OPINION: Jeff Yass took a bankroll made at racetracks and poker tables and built one of the world’s biggest trading firms. Now he’s betting on PointsBet.
When Jeff Yass talks to Chanticleer on Monday morning, he’s just finished watching the thrilling final stages of the US Open golf tournament. And he’s equal parts frustrated and excited.
As part of the deal, PointsBet will also be able to harness the technology, systems and processes SIG has developed for sports betting analytics over the past five years through a subsidiary called Nellie Analytics.Yass believes PointsBet can do for sports betting what SIG has done for options: create deep and stable two-sided markets, where PointsBet has the confidence to offer sharp pricing that encourages large gamblers to make big bets against the house.
Yass makes no secret of his excitement about finally finding a way to take on gamblers in the way he’s taken on financial market traders since the early 1980s.“It’s been a dream of mine since I was a kid to be a bookmaker, so this is fantastic,” he says. “And to meet guys like those at PointsBet, where we had a similar philosophy, and we meshed on every idea and we had the same thought process, was really a joy.
Pretty soon he went out on his own, first with a firm called Philadelphia Trading and then, in 1987, with SIG. It now employs 2400 people in offices around the world and has expanded beyond market-making into cryptocurrency trading, institutional brokerage, and private equity, with $US4 billion invested in more than 400 portfolio companies.
Yass is definitely punting on PointsBet at a low point in the group’s recent history. After a staggering rise through the early stages of the pandemic, the stock has plunged 85 per cent since February 2021 as investors lost faith in its ability to grow in an intensely competitive US market.
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