He's got a high-rise condo in Vegas and a getaway beach house in the Keys. He has poolside cabanas permanently reserved in both towns, just in case he feels a sudden urge to party at noon. He wakes up with gel in his air and has Axe Body Spray pumped through his bedroom vents. He drives a Lambo when he's not being driven in a limo. He doesn't have one girlfriend; he has three, and they're all dimes.
He's a pick seller, baby, and every bet's a lock. What's not to like?
“I think they’re some of the most dishonest, disgusting human beings I’ve ever seen,” Circa Sportsbook Operations Director Jeffrey Benson says of pick sellers. “They inflate their record, they give out different sides to different people, they quote numbers that aren’t available, and they probably know that they have no edge and they market themselves that they do.”
This is not a unique opinion. Pick sellers are largely regarded as the scum of the sports betting ecosystem, yet people collectively spend millions of dollars a year seeking their “expert” insight. And some of them are experts. The problem is, the vast majority aren't.
But are they really as evil as they're cracked up to be?
“Insurance companies sell a thing called variable annuities,” said Steve Fezzik, one of the few pick sellers who is respected by even the cottage industry's harshest critics. “These are horrible products that are wrong for 99 percent of people. I would compare the pick-selling business to variable annuities or timeshares. I’m sure some timeshares are great deals, but the vast majority of them are bad, so everybody selling timeshares gets labeled as a snake-oil salesman or crook. There are pick sellers who provide fabulous value to their clients.”
Then there's “Vegas Dave” Oancea, the pick seller featured in the Showtime docu-series Action. He may be the most reviled tout on the planet, in large part due to the notoriety afforded him by that show.
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“On Action, Vegas Dave said something that was so stupid,” recalled professional gambler Bill Krackomberger, who was featured on the same program. “He says, ‘I’m always losing when you guys are around.’ Then he points to his nice car and says, ‘I can’t be a fraud if I’m driving this car.' And you say, ‘You’ve got that car because you’re selling to these idiot kids.'”
“The boiler rooms, that movie Two For The Money, Vegas Dave type of guys just looking to take advantage of the unsuspecting public – they don’t make money betting, they just bilk the public,” said Fezzik. “I think that’s only like 10 percent of those selling picks who fall into that crooked category. Maybe 85 percent work hard, do all their homework, they’re really trying to win for their clients, but they just don’t because it’s hard.”
Trashing touts, then becoming one
Fezzik, who takes his self-concocted surname from Andre the Giant's character in The Princess Bride, is a Northwestern grad who calculated risk for an insurance company before decamping to Las Vegas to concentrate full-time on sports betting.'
“I would agree that 99 percent of sports bettors eventually lose,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2006. “But the guys I know, the math geeks like me who take this seriously, they don't lose. They may only win 54 percent of the time, but that adds up.”
After a decade of making a good living betting on his own, Fezzik said he “started to consider [pick selling] because I saw all these unqualified people selling their picks.”'
He went on to explain, “I’d won the SuperContest and the South Point twice also and tied for first in Leroy’s college football contest. So I had five legitimate world championships and won like $650,000 with very limited entry fees. My ROI was insane. Enough people kept contacting me and I was like, ‘I already bet it. Why wouldn’t I sell it?’ I signed on with Pregame (a pick-selling platform) in 2013 and immediately became a villain because I went to the dark side, but there was demand from the public.”
Since PASPA's repeal in 2018 and the ensuing spread of legal sports betting nationwide, Fezzik estimates that pick sellers' collective revenue has “gone up more than double,” while “the number of pick seller providers, free or non-free, has gone up close to double as well.”
“The rising tide has lifted all boats,” he observed. “I know people have always bet, offshore or through bookies. Maybe it didn’t stop a lot of people, but it did stop the dentist or lawyer in Illinois.”
Whereas most pick sellers tend only to publicize their wins, Fezzik is transparent about his wagering record, as is Krackomberger, who began moonlighting as a pick seller some four years ago after getting stiffed by one too many bookmakers.
