The proliferation of legal sports betting has sparked bettors’ need for a single app to track their bets and balances and compare how their bets perform against their friends. Golden Camel, launched this year, hopes to accomplish all that - and more.
Co-founders Ryan Magrum, Artie Baxter, and Ben Ramirez spoke with Covers' senior editor Ryan Butler about a San Francisco 49ers game that inspired the app, how the platform looks to integrate prediction markets, and what users can expect from Golden Camel in the months (and years) to come.
The Golden Camel team is made up of big sports bettors. Tell me about your betting experience and how that inspired the platform.
Magrum: “This was late baseball season, early football season, about 10 year ago, and we were both pretty degenerate sports bettors. We rolled into (Levi's Stadium) firing bets with our five different bookies on all the games - including the one we were at. We spent the whole game on our phones, completely not present. Also, we lost every bet.
“So we joked, ‘What if there was an app like an E-Trade account that showed all your bets in one place so you didn’t have to bounce between bookies’?”
Baxter: “But sports betting wasn’t legal, and we weren’t tech guys, so it was just an idea to make us feel better.”
Magrum: “Fast-forward six years. About four years ago, I moved to Austin. I was flipping houses. My wife said, ‘You don’t love what you do. You need to be passionate. The kids need to see that.’ She suggested revisiting the sports betting idea. Sports betting had become legal, states were coming online, things were moving in the right direction. So I called Artie.”
Baxter: “I didn’t even remember the idea at first. He reminded me of the game where we lost all that money, and I’m like, ‘Really? I’m in a crisis and you’re bringing that up?” But he looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘If you tell me we’re in, I’ll make it work.’
“We knew nothing about tech. Then we reached out to Ryan’s cousin’s wife - Ben’s wife - who’s a successful tech entrepreneur. Soon enough, we’re ‘tech guys.’”
Ramirez: “I’ve learned a lot, but my background is tech and design. I’ve been a designer at various tech companies and startups - helping companies get from zero to one. I had worked on gaming-related startups and had UX research on what makes gamblers tick.
“So when Ryan came to me, I could apply that experience - building something fun, easy to use, with smart UX, and helping them figure out how to build it and what team they’d need.”
Dozens of other companies have tried creating similar platforms that allow bettors to track bets and compare their plays against other users. What separates Golden Camel?
Baxter: “We’re the Apple TV of sports betting. We want to be the glue between the consumer and the platforms. Our point of view is, ‘Less is more.’ Offshore books often have better UX than U.S. books. Think Chipotle or In-N-Out, not Cheesecake Factory.”
Magrum: “It’s about user experience - simple, fast, efficient. An aggregator where you can check bets quickly and get off your phone. The goal is to help people be more present instead of bouncing between apps and tracking bets manually.”
Ramirez: “We have all the deep-dive data if you want it, but we don’t shove it in your face. And philosophically, our POV is entertainment. If you gamble, you’re going to lose. We’re not selling the fantasy of outsmarting the house.”
“We’re building social features - connecting people, sharing bets, celebrating wins, laughing at each other’s losses. Think Red Bull or Barstool Sports, not Charles Schwab.”
Prediction markets have dominated the sports betting discourse this year and are projected to make an even bigger impact in the years to come. How is Golden Camel approaching sports event contracts?
Magrum: “Yes - we’ve started those conversations. We want to include them in our aggregator and track those lines.”
Baxter: “Trends are our friends. We’re not going to be dinosaurs. We’re planning for that future.”
Ramirez: “Being platform-agnostic makes it easy - whatever users are betting on, we’ll be there.”
You’ve already made your name known in the Phoenix area with your company headquarters. What comes next for Golden Camel locally and nationwide?
Baxter: “One of our big assets is connections with young adults. We’ve made a content hub where people can watch games. They can be a personality, a handicapper, or they're just a fan, we wanted to build out a space and to throw events and to be a part of the community in Phoenix, and so we just launched our office/headquarters that is more like a massive man cave than an office, and we're really like excited to sell the fun of gambling.”
Magrum: “Artie and I shoot our podcast here, and we're open to college students and whoever else wants to come get involved under our umbrella and grow their brands with our brand in the sports entertainment world.”
Ramirez: “Overall, the (sports betting) industry is really accelerating still at a good clip, so it’s fun to be creating something that is right there where people are excited to use it. We already have numbers to back up the traction we have with our product.
“People are using the app, and they’re staying on it, which is a really good sign. It’s still early. We have a lot of learning to do, and we have stuff to improve upon, but I think we’ve gotten to the core of what people want: a nice experience, and something that is fun and easy to use.
“Not everybody is betting $10,000 on a game. But even if it’s a few dollars, you want to feel like it’s a great experience and to be able to share that with your friends.”
