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The "Walking Bets Girl", Taylor Mathis, announced she has entered into a partnership deal with the NoVig Sports Betting Exchange.
What is the NoVig Sports Betting Exchange?
Novig is a sports betting exchange that eliminates the need for traditional sportsbooks by creating a two-sided marketplace. We do this by enabling users to bet directly against friends or the market, rather than against the house, making the betting experience more efficient, fair, and, most importantly, profitable.
Taylor Mathis Fresh Off Her Gig With DraftKings
While neither officially announced they were parting ways, Mathis came under fire for promoting a meme coin in her likeness that many in the gambling and crypto communities claimed to be a scam.
DraftKings came under intense scrutiny to drop Mathis, which apparently they did.
Here is how it all transpired at the time:
From Awful Announcing:
Essentially, fans of Mathis made the $TAYLOR token based off her likeness, and she agreed to promote it in exchange for 20 million tokens, two percent of its total supply. She started promoting it on her X account (which has more than 200,000 followers) last week, leading to it reaching a $6 million market cap Saturday (which would have her stake worth an estimated $120,000).
Mathis sold her stake for 95 SOL (another cryptocurrency, with 95 tokens currently worth just over $16,000). She then sent messages saying she didn’t want to be involved in $TAYLOR any more. She posted on X that crypto wasn’t for her and that she would donate the money to charity. But her account then bought 34 million $TAYLOR tokens at a new low price of $9,000 (giving her almost 1.5 times her initial stake and a $7,000 profit), and she promoted that she was back in on the coin. That led to yet more people questioning if she was illegally manipulating the market, and to them tagging DraftKings, and to her locking down her account and removing DraftKings references from it.
*There is some extensive air (silence) at start of the below audio
Come join now!!https://t.co/zFVwX8ypOY https://t.co/djYGhXr8Dq
— Taylor Mathis (@TMathSports) January 9, 2025
"I Honestly Just Want to Kill Myself"
Shortly after the controversy broke, Mathis said she was duped into joining up with the individuals looking to promote her meme coin.
She revealed: "I only reluctantly even 'played along' because they hacked my iCloud and threatened me and my family posting our home addresses sending videos with guns etc if I didn’t do things."
Taylor appeared to be in total despair by late Friday.
"I honestly have never been in such a dark place in my life, I honestly want to kill myself. I have made no oney (sic) off of this and all the false information out there is disgusting. I don't know how people do this to people."
No Love for NoVig From One Group
On Wednesday's chosen podcast, our friends at the Prime Suspects discussed the Mathis signing and didn't exactly have the kindest words for NoVig's business (go to the 2:36 mark to listen below).
NoVig, it should be noted, has deviated from its original positioning as a sports betting exchange that looked to take all types of action now moving into a more recreational sports betting space that includes more of a focus on parlay betting (i.e. "sucker bets").
Joe Brennan, Jr of Prime Suspects and also co-founder of Prime Sportsbook, had this to say about Mathis:
"I'm not going to apologize for it," he said. "I went to her Twitter account earlier since she's linked to it through all these things and right now pinned to the top of her account are not what I would consider picks videos. They are emphasizing a different part of her game and they (NoVig) would not be the first guys out there to bring together sports betting and very attractive women. I don't think that necessarily gets them in hot water. So what (if) a sportsbook goes out there and gets a bikini girl to go out there and make content for them, stop the press, or even the push into parlays.
"I think the thing I find alarming about these guys, especially some Harvard educated kids, is now this announcement that they are hiring 'college ambassadors' and I think this is one of the stupidest fucking things I've seen anyone in the sports betting business do, since it's become very clear with regulators, they don't want us (regulated U.S. sportsbooks) near college campuses."
Adam Bjorn had this to offer: "(I) ran into Jacob? Is he the guy that is in front of this thing? I had a conversation with him at a Paris beer garden at one of the SBC parties. Clearly had no idea what business he was in."
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