Edition 14: Unabated Sports Profile
A review of your direct path to intelligent betting
Welcome to Edition 14 of The Handle! We’ll be doing a deep dive and review of Unabated, a hot new sports betting product currently free to all bettors.
Unabated Sports is a new dynamic sports betting product aiming to provide “Your Direct Path to Intelligent Betting” which launched last week to the public. The product sets out to give aspiring sharps the tools and resources necessary to level up their skill and knowledge as a sports bettor. Unabated boasts a reputable and seasoned founding leadership team including seasoned professional bettors Captain Jack Andrews and Rufus Peabody, as well as early Fantasy Labs & SportsInsights (both acq. by Action Network) employees Dan Fabrizio and Matt Snyder.
Captain Jack (a pseudonym) and Rufus are both professional bettors with a knack for producing content and understanding which data science tools bettors can leverage to be more successful. Fabrizio and Snyder boost the business acumen and tech savvy of the start-up, forming a suitable four-man founding team looking to improve the sports betting ecosystem. Unabated offers products to amplify the betting acumen across all levels of skill, ranging from a simulator tool with dynamic uncertainty for NFL season to an odds screen for NFL futures. The Handle team took a look at the qualitative and quantitative features of Unabated’s product and are excited to share our thoughts below.
So, what is Unabated?
As we all know, as the sports betting landscape rapidly expands and money pours in, the landscape of “wagertainment” will grow with it, with some services providing valuable tools to bettors, with others being about as -EV as it gets (looking at you, Vegas Dave). The Unabated team is creating tools and providing resources to help bettors lose less and hopefully bringing them closer to 0 EV. Some of the tools include trading tools to allow you to calculate pricing on alternative lines accurately, comparing two lines to find the optimal price, and calculators for closing line value (CLV) and hold percentage. Additionally Unabated’s content suite includes a live futures odds screen features > 30 sportsbooks as well as an in-depth NFL simulator which allows users to customize qualitative insights and build their own no-code models. These data-driven tools will allow aspiring profitable sports bettors a look at resources with proven data science backing and an authentic educational perspective in a place where most content is just a pick with some information that has long been factored into the market. Most content is a wide funnel directing sports bettors to affiliate links to make picks on extremely efficient markets. Unabated hopes to avoid funneling users to specific sports books to pad their own wallets, instead funneling users to their own product suite once they go with a paid site of offerings.
NFL Simulator
In a feature last week from US Bets’ Eric Ruskin, Rufus Peabody contextualizes Unabated’s role in the betting landscape by saying “sports betting is about both being able to ask the right question and having the tools to answer it. We’re not creating their power rankings for them. They don’t need to trust our numbers. We’re giving them the tools to leverage their own numbers and their own power ratings”. Peabody feels as though the NFL simulator provides bettors with the tools to optimize their edges and quantify their opinions better.
For example, in week 1 of the NFL season the Washington Football Team’s starting quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, injured his hip and is out for the next 7 weeks (give or take). A tool like Unabated’s NFL simulator allows a bettor to factor in the insertion of Taylor Heinicke into the starting lineup, or change the probability that any individual quarterback will get hurt. The increased precision of this feature allows users who don’t have the ability to create their own model to utilize the Massey-Peabody power ranking system and input a few of their own dynamic variables to influence their simulation.
Once the simulation is run, bettors are presented with a matrix of each team’s average win total and odds of winning multiple future bet options such as the Super Bowl or a given division. Finally, a user can match their own live odds against a selection of 30+ sportsbooks to mobilize their opinions into actionable edges and place wagers at their discretion. Rufus even claims to be using the Unabated tech instead of his own models for some of his NFL bets.
Unique Content
Captain Jack has done an awesome job of creating interesting, educational, and effective content for sports bettors of any level to increase their skill level and learn to bet smarter. Reading Jack’s content and watching his videos allows bettors to have the tools at their disposal to manage their bankroll more efficiently and sustainably bet. Captain Jack’s background is as an advantage player, traveling across the country winning in casinos and as a sports bettor. After the repeal of PASPA in 2018, he began writing publicly on how to become a sharper bettor and the intricacies behind market making and how the sports betting process operates from all angles. The Jersey native shifted to video content in March 2019 with the rise of the pandemic and has built a content library of high-quality production videos teaching bettors how to increase their edges and gamble more responsibly. Captain Jack’s Youtube channel boasts over 13k subscribers to go along with his 25.7k Twitter followers and Peabody’s 37.4k, giving Unabated a built-in audience and starting point for inside-out growth and marketing efforts.
The nature and voice of Andrews’ Youtube and previous writing shines through with Unabated’s Education section. The site has featured pieces on specific NFL betting such as Elimination Contests and Teasers as well as more general sports betting advice including the mentality of a professional gambler and an honest review of the tout industry. While Unabated’s content won’t be able to rival the SEO prowess of sites like Action Network, the team hopes that their content will be more useful and actionable for any bettor looking to legitimately improve their process and bet sustainably.
Interface and Experience
For starters, the Unabated web screen is a bit crowded on the native home page, with not enough focus on the navigation between different tools relative to the home screen. These tabs are the various tools and represent the meat and potatoes of the Unabated offerings. We think it should be far easier to see and click between these tools on the main home page, even if this isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Earlier, we talked about the simulator and content, so now we are going to briefly dive into the trading tools.
The trading tools are incredibly exciting and the breadth of their offering is simply unparalleled in the current industry landscape. This is where Unabated truly differentiates itself from any other product that currently exists, across both the free and paid content space. There is simply no available chart for everyday bettors to learn the value of a half point, to decide whether to bet a juiced over 5 goals NHL bet, or take over 5.5 -110. The same logic applies to comparing alternate lines in an NBA game, and Unabated has the capabilities to do this for you. The math behind these calculations isn’t exactly rocket science nor is collecting the data necessary to create your own chart, but they are both non-trivial processes for casual bettors who simply do not have the requisite time to make it happen for themselves. Unabated lowers this barrier, allowing each bettor to compare lines with ease. We cannot recommend these tools enough for bettors who are perusing alternate lines or looking for value.
Final Grade: 8/10
Overall, the Unabated UI can be a bit clunky, especially for a truly novice bettor who does not know how to create power ratings. However, the tools are quite literally the best available across the entire internet for comparing lines and trying to itch out some value. We are looking forward to Unabated continuing to innovate their product and expand their offerings, and look forward to using it this NFL season and beyond. Unabated is free (for the time being), so we recommend any bettor looking to up their knowledge of sportsbooks product offerings and improve their effectiveness as a bettor to check out their full suite of tools while they’re still available without a paywall.
Miscellaneous Recent Consumption:
Press
According to GeoComply there were over 58M geolocation transactions for opening weekend of NFL season, a 126% YoY increase.
Fintech company Sporttrade Inc. will use software from New York-based Nasdaq to oversee its sports betting and trading platform. Bloomberg with more here.
Fanatics has had meetings with Rush Street Interactive and Swedish gaming company Betsson to execute its sports betting operation. The merchandising giant has upended the trading card market and is looking to do the same with sports betting. Darren Rovell from Action Network has more here.
PointsBet CEO Johnny Aitken details plans to compete with DraftKings and FanDuel through high-level technology offerings including in play betting (Acq. Banach Tech for microbetting) and a move into iGaming. Business Insider has more here.
Wynn Resorts has obtained a $1.5 billion credit line from the Bank of China. Front Office Sports has more here.
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