In episode 220 we sit down with Brett DeBari of WinStreakz to discuss his innovative, fun and easy to play free to play sports pickem game!
Ryan Knuppel
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Ryan Knuppel here. Knup Sports Show episode 220. Man, we are moving up there in the world. 220 episodes of this little show. Excited to be here again with you and talk a little sports. Talk a little sports business. And today, talk a little picks. Talk a little real cash prizes with picks.
I got another awesome guest that you guys are not going to want to miss here in just a bit. A little housekeeping before we get started. I will be at the SBC North America event May 7th through 9th. That is next week according to this recording time.
If you’re going to be at this event please let me know. I’d love to sit down, talk with you, chat with you, even just say hello. If you listen to this show and you see me, pop by and say hey. It gives me a little bit of encouragement that there’s at least one listener out there to this show.
If you have not got your ticket for this event please use “new partner vip” as a promo code. You’ll get a little money off with your ticket. But yeah, I’d love to talk to you at that event. Should be an awesome event. They always do a great job with that event and I believe my guest today is going as well, so we’ll talk about that a little bit on the show.
All right, that’s it for the housekeeping. Let’s jump right into the show.
Ryan Knuppel
Let’s bring on my guest. Today I have Brett DeBari of WinStreakz. Brett, how are you, my friend?
Brett DeBari
Hey, good, Ryan. How are you doing?
Ryan Knuppel
Doing amazing, man. Doing really good here in Orlando, Florida. You’re over in Arizona, right?
Brett DeBari
Yeah, right in Scottsdale. So perfect time of the year. I like the 85 to 90 degree weather. Can’t beat it, man. I moved from Illinois down to Florida about eight years ago. And I said, man, I escaped the Midwest weather down to the sunny weather. So I can’t beat it.
Ryan Knuppel
Awesome, Brett. Well, let’s dive in here. I’m excited to learn about you and WinStreakz and what all is going on there. So first off, tell me about yourself. Tell us what makes you tick. What kind of your career path that led you into starting WinStreakz?
Brett DeBari
Yeah, so always been a big sports fan. That’s, you know, that’s my jam. Grew up in Connecticut. So, you know, not to kind of brag or whatever, but two nice national championships for the Huskies the last two years. And this one was in Glendale. So that was fantastic going to that one.
But yeah, always been a sports fan, played Division III college basketball, didn’t really play, but was on the team and just always had that knack for just competitiveness. And when I realized my career was over, I wanted to get into sports, but making money in tech sales was the thing to do in 2004, 2005, all the way for the last 15, 18 years.
The last job I had was working at Amazon AWS. So did startup sales. I had about 150 customers all along the West Coast and I was really talking a lot of entrepreneurs about how they got their starts, how they raised money, and I was like, you know, let me take a stab at this and found an accelerator program called On Deck.
It was great. I got into their program. They had about 10,000 applicants. They brought on 120, gave us, or invested, not gave, $125K to each of us to run our companies. So that’s how I got my start about a year and a half ago. And since then, been building out the app. Not me personally, I’ve had some developers doing it.
I’m the sales guy, the idea guy, the business guy. And yeah, we’re rocking and rolling. Been in the app store for six, nine months and almost have a thousand people playing per week, but yeah, that’s kind of my thing. I like it and I’m able to enjoy what I’m doing versus selling cloud storage, which people don’t even know what the cloud means.
And most of my customers don’t, but they just know, hey, Amazon is running the world. And I was happy to be a part of that for a while.
Ryan Knuppel
That’s awesome. That’s what I love about that first question is it’s funny because everyone has their own unique story to where they got to today, but a lot of us in sports, it all starts with just, man, we just love sports. And when we got out of playing sports, we had to find some way to continue down that sports realm.
And that, that answer is consistent across a lot of entrepreneurs in this space, which is just an amazing thing to hear. And I can relate with you. I played a division three basketball as well. So a couple of fellow D three basketballers here. I was more of a cheerleader on the bench, but, uh, But yeah, no, it was good though.
Again, keeping that up after AAU and high school basketball was again, staying competitive. And then when I realized I wasn’t good enough, cause I’m, you know, five 11 and you know, these are, you know, these are big boys out there, even in D3. I said, okay, You know, let’s just focus on, you know, getting the studies done and, you know, started playing golf and swimming and all those types of things. But I like it. Could be worse. Play a little golf, do a little swimming. I mean, life could be worse there.
