here in Orlando, FL, but all is good currently, so we’ll hope the wind just blows on by. But, uh, for you, hopefully you’re staying safe where you’re at. Take care, and enjoy this awesome sports world. Alright, take care everybody. Have a great one.
Relevant Links
- AlloySports – https://www.alloysports.com/
More Knup Sports Links
- I refer to Knup Sports often in my show. That’s our sports passion site. Check out KnupSports.com here.
- If you are looking for my services you can find more information on the Knup Solutions website.
- Listen to more episodes of the Knup Sports Show.
- Want to be a guest on our show? Setup a time that works here.
- Subscribe to the Knup Sports Show on iTunes here.
- Knup Sports is a proud part of the Sports 2.0 Network
Contact Ryan Knuppel
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanknuppel
- Email: ryan@knupsolutions.com
