The World’s Most Famous Sports Bettors

Concerning betting, everyone hopes for success in this field, but few know people who have made boatloads of cash through this pastime. Enter this article, which seeks to uncover bettors that have had extraordinary prosperity in wagering on sports and one that made global headlines on other grounds as well.

Billy Walters

Various US outlets have dubbed Walters one of America’s most successful bettors. Some have nicknamed him the best ever, and he notes that he can brag about having a winning run that stretched over three decades.

Walters is a Kentucky native who grew up in a poor family and found his niche in the car dealerships and furniture businesses. That said, gambling was always near and dear to his heart, as he began wagering at nine on baseball. By the time he reached twenty-two, Walters estimates that he had lost over $50,000 partaking in this hobby. However, his luck turned in his thirties, as he began winning big at casino games in Atlantic City and Las Vegas before moving to utilize computer analysis to analyze sports outcomes. Putting technology to use, Walters created a system that produced thirty-eight winning years out of thirty-nine, selling picks primarily for the NFL, NBA, and college football contests. Per his analysis, his scheme delivered a 57% accuracy.

Haralabos Voulgaris

Voulgaris is probably the NBA’s most renowned gambler. Born in 1975 in Winnipeg, this Canadian of Greek descent used to work as the Dallas Mavericks’ director of quantitative research and development. He is also quite the poker player, as the Hendon Mob Database lists his lifetime earnings at almost $3.5 million.

Voulgaris studied philosophy at the University of Manitoba. He now owns Spanish football club CD Castellón and lives in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, California. In 2013, ESPN profiled him, detailing how he accumulated sizeable wealth by sports betting alone by the time he turned thirty. According to him, he picked up gambling while staying in Las Vegas for two months after high school while joining his multi-millionaire father on a business trip. Staying at Caesars Palace, Voulgaris would spend hours in the establishment’s sportsbook, where he watched NBA games and soaked in how sports betting works. Following graduating college, he bet $70,000 on the Lakers capturing the 2000 NBA championship, which they did, beating the Indiana Pacers 4-2. With the capital he got from this win, Haralabos made over three hundred wagers on the following NBA season, with a staggering degree of success.

He claims he exploited inaccurate total odds, boasting a 70% win rate. And that, at one point, he would wager over a million dollars a day, and that boxing legend, Floyd Mayweather, was his beard. According to his analysis, basketball is way easier to predict than football. That is why he sticks to betting on it.

Tony Bloom

Some British readers may recognize Bloom as the owner of the EPL club – Brighton & Hove Albion F.C.. He bought 75% of the franchise in 2009 after a long-term association with the team. His grandfather was its vice-chairman in the 1970s, and one of his uncles was a Brighton & Hove Albion director.

Bloom is an entrepreneur and a well-known poker player who attained much of his fortune via his private betting syndicate. His company, Starlizard, is a business entity that looks at betting similarly to how hedge funds treat stocks. Bloom describes it as a consultancy firm that utilizes complicated algorithms that incorporate statistical models that create odds that are more accurate than what bookies list. Starlizard then sells these to bettors looking to gain an edge. Thus, they act as a betting adviser.

UK media believes Starlizard makes £100 million to $145 million per year, with football odds bringing in their biggest business. That means that Bloom has found a way to hack football betting.

Zeljko Ranogajec

Ranogajec is a secretive Aussie with Croatian blood who finished school at the University of Tasmania, studying law and commerce. He rarely gives interviews and has managed to stay out of the limelight, even with multiple journalists profiling him, going so far as to label him as the world’s biggest gambler. Per some reports, his gambling activity, at one time, accounted for 6% to 8% of Tabcorp’s, Australia’s largest gambling company, annual revenues, betting mainly on horse races. Allegedly, he has a sophisticated betting system that can spot quality margins. Some have questioned the methods his gambling syndicate implements, which sources believe pulls in over $1 billion annually through strategic betting and bookmaker-struck rebate deals.

Despite all this, Zeljko’s fame in the gambling arena primarily comes from his success as a blackjack player, and in 2011, he got inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. He has also won a $7.5 million Keno jackpot and has left Australia due to various legal controversies/issues.

Ben Patz

It is strange that someone who came into this world in 1996 and whose first legal bet was in 2015 makes this cut. Yet, Ben Patz accomplished this feat, but not for all the right reasons.

Patz began his online gambling adventure by initially utilizing offshore bookmakers. Ben’s first big win was a twelve-team parlay through which he won $75,000 that he never got, as his chosen bookie refused to pay him out.  After Internet sports betting became legal in the US, he moved to using New Jersey-based ones and quickly became the talk of the gambling world. He had exposure to the betting sphere from his dad, who was an avid horse bettor.  He used the NJ William Hill sportsbook and won $237,200 on a $1,800 parlay. That was the start of a stunning sports wagering career, which included a run that netted him $1.16 million in winnings, accumulated in fifty days via parlays only. That is what earned him the moniker Parlay Patz.

Unfortunately, much of the US betting public became aware of Patz on account of his thirty-six-month probation sentence, which he got for threatening professional and collegiate athletes on social media. So, much of his notoriety stems from this court case, in which he admitted to sending private messages to various athletes, threatening to murder them in brutal ways.

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