Brett DeBari
Exactly. Exactly.
Ryan Knuppel
Awesome. Well, thank you for that background. Appreciate you kind of sharing that story. But let’s dive into WinStreakz and talk a little bit more about the guts of what it is. You know, why don’t you give us the thousand foot view of what WinStreakz is and what you’re out to accomplish?
Brett DeBari
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I would assume most of this audience is pretty familiar with, uh, ESPN Streak for the Cash back for the last, you know, for 10, 15 years that they ran it and, you know, it shut down last August, but they had over 3 million people download and play that app. And even at the end, over 125,000 people log in every day.
And from that standpoint, no, you know, nobody really ever won any prizes. Let me ask you, Ryan, did you ever play Ryan and did you win?
Ryan Knuppel
I played a few times. I don’t think I ever won, no.
Brett DeBari
Yeah. I was in the first pitch contest at FSGA back in February and literally did that, start my pitch off. Hey, how many people? Raise your hand if you ever played ESPN Streak for the Cash. Keep your hand up if you ever won even a dollar.
And, you know, everyone laughed and – Yeah, everyone laughed and they said, okay, so I’m pretty much ESPN Streak for the Cash 2.0. So instead of having to build a streak of 30 wins in a row on one person potentially winning $10,000, which some months doesn’t even happen, you pick five games a day and it’s a weekly contest Monday through Sunday.
And 100 people win prizes anywhere from $1 to $100 per week. And if you hit 2,000 points, which the odds are around 20,000 to one instead of the over a million to one ESPN streak, you can win $2,000. So 2,000 points, $2,000. That’s really cool. That’s awesome.
Ryan Knuppel
So let me first ask you, comparing it to the ESPN product, because I think everybody is familiar with what they had going on, but I don’t know that everybody’s familiar that they even shut down, right? Why did they shut down? Was it just one of those… I’m sure you’re familiar with why. Was there a why to why they shut down?
Brett DeBari
So I’m not familiar. I can only speculate. But my main thing is, they probably ran out of people downloading the app, so it didn’t make sense to continue to market it and those types of things. And you know they made the whole acquisition with Penn Gaming so they run ESPN Bet so I think they already had all their free-to-play players to convert and they don’t want people spending their time on free-to-play games they want them to spend their money I’ll say risk their money but more spending because it’s very tough to win gambling and as we all know that but yeah I think that’s the main reason they already had those people and they wanted more focus on their ESPN Bet platform
Ryan Knuppel
Yeah, so talk a little bit more about the free to play mindset with this. So is it truly free to play? Like I don’t have to deposit any money or anything to be a part of it?
Brett DeBari
Absolutely. So you sign up and we take your name, your phone number, your email, and you have an account. You put your username in and that’s it. You can spend a dollar in the app to get these things called boosts. So if you ever want to spend money, you can only spend a dollar at once and you get 20 free boosts.
But you can also earn boosts by getting points, by watching advertisements in the app. So yeah, zero deposits. And yeah, you can win anywhere from, again, $1 to $100 per week, if not two grand. And we really want to focus on those types of people that this is kind of where I say you know some people don’t smoke some people don’t drink some people don’t gamble it’s just things they don’t do and we want to focus on those types of people that enjoy sports they want to have that rush of picking winners rooting for their teams and potentially moving up a leaderboard without having to deposit their hard-earned money and that’s really the the market that we’re going after and we’ve been doing pretty well so far
Ryan Knuppel
That’s awesome. Tell us about, congrats on that first of all, but tell us about how it’s been going. So where are you at in the product lifecycle? You know, I see, you know, you do have apps out here. You’re rolling. Tell us a little bit about where you’re at in the product lifecycle.
Brett DeBari
Yeah. So we’ve been live for closer to nine months. We’ve had some bugs in the past, but pretty much, you know, the last two or three months we’ve been solid. You know, everything’s working. You know, those are the things, the bane of my existence is app issues, but got a good developer on the team and we’ve been able to test and get all these bugs out.
But yeah, since then, we’ve grown almost to 1000 players and we’ve spent under $10,000 in marketing. Most of the money went to the development of the app. We’re seeing about 25% of the people that are joining now are from referrals. And we do have a great referral program.
So Ryan, here’s kind of what we do. Instead of giving people dollars for referring friends, we give you a referral bonus when your friends win. So let’s say I referred you. You won that first place for a hundred dollars. You get a hundred dollars. I get 50.
