RM Williams’ great-grandson winning at sports betting

Joel Williams runs a sports tipping business, Bet with Joel, which claims to be up more than 180pc in the past 12 months.

Like his great-grandfather Reginald Murray “RM” Williams, Joel Williams is styling himself as a plucky underdog taking on the big guns in his line of business. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

Like his great-grandfather Reginald Murray “RM” Williams, Joel Williams is styling himself as a plucky underdog taking on the big guns in his line of business.

His Bet with Joel tipping business, which the 28-year-old heads from Adelaide, claims to have made returns of more than 180 per cent in the past year from his sports betting tips.

Williams says he is taking on the bookmakers and winning for his clients, finding a string of winners across local and international basketball, the AFL, greyhounds, tennis, the US NFL and soon, he plans, the NRL in Australia.

He is working on some tips for his clients for Wednesday’s State of Origin clash, providing advice on markets such as individual try scorers and total points scored in the match.

Williams mixes some new-age number-crunching skills with old-fashioned scouting and sporting expertise as he and his team spend hours poring over player information and team acumen to find an edge against the bookmarkers.

Across time, the positive returns have piled up. Bet with Joel offers tips to its customers across several pack­ages. The higher the cost, the more specialised the tips.

The firm’s black package, Williams claims, has returned 182 per cent in the past 12 months from more than 4000 tips. The next most expensive, gold membership, is up about 145 per cent from 3500 tips in the same time.

The global membership, where higher-end investors bet around the world with bookmakers, is up 205 per cent, though Williams says he rarely recommends betting more than about 3 per cent of a client’s total investment bankroll.

“I preach and educate it is not about one day or one weekend, it really is about an analogy — it’s like if you’re competing against a bookmaker normally it is like flipping a coin slightly bent to land on tails all the time for them. We bend the coin back to our customers’ favour,” he says.

Williams has not followed in RM Williams’s footsteps by going into the boot-making trade but he is considered one of the more entrepreneurial members in the family — and he says he is happy the group behind the famous name has returned to Australian hands after billionaire Andrew Forrest recent shelled out about $190m for the iconic boot brand.

Having started in business by importing shoes to sell in Australia, Williams ran a cafe before establishing his betting business, following some personal success backing winners, at the beginning of 2019.

He says he remembers visiting the family farm in Toowoomba as a child, where RM Williams resided before his death in 2003, and his grandmother telling him as a teenager that of anyone in the family he reminded her of RM the most.

“RM was a bit of a challenger himself and did things his way, and in the game I’m in I’m different as well. I feel like the challenger taking on the big guys, so maybe there’s some similarities and maybe that comes from him,” Williams says. “But half the people I know wouldn’t know RM is my great-grandfather. I’ve always wanted to make my own way in the world. I’m obsessed with that entrepreneurial spirit.”

Williams says he has had some big success for his customers with the AFL and the recent NBA playoffs in the US. The NBA was particularly different as the league went into hiatus because of the pandemic before resuming in a bubble.

“For me it was quite exciting because it gave bookmakers less data to go off. You saw the players’ shooting percentage go up, for example, and we could see that fast and make adjustments with our strategy. It worked out well.”