Deadspin: How Randy Bell Turned a Sucker’s Game Into an Industry
- Randy Bells said to be “America’s Favorite Sports Betting Expert”
- Bell has the love of mainstream media to pass him off as an analyst unlike “blowhards” of yesteryear
- Following him, he says, is like having “a seat in the sportsbook”
- Audio recordings that surfaced last year appear to capture Bell telling a business partner that his touts’ picks aren’t successful
Deadspin.com features a story Friday on what it calls “America’s Favorite Sports Betting Expert”. That would be RJ or Randy Bell of Las Vegas.
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Various titles, some generous and others outright false—betting expert, professional handicapper, Vegas oddsmaker—are used to identify Bell when he is interviewed, but his role as head of Pregame.com is always included and rarely explained, Ryan Goldberg of DeadSpin.com writes.
He goes on to compare the “blowhards” of yesteryear in the world of sports handicapping (or tout services) to what Bell does today.
Unlike his forerunners—notable loudmouths from the ‘80s and ‘90s like Jack Price and Stu Feiner who came across like professional wrestlers—Bell is not braying on TV infomercials, promising to bury your bookmaker. He doesn’t have to. Mainstream media now brings the heads of these services on air and passes them off as analysts, affording people like Bell streams of new customers and free advertising a salesman could scarcely imagine.
Goldberg suggests in his piece that Bell is being cast as an oracle.
On Twitter, his followers number more than 117,000. Following him, he says, is like having “a seat in the sportsbook.”
But as Goldberg reveals, this could all be bells and whistles.
In private, Bell seems to tell a different story. Audio recordings that surfaced last year appear to capture Bell telling a business partner that his touts’ picks aren’t successful enough to make them profitable for customers. “The odds are you don’t win,” the person identified as Bell says on the tapes. “I think we know that.”
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