“I do a weekly writeup, win or lose, on my Krack Wins site,” he said. “Everyone always says, ‘I’m 5-0 the last weekend.’ I don’t want to know about that. I want to know how you’ve done the last six months, year, or lifetime.
“I went after touts for years before I was a tout. There are only a couple guys who sell picks that I respect in the whole industry. You have these stupid internet kids who want to see someone with a fancy car. That’s not me. I’ve got a three-and-a-half-year-old Kia.”
Buyer beware
When asked to sum up the pick-selling industry as succinctly as possible, Krackomberger replied, “Buyer beware.”
Matt Schuler, the executive director of the Ohio Casino Control Commission, echoed this sentiment.
“Growing up in America, how many times have we heard the phrase, ‘Buyer beware?'” said Schuler. “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. In this situation where we have so many novice gamblers, coupled with this concept that sports gambling is a method to make money — that’s a dangerous mindset. There’s an illusion of control with sports gambling because fans know the teams, they know the coach, they know the field, the weather conditions, the refs, and believe that gives them an edge. The truth is, gambling is gambling. If you gamble long enough, chances are you’re gonna lose.”
Legal gambling in the United States is heavily regulated, but pick sellers are not. Only Maryland has a license for the independent evaluation of pick sellers, and it only pertains to those that are affiliated with a sportsbook in some way. (West Virginia is considering the adoption of a similar law.)
Schuler said it's not in the OCCC's purview to regulate pick sellers, but he wouldn't rule out eventually launching a public education campaign to address the topic. To that end, he is fond of a tout-wary PSA produced by the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, the organization responsible for the 1-800-GAMBLER helpline.
Another New Jerseyan, the gaming consultant Bill Pascrell III, thinks it's only a matter of time before state regulators take a hard look at pick sellers, while Circa's Benson said, “If you had someone regulating someone similar to a stock seller to clean up that side of the industry, it couldn’t hurt. But [regulators] have so much on their plates.”
David Beaudoin, a former Laval University professor who now bets on sports and sells picks for a living, agrees. The Quebec resident, who has more clients in the U.S. than in Canada, feels that regulations requiring touts to be transparent about their success rates “would be great in theory, but maybe hard to implement.”
'Not enough transparency'
The handicapper-for-hire industry has become so manifold that it now boasts adjacent businesses like SoBet, an online platform for sports betting influencers. Among SoBet's handpicked personalities are a good many pick sellers, but that's not how the site's founder, Cooper Lycan, defines his company.
“We don’t necessarily consider ourselves to be working in the pick-selling industry,” said Lycan. “That’s an ecosystem we’re trying to fix through transparency. At the same time, along the trend line that we’re seeing, the independence of these social creators, they need avenues to monetize what they’re doing. They’re spending time researching, building models. But really, the pick-selling industry is something we see ourselves fixing.”
When asked what needs fixing, Lycan replied, “Through our lens, it’s just too siloed — too many options, not enough transparency, accountability, anybody can really do it without any reputation. That’s probably the biggest flaw we see right now.”
Captain Jack Andrews (another pseudonym) is the co-founder of Unabated, a company that, for a fee, offers bettors access to its proprietary handicapping tools. Benson, for one, considers what Andrews is doing to be far less unseemly than selling picks.
“I think it’s different,” said Benson. “They’re allowing people to use tools to make their own decisions versus selling picks.”
“I always wanted to develop something that would require people to still bring something to the table,” Andrews told Sports Handle. “We sell tools that help you line shop more efficiently. I think it’s a more sustainable way, if you are a bettor, because you’re learning something, you’re figuring out how this all works. You’re betting numbers at prices rather than just being spoon-fed answers that may or may be right.”
As for those doing the feeding, Andrews observed, “They’re basically raising the vig. [A pick seller’s clients] are gonna lose more when they lose because you factor in the price they paid for picks, and they’re gonna win less when they win. You’re already charging yourself higher vig, and it’s already hard enough to beat the house.'
“From the industry side of things, it makes people think that sports betting has an 'easy' button. It’s not that easy. There’s still a lot of hard work to do. Price matters. There’s gonna be a point where that line moves where it’s no longer a good bet, and a lot of pick sellers don’t want to educate you on that level.”