So we’re trying to partner with influencers or just, you know, influencers that have maybe 10, 15, 20,000 followers, and they can refer a hundred, 200, 500 people, or just individual people. Maybe like I, you know, at a frat who runs his frat and he’s like, Hey, everyone use my code. And then he’s winning when his friends are winning.
So instead of rooting against your friends, uh, you’re rooting for them because if they win, you win too. And we’ve got a cool feature on the app itself where you can see everybody in the app. And everybody in the app is in green that you referred. So you can see, hey, they’re winning $5 this week. They’re winning $2. They’re winning $100.
And you can see that. And every week, you’ll see a list of those people broken out and how much you won based on what they won. So a new way to push referrals versus just saying, hey, get $5 per sign up. And then all of a sudden, those people disappear. So we’re seeing better retention with that.
Ryan Knuppel
I bet. I love that model. I think that really encourages longer standing, you know, interest in how your referrals do. Right. Because, yeah, the whole traditional mindset of let me bring somebody in. Then I don’t really care. I get my five dollar commission and move on. I love that.
Now I can kind of put a little vested interest in. Well, one, I mean, if you have a community, you can actually help each other try to win. Right. Like it could be part of that whole model. So I love that model. That’s that’s pretty cool.
Brett DeBari
Awesome. And then, yeah, we also like in those things, you know, you can have your own group, right? So you can create a group. You know, if you want to send out your picks, we had one guy actually sending out his picks and had all these different people following him.
And one week he finished third and he had like seven or eight people in the top 10 with all his same picks or very close because some people probably say, hey, I’m going to change one thing around and maybe take advantage. But no, he had about 25 to 30 people in the top 100. Not every week is he that great of a picker, but it’s one of those things where you have a whole group following you and you guys can win together, which is fantastic.
Ryan Knuppel
You’ve already mentioned a couple differentiators but what I want to know, the free-to-play space sometimes can be a crowded area there’s a lot of companies kind of after that or have been on and off you know a lot of different products out there that are going after the free-to-play market in the sports and sports betting space specifically.
Tell us a few ways that WinStreakz is a little different than the other products that might be out there. What differentiates you from other platforms that might be in your competitive space?
Brett DeBari
Sure. So a lot of those, they’re partnering with big gambling companies. So the sponsors are DraftKings, FanDuel, stuff like that. We have sponsors that are really looking for people that enjoy sports. So Chinook seeds, are you familiar with Chinook seeds?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they gave us 1,000 free sample packs. So it’s eight different flavors, and they can win those types of prizes. So we’re giving those away if you refer a couple friends. We also have game time tickets. We got over $5,000 worth of gift cards from them.
We partnered with the El Paso Chihuahuas, minor league baseball teams, Las Vegas Aviators. So we’re really focused on partnering with those types of teams and groups that are really focused in on like, hey, how do we make people’s sports experiences better?
Yeah. Versus just saying, hey, come in here, win some points, get, you know, get free money to go play or go gamble on, you know, five to win 150 on a DraftKings or FanDuel. And, you know, people are enjoying the aspect of, Hey, you get this points bank every week, even if you don’t win, you can turn those in for prizes.
So we’re turning it into turning back the clock where you have this arcade like style where, Hey, every week you get points or you have more tickets. And after three, four weeks, you can enterprise versus all those different things of free to play. We need you in there for. five, 10, 20 minutes a day to make money. Ours is no, make your five picks a day and that’s it.
So it’s a simple game. You can literally log into the app for 15, 30 seconds if you want, or you can scroll through and you can spend more time looking at all the different games, all the different sports and finding what different prizes you want and watching ads to increase your chances.
And so those five picks that you make every day are cross sport. They can be cross sport. They’re not just a five in MLB and five in NBA and five in NFL. This is a cross sport thought mentality, correct?
Brett DeBari
Yeah. So we have just the major six, right? So MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA, and then college football and college basketball. So right now you might have three or four NBA games going on, you know, three or four NHL games, and then 12 to 15 MLB games. And you pick any five and the way that you get, it’s not just a point per win.
So if you have an underdog and you take them, you’re going to get more points. than if you take a favorite. So the Celtics last night, they’re favored by 10 and a half points. We use money lines to convert the points. So if you took the Celtics, you would have gotten maybe, I think, 18 or 19 points. And you took the Heat, you would have got 80 or 81 points. So it’s 100 point scale. So you take the underdogs, you get more points. But you could also lose those games and not get any points.
