Sports bettors can't resist snake oil
Hundreds of gambling touts are selling picks. Almost none of them, it seems, are worth paying for.
IMAGINE THE OUTCRY IF STOCK BROKERS promised sure-thing profits, provided little if any transparency about past performance, and faced no accountability when their customers inevitably ended up losing money. A similar form of predation is playing out — at what appears to be a shocking scale — in the world of legal sports gambling.
I investigated this for The Washington Post, speaking with a variety of characters in the sprawling sector of pick selling. The business is straightforward — charge subscribers for betting recommendations, profit regardless of whether the picks win or lose — and the market of naïve bettors who are eager for easy riches is growing by the day. What I found fascinating to learn about, thanks to insights from full-time bettors and the small group of reputable touts, is the math and betting mechanics that explain why buying picks is almost always a bad investment.
A few years ago, former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Michael Schwimer launched a business intent on driving deceptive pick sellers — “scum of the Earth,” he says — out of business. Schwimer had assembled a team of data scientists and was so confident in their sports predictive models, he made a remarkable promise: Subscribers to his new pick-selling service, JAMBOS, could pay $3,000 for 17 weeks of picks across several sports. If the recommendations lost money after that period, JAMBOS would give each customer a $10,000 refund.
The service folded after five months.
Schwimer said their picks were winning, but lines were moving too quickly for subscribers to be able to bet the recommendations. “There’s a reason why buying picks doesn’t work,” he told me. “There’s no accountability.”
If you know of something that might merit coverage—related to anything newsworthy, not just the betting business—please write me at dannyfunt1 [at] gmail.com.
By the way, in the last edition of this newsletter I joked that you should bet on Chris Stapleton’s performance of the national anthem taking more than 121 seconds. It lasted exactly 121 seconds. More importantly, it was an incredible rendition: Here’s a link if you missed it or care to revisit.
Thanks for reading! This is the face Wynnie makes at touts who try to trick her into buying losing picks:
Beautifully written and researched, Danny. Uncle Johnny