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Rob Pizzola, a professional sports bettor and founder of BetStamp, spoke on last week's panel during the big Bet Bash event. He took reporter Darren Rovell, also appearing on the panel, to task.
Pro sports bettor and co-founder of Unabated Sports, Rufus Peabody, created a Twitter transcript of the panel discussion, or as our friend Jackie Clevfan called it "a great play by play". And let's just say it made for some intriguing reading. Pretty much everyone we know was indulged in the thread (which is embedded below).
Sports betting Twitter panel at @bet_bash @CircaSports . Darren Rovell: “I’m part of the problem”
— Rufus (@RufusPeabody) August 11, 2023
The subject matter centered around those dreaded loser parlays.
Pizzola tells Rovell: “You’re creating a false allure that people can win. You’re sending sheep to the slaughterhouse.”
Rovell: “Well what do you want me to talk about then."
Pizzola then went on to call Rovell's website The Action Sports Network out.
“I would never send someone to the Action Network for betting advice. Your company is making things worse. You have an obligation not to put things out there that are misleading."
"A large majority of people are not looking at anything," Rovell responded. "They are blindly betting”.
Rovell added: "At least we are putting up data."
Pizzola: “You’re passing off people as having expertise who don’t.”
According to Rufus, the two mostly engaged in a shouting match from that point forward.
Then it came down to this:
Rovell: “You’re acting like we’re as bad as the touts of the 80s”
Pizzola: “In a way you are”.
OUCH!
Rovell then questioned why Pizzola was coming after him so hard and not other outlets like CBS. He also called out Pizzola’s reputation and one can sense this was about to get really ugly as pro bettor and fellow panelist Steve Fezzik felt compelled to defend Pizzola.
Pizzola: "You have influencers promoting things that are very problematic, as gambling is addictive and it can have really dark consequences."
Pizzola went on to begin discussing "successful bettors" when Rovell interrupted.
"Do you have their records? How do you know they’re good? It’s just if people work at the action network they’re not winners right?"
Rufus noted that the entire panel did agree with Rovell's point.
Rovell's tendency to block folks on Twitter came up. He claimed he blocked only a few people.
Enjoy the Twitter thread.
As for the event itself, organizer Spanky said he was "deeply humbled by all the love".
He tweeted:
"It’s you the attendees that believed in the idea that sports bettors should have their own conference Without you - we’re nothing I promise to keep this crazy special thing going for decades to come BetBash 4 dates out soon."
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
