Wagertainment is the perfect term to describe how so many people approach the NCAA Tournament. We will place our bets. It could be at a sportsbook or simply throwing down 5 or 10 bucks to enter the office bracket pool, but we will all put some money down.
Now, does that mean we are all educated college basketball fans? Hell no! Look at the ratings. College basketball’s regular season is, at best, a regional curiosity. We are more attracted to being part of an event than to analyzing the path Purdue will have to take to get to Houston.
The stigma is gone when it comes to sports betting. That means more people are doing it than ever before. Sure, it is easier to do, but information is also everywhere and it isn’t tailored only to the guy calling his bookie to get a few dollars down before tipoff of the next game.
BetQL is on to something with what it calls “wagertainment.” It’s the idea that sports betting doesn’t have to be a niche conversation. If your primary goal is to entertain, and you succeed at that, the audience will follow you anywhere. Let other networks and platforms hire the octagenarian Vegas bookmakers. This one isn’t going to live and die with the audience that wants to hear from those guys anyway.
Plenty of women have found a home at BetQL, not only feeling welcome as a listener, but standing out as talent as well. The wagertainment approach isn’t the only reason, but it certainly helps.
“Wagertainment means figuring out how to take a bunch of dense information and turn it into fun content that people can relate to. When hosting BetQL U In The Action on Saturday’s, we watch games and bet on them live during the show,” says former BSM writer and current BetQL host Kate Constable. “I want our listeners to feel like they’re sweating these plays out with me, so showing my true emotion as the game unfolds, whether good or bad, is important. It’s all about getting our audience to feel like they’re apart of the action and invested in the outcome of the game right alongside me.”
Kate is one of many female BetQL hosts. Like her, Lucy Burdge is also on the network on the weekends. Burdge hosts Back to the Futures.
She told me that she isn’t surprised by the increased opportunities to be in the sports betting space. More states have legalized betting on sports, so more people are betting. That means more people are looking for information.
“I feel the number of women in the business of sports betting has certainly grown with greater opportunities. And hopefully that leads to more women in the sports betting audience who enjoy it.”
During the week, BetQL listeners hear Trysta Krick on BetMGM Tonight, Chelsa Messinger on BetMGM Daily Tip and Erin Hawksworth on BetQL Daily.
“I was the second woman hired on at the network,” Hawksworth says. “Chelsa was first, then there was me. The network has grown altogether. There definitely weren’t many women when I first started. I am not shocked at all. I think it is amazing to see so many qualified women who love talking about sports gambling.”
That’s the key to finding the right female voices. BetQL isn’t just looking for women. The network is looking for qualified women.
Qualified means more than just knowing the odds and what they mean. A qualified candidate, male or female, is someone that can thrive in the wagertainment universe.
Trysta Krick will be the first to tell you that she is no sharp. She likes to gamble and she is good on a microphone. Winning is nice, but it takes a backseat in the wagertainment formula.
“I came from Barstool, so it was always through the entertainment lens,” she told me of her gambling background. “Once I got to Audacy, I really looked at it much more carefully, in terms of where trends have gone and just doing more of the nerdy stuff. You start to learn all of the different websites that you need in order to research and find out what helps you become better at it. I mean, if you’re putting your own money on it, we know we’re not going to be as good as professional gamblers, but we can at least try, right? We can at least attempt to be good at this in addition to entertaining. Nobody wants to lose money. That’s not fun. And part of this, obviously, a big part of this is having fun.”
Putting entertainment first has taken gambling content and just made it content. It gives the women of BetQL the kind of power over their shows that any great entertainer has.
The bets do matter. The network isn’t called EntertainmentQL, after all. But the person making the bets and how they react matter more.
“I love it because when I prepare content I of course want to win my bets but I also want it to be entertaining and add my own personality because that is also the aspect of it I have most control over vs. whether or not a team loses a game,” Burdge says. “This business is, in the end, about entertainment, so wagertainment is certainly something I appreciate.”
So let’s end where we began. The field is set. The first games of the NCAA Tournament tip off on Tuesday. The first weekend of action is always one of Vegas’s busiest, and now that mobile wagering is legal across the country, those books see a bump in action too.
Bettors are on the hunt for information. The amount of money they will each put down varies wildly. Whether it is who to pick in their bracket pool on an Elite 8 matchup that feels too close to call or whether to take the over on Brandon Miller’s rebounds in game 1, more people than ever will be seeking out what the voices of BetQL have to say.
Kate Constable hopes that any listener immediately can tell that wagertainment is a real thing and it is something she and her colleagues do very well.
“I hope they take away how much fun betting can be, assuming you’re smart with your money! I look at a lot of factors outside of stats when handicapping. Motivation, past meetings, coaching styles, etc. There is so much more to betting than the X’s and O’x and I hope I’m able to shed light into some of those intangibles that people can take with them to become a more successful bettor. I also hope they’re able to feel how much fun I have doing it.”
Demetri Ravanos is a former columnist and editor for Barrett Media. He is the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host of the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
