Bull City Bets Podcast Hosts Discuss Becoming A Sharp Bettor

What does it take to become a sharp bettor?

Sam and Brad Eberwein, brothers and hosts of Durham’s own Bull City Bets podcast, are trying to figure that out. They launched the podcast last year, before North Carolina legalized sports betting, to track this journey.

The podcast involved Sam and Brad making hypothetical picks on NFL and NHL games, discussing pick strategy, and reflecting on betting outcomes. At the end of last NFL season, the two brothers had won about as many as they lost—a pretty good start.Brad and Sam Eberwein headshot. Hosts of Bull City Bets

Now, they’re back for season two to make their first foray into legal NFL betting in North Carolina. Sam and Brad sat down with NCSharp to talk about new goals, developing a data analytics model, sifting through all the NC sports betting content on social media, and what their sports betting app upgrade wish list would include.

Staying (in the) positive

The Eberweins are trying to do two things: make a little money betting on sports, and garner a solid viewership for their podcast.

At their core, Brad and Sam are Carolina sports fans. They roast each other for their picks, and both have no problem owning up to some busted bets. (Sam’s bad decision to take the Patriots over the Jets in week 3 is brought up no fewer than three times). They keep it light when talking to me, but they also take every missed bet as a learning opportunity.

NCSharp: What are your goals going into year two of the podcast, both as bettors and as podcast hosts?

Brad: I’ll keep it simple. Let’s just stay in the positive. Let’s not lose money.

Brad’s not one to mince words. Sam, on the other hand, likes talking things out.

Sam: We’re not expecting this to be a second source of income, but we’re trying to pick our spots carefully. We’re casuals, right? I’m not gonna act like I’m a professional at this, and I think on our journey to become sharper it’s so challenging to know where to spend our energy and what to focus on.

Sam’s referring to something that many new online sports bettors confront–the volume of betting markets out there. We spoke about this last year when Bull City Bets was just getting started.

Sam: During the Stanley Cup Playoffs last year, I was just trying to see, from a learning perspective, how to figure out some of the deeper action. And then that was a bad idea because it resulted in a lot of crazy parlays that I was playing. They obviously didn’t work out just because the odds are insurmountable. I think what we learned too with NHL betting, in particular, is that it’s hard because there are so many people involved on the player prop side, and the amount of props was just overwhelming.

Sam and Brad have candid and informed conversations. While their picks may reflect that they’re still on the upslope of the learning curve, their conversations show a maturity and insight that other bettors can relate to and learn from.

NCSharp: What are you guys doing this year as hosts to upgrade the podcast content?

Brad: The goal is to increase the number of listeners. And this year I want to do more work analyzing betting trends.

Sam: We’re trying to build a ranking system with certain variables. It’s not anything complex, and we’re not scraping websites for data and building an analytics model to pop out certain scenarios and probabilities. Maybe one day we’ll get there. For the NFL this year we just built a power index trying to do something similar to ESPN’s FPI but with our own spin on it. And then using those rankings in combination with some other factors to help us break down the spread or the over/under.

They’ve both done their reading (Billy Walters’ book “Gambler” had a major impact on both of them), and this season they’re hoping to impart some of that experience to their listeners.

Carving out a niche and avoiding ridiculousness

NCSharp: What stands out to me about the podcast is its educational value. Are you guys trying to lean into that? Or would you like to get to a point where you can start offering more sharp betting advice? These two things might not be mutually exclusive, but do you have a preference?

Brad: I don’t want to be in the business of selling picks.

Sam: We see a lot of people on social media posting these crazy tickets. Like, ‘can you believe this bettor hit this ten-leg parlay and turned $100 into $20K!’

Sam: You have these personalities on social media. Some are very public, some may not be as public. What I’ve seen in these channels is someone will post a pick and then someone else would be like, ‘that’s horrible take my pick instead.’ And it’s almost like they’re combative.

The Eberweins are trying to stay out of that crossfire while finding a way to showcase what they’ve learned.

Sam: I think it’s like finding that niche. It can be difficult in the nuance of it, and we’re definitely going to pursue big wins. We just need to carve out our voice without sounding ridiculous.

It’s a tone issue, and one that Sam and Brad are still questioning.

Sam: How do we kind of elevate the podcast to a place where we’re focusing on a collective body of lessons learned or expertise that we can share with folks? I feel like we’re still very early in that journey of trying to get that level of expertise.

Leaning into NFL player props and banking no-sweat tokens

NCSharp: The NFL has been absolute chaos in the early going. How are you guys handling that in terms of making sharp picks?

Brad: I think the challenge with the NFL is there’s so much parity and everybody has a prior on what they think should happen. But then every week something crazy happens; it’s very challenging. It’s also the most heavily bet on sport, so in some ways the markets are the most efficient and finding value is difficult.

Sam: I’ve been trying to lean into the first touchdown prop market with low unit values. When you look at some of the first touchdown pricing on Rhamondre Stevenson or Breece Hall in that Patriots/Jets game (week 3), it’s so low that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to make that risk. But when you start looking at some other options; for example, Alan Lazard was 16-1. Tyler Conklin was 25-1 or something like that. These guys are prominent parts of the offense, and if I can bet a quarter unit and get five units back on a 25-1, to me it’s a solid bet because if you only place four of them, you bet one unit and you kind of spread your risk out and you’re targeting some higher value options.

Brad has used some of the promo offerings from DraftKings NC Sportsbook to mitigate that risk.

