Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2000 | 9:41 a.m.
Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Wednesday. Reach him at 259-4041 or [email protected]
He's a soft-spoken, articulate 29-year-old family man with an accent that makes him sound a bit like a Beatle.
He also runs the largest sports book in the world, in terms of number of individual bets accepted.
Meet Simon Noble, executive director and co-founder of Antigua-based Intertops, and in many ways the new face of sports betting.
Unlike the legendary oddsmakers of generations past, Noble does not come from a betting hotbed such as New York City or Steubenville, and he did not head to Las Vegas to seek his fortune.
Noble grew up in Bristol, England, playing rugby and taking in an occasional horse race.
"When I was a kid I never said, 'I'm going to grow up and be a bookie,' " Noble said last week during a business trip to Las Vegas. "It just happened."
And it happened in the islands, where the real sports betting fortunes are made these days.
Hotmail delivers
The rise of Intertops, which accepted its first online wager in 1995, parallels that of another Internet success story, e-mail pioneer Hotmail.
"We were the largest advertiser on Hotmail back in '96," Noble said. "One of every two (advertising) banners that popped up was for Intertops."
As the number of Hotmail users grew from a couple of hundred on its launch date of July 4, 1996, to some six million just months later, Intertops' exposure grew along with it.
Noble and a partner had made an initial investment of about $250,000 to set up the book in Antigua. On their first day of operation, exactly one customer signed up.
"We were sitting there thinking, 'Oh my God, what have we got ourselves into?' " Noble said.
Since then, Intertops' growth has been astounding.
Consider:
In late 1997 Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft for a reported $400 million in stock. By then Intertops had established itself as the leader in the Internet sports betting field.
"If it wasn't for Hotmail, probably none of this would have happened," Noble said.
'Survivor' mania
From a publicity standpoint, it was perhaps the best promotion ever offered by a sports book.
Even now, everyone wants to talk about "Survivor" wagering.
This past summer Intertops hung odds on who would win the popular TV adventure/game show.
"We used two of our in-house oddsmakers, with a lot of help from one of the wives, who was following the show," Noble said.
Intertops set a maximum wager of $110 on the prop -- not bad for an event whose outcome was already determined.
"We ended up taking more than 15,000 bets," Noble said.
To its credit, Intertops continued to accept wagers even after some computer hackers "discovered" the winner long before the final show and spread the word online.
"Yeah, everyone plowed in on that one guy," Noble recalled. "But we were getting so much publicity, we figured we'd take it as a loss leader."
Of course, when the "discovery" turned out to be a hoax, it meant a windfall for the house.
Noble said he made an exception to the $110 limit for one bettor, who wanted to wager $5,000 on Richard, the eventual winner. By then, the "Survivor" proposition was such a success that Noble decided to accept the large bet. To this day, Noble believes that customer had inside information. But he paid off the bet.
Cruising offshore
"When it comes to sports books, Las Vegas is dead," Noble said.
He makes the statement matter-of-factly, without vitriol, a businessman observing a trend in his industry.
"The smart money has definitely moved offshore -- which is not necessarily good for us," he said.
Make no mistake: "Survivor," presidential election and Groundhog Day wagers are lots of fun, but North American sporting events are the meat and potatoes of Intertops' operation.
That means going head to head with some sharp money -- even for Intertops, which primarily targets "squares," or small-time recreational bettors.
"There is one syndicate in Tasmania that beat us consistently in baseball, and we have two guys in Finland who are real sharp hockey bettors," Noble said.
Not surprisingly, Noble finds the idea of a federal law to ban college sports betting laughable.
"Every offshore book is licking its chops waiting for that one," he said. "It's really very foolish."
Noble does think it makes sense for the city of Las Vegas to lend its name to an Internet casino -- a proposal that surfaced last week.
"I'm surprised it took this long," said Noble, who thinks such a venture would boost the image of the industry he has grown to love.
"I never expected to be a bookie, and looking back I can't believe it happened this way," Noble said. "But even if I could, I wouldn't change a thing."
One contestant -- who needed the Jets Monday night -- went 17-0 to take down the $15,000 weekly prize in the Stardust's free All-American football contest. ...
In the Stardust invitational, Jimmy Vaccaro went 4-2-1 to defeat Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman (2-5). At 9 p.m. Friday, Brent Crow faces off against Larry Ness.
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