Ep. 179: Just merged: Pine Sports and SharpSports join forces w/ Vijay Dewan & Ryan Murphy

Ep. 179 features Ryan Murphy of SharpSports and Vijay Dewan from Pine Sports, who sit down to talk through their recent merger to form the new Pine Sports, a full-stack sports data and AI company serving both bettors and B2B partners.

Hear them discuss:

• The origin story and strategic rationale behind the Pine Sports and SharpSports merger • How mutual investor Chris Grove sparked the deal by introducing the two founders • How the merger combines SharpSports’ B2B infrastructure with Pine Sports’ consumer-facing AI tools • Why clean data pipelines are essential to powering jaXon, Pine’s chat-based betting assistant • What they've learned from launching LLMs into real betting workflows with jaXon • The future of “autonomous betting” and where they see chat interfaces playing a role • How they’ve integrated tech stacks and restructured roles across the combined team • Their strategy to scale both the SharpSports API and Pine Sports’ user base • How big‑name athlete Marshawn Lynch is backing the company, and how his endorsement is boosting Pine Sports' brand credibility • Trends in how casual and sharp bettors are adopting new tooling • Why they view betting tools as an underserved and high-growth category • How Ryan and Vijay split responsibilities and stay aligned post-merger

Catch the video version of this episode here.

Learn more 👇

➡️ Pine Sports website ➡️ SharpSports website

➡️ Vijay Dewan on Linkedin

➡️ Ryan Murphy on Linkedin

📩 Get the top headlines from the industry's most promising growth-stage companies every week—totally free! Subscribe to the Betting Startups newsletter here: https://news.bettingstartups.com/

--

This podcast is presented by Optimove, the #1 CRM Marketing solution for the iGaming industry. Since 2012, Optimove has served iGaming Operators from startups to industry leaders. Today, 4 out of the Top 5 US Operators Personalize Player Experiences with Optimove. iGaming operators know their growth journey begins and continues with Optimove, the #1 CRM Marketing solution for the iGaming industry.