Brad: Look, if I have a no-sweat token, I’ll take more risk because I know I’ll get a bonus back if it doesn’t hit. So, when I have one of those in my pocket, I might take a risk at a longer parlay. For instance, I took Andy Dalton to get 200 yards,  Adam Thielen over receptions on three and a half, and Diontae Johnson to get 50-plus receiving yards. Because I had the no-sweat token, I took the bigger bet. I probably shouldn’t be betting on the Panthers because of what we’ve seen from them, but I’m willing to take a chance when I’ve got the bonus bet in my back pocket.

NCSharp: Do you get DraftKings email blasts with bonus bets?

Brad: I get a lot of them on Thursdays, for Thursday Night Football. I can take risks when I have one and then use the no-sweat token on Sunday.

Sam: I got a lot more of them during hockey season from FanDuel. I don’t know if it was targeted because I was doing a lot of hockey betting, but I got a lot of bonus bets and boosted odds on anything of +400 or greater.

NCSharp: So, what are you guys avoiding? No high-risk parlays, I’m guessing. What else?

Sam: I wouldn’t say we’re avoiding parlays. I think we’re just trying to make smarter parlays and bets overall. I read something that for a sports better that made money over time, most of their bets were these not sexy -300 to -750 picks. When betting in that range, you bet ten dollars to win three. Nobody likes that because, nice, you got three dollars. But over a long enough period of time, you’re up thousands of dollars playing that side of the market.

Managing the bankroll

NCSharp: So, pragmatically speaking, how do you manage all your activity? Going back to your goals as sports bettors, what tools are you using to keep track of your bankroll? 

Brad: We use Excel. It’s not that sophisticated. Most people use it.

Sam: We’re definitely not overdoing it. There are apps out there that you can link to your accounts, and they’ll track all your bets. That just seems like a lot, and I hope we don’t get in that far.

Brad: We do look at activity statements in the apps to get a better understanding of wins and losses though.

He’s referring to a feature that typically shows up in your account settings, providing a running total of your overall wins and losses.

NCSharp: Doing that data analysis, what have you guys learned thus far?

Sam: It’s interesting. In the grand scheme of things what we learned is more about unit management and the amount of money that overall is sitting in the bankroll. When we started this, we only cared about did we win? We didn’t really think about the unit side of it. And now I think, who cares if I lost 20 bets; I had one bet that gave me 30 units.

NCSharp: How do you factor promo spending into your bankroll management?

Sam: Our hit rate right now is probably in the 30 percent-ish area. That’s partly because we’re trying to take as many promos as we can get, and you’re almost incentivized by the books to take more risk with these promos. So, inherently, maybe we fall into their trap and our record is worse than it would be if we didn’t have some of these promos involved. When you look at winnings and things like that we’re still in that net positive category.

Sam begins factoring in odds boost credits and max bet ceilings, and he gives a little smile.

Sam: “There’s just a lot of factors, and we’re still figuring them all out.”

Making a sportsbook app wishlist

When sports betting launched in North Carolina last March, Brad and Sam set out to sample all of the NC sports betting apps, splitting them evenly between each other. Since launch, they’ve gravitated to some usual suspects–Fanduel Sportsbook NC, DraftKings Sportsbook NC, BetMGM Sportsbook NC. The reason? It’s simple.

Brad: The interface is best on those apps. That counts for a lot.

Despite the ease of use on some of the more popular apps, I’d like to find out from them, as customers, what they want in an app.

NCSharp: Okay, last question. You guys have toured most of the sports betting apps. What feature would you love to see on these sportsbook apps that you don’t currently have?

Brad: I’ll start. I know it shows my win/loss record on the Draftkings app. I’d like to have more options to see a breakdown of my wins and losses by bet type. That way I could actually track my percentages of wins instead of having to go down and count all my wins one by one.

DraftKings My Activity screenschoot
DraftKings My Stat Sheet layout

Sam: I’m piggybacking off Brad here. I think these companies have all this data on us. They got what bet types we like and which bets we don’t like. They’ll send us targeted promos, but if we could get better analytics on our activity, if these companies would engage with us to show us that you win bets more often when you’re betting these odds or here are your win losses stratified by payouts or odds, we could become more informed bettors.

NCSharp: That seems like some something a pretty modest AI system could give you.  

Sam:  I think so. From a responsible gambling angle, they could offer recommendations on unit sizing. They already give us the alerts saying, ‘You’ve been enjoying Fanduel for the last 30 minutes and you’ve wagered this amount.’ It’d be helpful for them to use that technology to send something saying, ‘Hey, so this is your fourth NFL parlay and you haven’t won any of these. Maybe try a different market.’ I think it would make for more informed and engaged bettors.

We brainstorm a few more ways AI concierge services could even out the money at sportsbooks and help all bettors, but our time is up.

As we close, I can tell Brad and Sam’s wheels are spinning. They’re ambitious about the podcast, about sports betting, and, above all else, about making sound decisions.

When it comes to sports betting, that can feel like a binary proposition. You win or you don’t. It can drive you crazy.

Sam sums up that anxious feeling:

“If 80% of the betting public is over here, should I really consider being with the 80%? Or should I think, maybe I want to be with the 20% over here that’s seeing something that I’m not?”

How to find Bull City Bets

You can listen to the Bull City Bets podcast on most music apps. You can also listen to all their episodes and keep up with their activity at bullcitybets.com.

 

Image Credit: Shutterstock

About the Author

Tyler Andrews

Tyler covers sports, sports law, and gambling for the Tar Heel State. He has also covered similar topics for PlayTexas, PlayGeorgia, PlayCA, PlayFlorida, PlayOhio, and PlayMA. Tyler’s current focus is North Carolina’s pathway to gaming legalization.