Ryan Knuppel
Yeah, I love that simple, you know, simple and easy to use, I think, is a key to this space. You know, there’s a lot of these that get super convoluted and complex that you just kind of get overwhelmed. And I love the simplicity of this model. Sounds pretty cool.
But one thing I wanted to ask you and touch on is the marketing side. You mentioned that you only spent maybe 10 grand on marketing, so haven’t really put a bunch into marketing. So how do you get visibility? Because the name of the game here is getting people and getting eyeballs and getting people into the space.
What’s your game plan and experience been on the marketing side for this?
Brett DeBari
Yeah, sure. So, you know, do some posts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, stuff like that. But just brought on a CMO, a fractional CMO to really that has worked in the app space. So understanding how to grow apps and where to spend marketing dollars and who to reach out to.
But the main thing that I’ve been able to put together and I’ve gotten some good traction, especially from the FSGA conference and just reaching out is partnering with other fantasy apps or people that have big, you know, subscriber lists in the sports space. And the partnership I have there is, hey, if you guys want to share your lists with us or for example send a message out so let’s say let’s say new sports wanted to put together an email saying hey everyone you know come download win streaks instead of me paying per download I’m paying or splitting the ad revenue that I’m getting per player and it’s about 50 cents per month that I’m getting you know just on the ad banners that are showing there no money out of people’s pockets so I have a sports app company or a fantasy company that has 50,000, 100,000 people in their subscriber list and they want to send out an email, we’re splitting that revenue 50-50.
So that’s how I’m getting those eyes on it. Partnering with bigger, more successful and more in the know companies where, hey, if they have got 100,000 people on their subscriber list or even 500,000 or a million and we get five, 10,000 signups, that can be five, 10 grand of revenue coming their way just for putting stuff together. So that’s what I’m focused on now where it doesn’t cost me anything and it grows and everybody splits in the profits. So those are the ways I’m trying to do it. If they’re successful and they are working on promoting it, I’m going to be successful as well. So those are the things that I’m really focused on for partnerships.
Ryan Knuppel
That’s cool. That’s cool. I love that model as well. Doing some great things here, Brett. I love everything. I’ve heard so far about win streaks. I haven’t got my chance to really dive in and play it yet, but I’m planning on it after hearing what’s going on here. I’m planning on it right after this. getting all added into it and rocking and rolling.
So what’s the future look like for you guys though? What’s a, I mean, is it as simple as just continuing to pour into development and marketing and growing, or are there any big future plans for win streaks?
Brett DeBari
Yeah. I mean, so right now just really want to get that number. So, you know, we’ve, we raised 125 K a year and a half ago from an accelerator. And now we’re trying to get about anywhere between 250,000 and 500 on the next round. So we can really push that marketing. The numbers we have are great, right? If we get, we’re acquiring users for our players. I don’t like to call them users, uh, for acquiring people, players for under a dollar. And we’re making more than 50 cents per on each of those. And just in the ad revenue for playing, it’s almost like one of those cash machines, right? You put a dollar in, you get a dollar 25 back or whatever it is. So yeah, we’re trying to prove that out. And that’s really the next step is putting that money into the marketing piece.
Um, And that’s you know, that’s the main the main name of the game. No crazy things. Again, like you said, we like to keep it simple. And if we can grow to five to ten thousand players, a we’re going to be able to raise that money easier. And we’ve got a lot of other sponsors that said, hey, this makes sense. If you can show that you’ve got ten thousand eyes on this every single day, we could come in there. So I’m not going to say certain companies, but any company you’re watching that are on those sports games on TV’s. on your TV, those are companies that are showing interest, but you need to get at least 10,000 people logging in your app. You know, a thousand doesn’t matter to them. So looking to raise funds. So potentially somebody listening to this, if you want to reach out to Brett, how would they get a hold of you? What’s the best way to get a hold of you if they wanted to chat through potential fundraising and things of that nature?
Brett DeBari
Yeah, sure. So Brett with two T’s at Winstreakz. You can send me an email or if you’re in the app, there’s a thing that says reach out to the support at Winstreakz. That’s the best way to do it. And, you know, if you just go on our website, my phone number is right there, too. So all those three ways are very easy to get in touch with me.
