Famous Sports Gamblers: Legendary Bets

Despite only being widely legal across the USA for a few short years, there is a long and storied history of sports betting in the USA. There have been several famous sports bettors to emerge over the last 100 years, with some being known for their immense skill and others known for their exorbitant wagers.

In this guide to famous sports gamblers, we’ve provided profiles of some of the most celebrated bettors in recent history. But what makes a great bettor? To get started, we’ve covered the skills needed to be a successful sports gambler. We’ve also looked at some celebrities known for betting and the history of legal betting in the USA.

The Skills Needed For Successful Sports Betting

Great sports bettors aren’t made overnight, and they certainly don’t rely on luck alone for their success. When it comes to the best of the best, they all share several skills and gambling strategies that help them make a living off the activity. For the most part, their success relies on their ability to research events.

The best sports bettors of all time tend to have great mathematical skills which helps to evaluate statistics. They are also wise when it comes to managing their funds and will make rational bets over emotional bets. Below, we’ve outlined some of the essential skills to master to guarantee longevity in the betting industry.

• In-depth sports knowledge
• Understanding of odds
• Ability to analyze data and trends
• Research skills
• Patience and discipline
• Ability to be rational and logical
• Awareness of laws
• Understanding of risks
• Strong bankroll management

Famous Sports Bettors

Now that you understand what makes a top sports gambler, we want to introduce you to the most famous sports bettors in the world. While each person has their own individual strengths, they have earned their place on this list for displaying consistency and proficiency in wagers.

Billy Walters

Billy Walters will often be at the top of most experts’ lists of sports betting legends. He first came to prominence in the early 1980s and proved himself adept at picking winners. His first bet was placed when he was nine years old, and while his early career was dotted with losses, he soon learned to analyze sports data.

Over the next 30 years, Billy Walters enjoyed a winning streak. He won tens of millions of dollars, with one of his most notable wins being a $3.5 million payout on Super Bowl XLIV. His sports of choice are basketball and football. It is estimated that Walters is now worth around $100 million.

Haralabos Voulgaris

Haralabos Voulgaris is another sports fanatic who is considered to be one of the greatest sports bettors of all time. The Greek-Canadian has made most of his gambling fortunes by wagering on NBA games, and there were times when Voulgaris was known to wager over $1 million on NBA events.

His first bet was a successful $70,000 wager on the Lakers to win an NBA Championship. He found success by taking advantage of inaccurate odds for half-time points totals. His winning rate was roughly 70% at the peak of his betting career. Outside of sports betting, Voulgaris is an avid poker player, with over $3 million in winnings through live tournaments.

Zeljko Ranogajec

Zeljko Ranogajec is an Australian professional gambler and businessman who has a net worth of roughly $400 million thanks in large part to his betting success. His sport of choice is horse racing, whereby he employs a number of strategies to boost his wins, such as wagering on events with popular interest and large liquidities.

He has also developed relationships with betting operators to secure rebates on his bets. His appetite for betting is so large that his wagers are said to account for one-third of Betfair’s total annual revenues. He is now based in London, where he now runs his own betting company.

David Oancea (Vegas Dave)

Known by many as Vegas Dave, David Oancea is a famous bettor who has also garnered plenty of controversy over the years. He first came to fame when he won a huge $2.5 million futures bet that the Kansas City Royals would win the MLB World Series. The next year, he won a $2.3 million payout backing the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl.

However, he was unable to claim the Super Bowl win as Oancea was being investigated by the federal government for using other people’s Social Security numbers to place bets. He was found guilty and was banned from Vegas sportsbooks for three years. He now works as a sports information consultant.

Ben “Parlay Patz” Patz

One of the more recent figures on this list of famous sports bettors is Ben “Parlay Patz” Patz. Despite only being 23 years old, Parlay Patz’s first major success came when he won a $75,000 payout from a 12-game parlay. He continued his winning streak, making over $1 million in a series of parlay bets in 2019.

However, Parlay Patz soon ran into trouble, when he was found guilty of using his Instagram to threaten athletes and their families. He was sentenced to three years of probation, during which time he is banned from any betting activities. With his probation set to end in 2024, we doubt we’ve heard the last of Parlay Patz.

Tony Bloom

Tony “The Lizard” Bloom is an English professional gambler and football club owner. Bloom earned his nickname in betting circled due to his cold-blooded gambling style, taking a rational, emotion-free approach to the activity. It is estimated that he is now worth billions of dollars.

