$30 Kickstarter Comparo—Syd vs Lexi (Lexi Pays Better, But Do What Works For You)

Two of the biggest DietBet hosts are Sydney Torres (Syd Journey) and Lexi Reed (Fatgirlfedup).

Both have lost lots of weight—Lexi lost over 200 I think—using DietBet, and now they are hosting games with lots of people in them.

Lexi has been hosting games since late 2016 and she now gets well over 5,000 people in her Kickstarters regularly—with this number exceeding 20,000 this January and 10,000 this February. This New Year’s, will she hit 30,000?

Syd gets 800-1,000 typically, with 1,400 last January.

Both hosts offer prizes for participating and both have active support for the players. I am in Syd’s next Kickstarter, starting on Monday. (I didn’t choose Lexi because the timing didn’t work out for me—she starts a week after Syd and the other two games I am doing.)

Both games cost $30. And I thought it would be fun to compare the payouts to see which one was better.

Of course, if one is trending better, that means the players are more likely to fail to make weight on average. I wouldn’t necessarily conclude from that that one host is not as good as the other one in providing support.

But I suppose some people might favor Syd and others might favor Lexi for any number of reasons. People should choose who they think is right for themselves. As I said, I chose based on personal timing requirements.

So if you look at the graphs above you see that Syd’s payouts and ROI tend to be less than Lexi’s. A Syd game pays around $41 on average, or about 37% return; while a Lexi game pays $48, or about 60% ROI.

The data points indicate when the Kickstarter started. I’m not sure what was going on in the two Syd games in February and March of this year. I’d guess Mardi Gras in the first one caused the return to spike, and 4 weeks of Lent in the second one caused the return to plummet; but that’s just a wild guess because I was raised Catholic. The Lexi games that were concurrent with these did not show this trend to the same degree.

I also plotted the number of players in each game. Although Lexi has several times more players than Syd, her numbers really spike in January, when the “resolutioners” come in. These folks start dieting after overindulging over the holidays, and after a month or two of sustained effort many of them leave.

I think a lot of these folks don’t know too much about DietBet and are looking to do just one Kickstarter, and drawn to the six-figure pot in Lexi’s games. Lexi had 20,307 players in her game that started on January 6; this number dropped to 10,271 for the February 11 game, and dropped into the 6,000-9,000 range for the spring and summer. In contrast, Syd’s January 14 game had 1,419 players, which is only about 50% more than her games later in the year.

So Lexi gets the huge influx of New Year resolutioners , which swells her numbers temporarily, and retains 6,000-8,000 veteran players who stay with her month after month; while most of Syd’s 1,000 average are veterans, with only a few New Year resolutioners.

Check out the ROIs for the December 2018 and January 2019 games for both hosts (Syd started games only a year ago, so we don’t have a 2017/2018 comparison to do—but Lexi’s data back then is consistent with the most recent Christmas and New Year period.)

Lexi’s November 19 game, which included an early Thanksgiving weekend and much of the lead-up to Christmas, paid $55.58 / 85.3%—the highest of the year. The next game, starting January 6 and having over 20,000 players, paid $44.04 / 46.8%, the lowest of the year so far (but actually higher than most of Syd’s games!)

Syd had a November 19 game as well, paying $40.36 / 34.5%—less than Lexi’s would be the next January. Syd then hosted a January 14 game which paid better: $41.52 / 38.4%.

It would that Syd’s people handle their holiday diets better than Lexi’s on average. In general, they do better than Lexi’s people.

But in the end, a person should choose who they like and lose the 4% on their own. Not much difference in dollar payout anyway when you’re betting only $30. Go with what’s more fun, or what fits in your schedule, is what I say.

P.S. my second and third transformers end in about a week. Lexi hosts one of them. I completed one late last August. Of these three, I am predicting that Lexi’s will pay the best for winning all 6 rounds. Makes sense.