Ryan Knuppel
Cool. Hey, Brett, before I let you go, I want to shift gears real quick. You seem like a young, savvy business entrepreneur, and I love just tapping into the brains of leaders and people doing amazing things in sports business. So I’m going to ask you maybe a challenging question. We’ll see. It may be pretty simple, but if you could give advice to another young sports entrepreneur that maybe was just getting started or thinking about starting up some idea they had, some business they had, what’s one piece of advice you would have to somebody that just wanted to start something? What’s one piece of advice you’d give?
Brett DeBari
Yeah, so great question. I guess the easiest, the first step is do your research. So before you start something, take a look at what’s out there. And if there’s things like your idea, see why it failed or why it’s doing well. Because it’s tough to put a lot of money into something and then realize three, six, 12 months down the road that it’s not going to work.
And also you know going to these types of conferences people are really friendly in this industry um I don’t you might not think it because gambling and people are trying to take money and da da da but no I joined the fsga two years ago fancy sports and gaming association and going to those conferences you’re talking to ceos of underdog uh prize picks uh guillotine league just you know another shout out all these different people that are in the industry and they’re very helpful and friendly so going there and talking to those people and understanding That’s a great way to at least get your feet wet and understand the market and potentially what can work and what’s already been done.
And again, some people don’t want to hear the word no or it’s not going to be successful. And I hear that a lot. But as long as you understand where the no’s are coming from and you figure out the why’s and if you can combat those no’s and turn them into yes’s, that’s the way to do it. But yeah, you don’t want to be running and spending all your time. thinking about something versus being able to execute or at least knowing what’s happened and why other people have failed. And if you can come up with the ways to make yourself successful where other people fell short, that’s how you’re going to make a winning business.
Ryan Knuppel
Great advice. Great advice, Brett. I hope there’s some young ears out there listening and eager and ready to start something that take that to heart before they do. So thank you for that advice.
And speaking of conferences, are you going to be at the SBC conference coming up here in early May?
Brett DeBari
A hundred percent. Yeah. Next week I’m flying in, flying in Monday night. So yeah, Tuesday, Wednesday, I just. Found out, I haven’t been to an SBC before, but found out Thursday is going to be a good night too. I guess everyone goes into Times Square and there’s a big party and everything. So looking forward to staying the whole three-day conference and meeting a lot of people and reconnecting with people that I’ve met in the past.
Ryan Knuppel
Absolutely. The SBC conferences are like none other, man. They’re really, really fun. And the night events are always a great time. So I’m looking forward to Everything about that and I’m looking forward to sit down and chatting with you So let’s make sure we make that happen as well.
Brett DeBari
Awesome. And before we go feel like we’re closing Anybody who downloads win streaks that’s listening to this. I want to make sure they get out, you know a bonus So we have these things called boosts So if you lose a game, you don’t get to get your pick back unless you use a boost So if you sign up and use code newt, then you’re gonna get 50 free boosts. So just put in KN UP and And you’re going to get that.
So I figured a little shout out there to you. And then again, anyone uses that code, you’re going to get 50% of their winnings too. So I figured shout out to you, Ryan, for having me on your show today.
Ryan Knuppel
I love that. No, thank you. Appreciate it. And I’d urge everybody listening to do that. And we’ll make sure to post that on the site as well and try to get some people in. Man, maybe we can get some winners. Let’s get some, let’s get some winners out there. Win some streaks. That’s a, that’s what it’s all about.
Love it, man. Thank you for having me again. I appreciate it.
Brett DeBari
No, really appreciate you being here for sure. And look forward to all the success that is to come from win streaks. And if you ever need anything from me, make sure to reach out. So appreciate being here, Brett.
Ryan Knuppel
Absolutely. And I’ll see you next week.
Brett DeBari
All right. Take care. Thank you.
Ryan Knuppel
All right, that was Brett DeBari of WinStreakz, episode 220. Seems like an amazing product and an amazing individual in this space. So I urge you, if any of that was interesting to you and you have other questions for Brett or you want to reach out regarding working potentially with them, please make sure to reach out to Brett.
I’ll put the links to him and the emails and stuff that he said in the show notes for your questions. for your research for later. All right. Well, that’s episode 220. I hope to see you all at SBC. Again, new partner VIP. If you have not got your ticket, make sure you can get a little discount on your ticket if you have not yet. But if you are going, man, I can’t wait to see you at that event. Should be a lot of good times as always.
All right. I’m Ryan Knuppel checking out from episode 220. Take care, stay safe, and we’ll talk to you in the next one. All right. Talk to you later.
Relevant Guest Links
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- You can connect with Brett DeBari on LinkedIn.
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