He was among the first in the UK to make Asian handicap wagers and introduced the option to his own sportsbooks in the early 2000s. He is also a successful horse race bettor, making hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sport. In addition to sports betting, Bloom is a hugely successful poker player, having won nearly $4 million from live tournaments.

James Holzhauer

While many may know James Holzhauer from his successful appearances on Jeopardy!, Holzhauer is also an extremely successful sports bettor and gambler. His interest in betting dates back to the 2006 World Baseball Classic, when he took advantage of inaccurate odds to earn big payouts. His continued success has relied on his own models for different sports leagues.

Holzhauer is a mathematician, and it’s his strong analytical knowledge that has helped him to secure over $2 million in wagers. It is this knowledge that also helped him to become the third-most successful player in Jeopardy! History, having won over $3.4 million from his stints on the game show.

Celebrity Sports Bettors

Many of the most famous sports bettors are known for their achievements in other fields, with some of the biggest names in athletics and entertainment regularly betting on a multitude of activities. With large bankrolls and strong relationships with major bookmakers, these celebrity sports bettors have storied reputations for their betting habits.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan is widely believed to be the greatest basketball player of all time. But the star was also known to have an insatiable appetite for gambling. The billionaire was known to bet on everything from whose bag would be the first on the airport carousel to a simple game of rock, paper, scissors.

But it’s his sports betting that has drawn the most attention. There are numerous accounts of him betting over $100,000 on a single hole of golf, and he was often spotted at casinos on the eve of important basketball games. It is expected that he has wagered millions of dollars on sports alone.

Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Another sports star to have a public penchant for sports betting is boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. Often, Mayweather posts his winning tickets to his Instagram and Twitter accounts, with bets often reaching up to $400,000 per game. His games of choice are basketball and football, though he’s also bet on boxing too.

His wins have been considerable. He won $3 million on a college football bet, $4.7 million from a month of betting on the NFL, and over $1 million on NBA games. However, it’s believed that Mayweather’s gambling history hasn’t been all successful, with the boxer estimated to have lost over $50 million on sports gambling alone.

Charlie Sheen

Charlie Sheen was once one of the highest-paid actors on television, with his final season of Two and a Half Men earning him a whopping $2 million per episode. However, Sheen has also been known to be a prolific sports bettor. At the height of his gambling, he was said to gamble over $200,000 on sports per week.

One of his biggest wins came in 2008 when he placed and won a $1 million bet on the Manny Pacquiao v. Oscar De La Hoya fight. But when he found there was no enjoyment from the win, he quit altogether. Sheen is set to star in a new series about sports betting called How to Be a Bookie that will air in 2023.

The History of Legal Sports Betting in the USA

Sports betting has long been a part of American gambling culture, with the first legal betting activities being on horse races in the 1800s. However, in the early 1900s, a wave of anti-gambling laws swept the country, and many states outlawed all forms of gambling. Only pari-mutuel wagering on horse races was deemed legal.

In 1931, Nevada became the first state to legalize gambling, including at casinos and in sports. The state became the hub of gambling that it remains today, though it also attracted bookmakers who would make wagers for people out-of-state over telephones. This triggered the introduction of the 1961 Wire Act, which outlawed betting over wire communications.

In 1992, the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was introduced, which banned states from legalizing sports betting. Only Nevada was able to continue offering full-scale sports betting. When New Jersey legalized the activity in a 2011 referendum, PASPA denied it.

New Jersey challenged the law as unconstitutional, and after a lengthy court case, PASPA was overturned in 2018. This then paved the way for states to legalize and regulate sports betting. There are now more than 30 states that offer some form of legal sports betting, with most of these authorizing online wagers at gambling sites as well.

Conclusions

As this guide has explored, history is full of sports bettors who have proven to have a strong knack for the activity. However, there is a clear distinction to be made between those who recklessly wager large bankrolls and those who have a strong understanding of mathematics and data. This goes to show how much work goes into being a professional sports gambler.

Frequently Asked Questions

We hope that you found this guide to the most famous sports bettors entertaining and interesting. If you didn’t read the whole page but want quick answers to your questions about the topic, keep reading. We’ve addressed several important details, including the skills needed to be successful in the history of legal sports betting in the USA.