BETTER ODDS, HIGHER LIMITS and FASTER PAYOUTS

On 7 May 2003, Pinnacle Sports moved their website from www.planetpinnacle.com to a much more suitable URL www.pinnaclesports.com. From here juice was reduced even further, (-105 for football) and new software was rolled out that was like nothing the sports betting industry had ever seen before. This was an entirely automated bookmaking interface where odds would move by a penny or two each time a large bet was taken.

How Lines Get Calculated at Pinnacle

Later clients learned Pinnacle was using advanced profiling algorithms to adjust odds not based on how much every punter was betting, but rather based on who was betting what. The gist of this: no bookmaker wants to move their lines when someone you should be sending the limo for makes a large bet, but does want to move them when a long time winning bettor makes even a moderate sized wager. To state it another way, an algorithm as advanced as Google.com would use, was added to make the lines adjust based on who was betting what.

The Pinnacle Sports website and overall operations continued to expand. After the 2003 football season, one of the oldest sportsbooks in the business VIP sports (1997) began cutting back staff. Pinnacle Sports was quick to pick up on this and more than doubled their staff size by hiring talent to leave VIP and secure their future working for Pinnacle. In March 2004 they added a racebook offering 7% rebates on all races win or lose. In September 2004 they added the lowest house edge casino the industry has ever had – by offering a 0.3% rebate on all bets. In August 2005, Pinnacle once again reduced their bet prices, this time to the same -104 NFL point spreads, -105 over/under totals the company uses today.

Pinnacle Sports Begins Aggressive Marketing

Having the best gambling site in existence, with the fairest odds, highest betting limits, and fastest pay outs, all that was left was the need for massive marketing exposure. In order to accomplish this Pinnacle Sports hired Simon Noble who was one of the most experience marketing geniuses the industry has ever seen to work as their marketing director. In January 1996 he was the CEO of Intertops when they took the first ever sports bet made on the internet, and later took over as the WWTS CEO when industry legend Billy Scott retired. His work at Pinnacle was magnificent as well.

What Simon Noble had an act for was getting major media to cover him and online gambling – even though sports betting was illegal in many of those markets. Pinnacle started posting odds on things such as would fuel prices rise, will the housing market bubble, who would win the next presidential election. Noble’s job was to give traditional media a small nudge. As a result his articles and quotes made it to the front page of Yahoo.com, and his name, quotes and subtle references to Pinnacle Sports began appearing in publications such as Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, USA Today, NY Times and the like.

Pinnacle Pulse

The other area Pinnacle focused on was educating punters. From September 2005 to September 2007, they produced 77 issues of an internet newsletter called the Pinnacle Pulse. Here readers were given insight into how Bookmakers priced the odds, how to do simple sports betting math and handicapping. Most columns concluded with the following the following text:

Why is a Bookmaker telling me this?

Pinnacle Sports’s philosophy is that if we can improve the sophistication of players everywhere, more bettors will recognize the benefit of our unique pricing model, which offers up to 60% better odds. Pinnacle Sports benefits from educating its players, as it is sharp bettors who firm up our early prices on all markets offered, that allows us to provide the highest limits and most competitive odds around.

The majority of Pinnacle Pulse columns were credited to Simon Noble, but it was Conquering Risk: Attacking Vegas and Wall Street author Elihu D. Feustel (better known as Justin7) who worked under Simon Noble at the time, who actually authored much of the strategy content. These articles truly were invaluable and massive threads would grow on betting forums discussing each topic. It wasn’t long before anyone serious about football betting – PinnacleSports.com offers by far the best odds.

English Football Sponsorship

In September 2006, Pinnacle announced a 3-year sponsorship with West Ham United football club who had just recently returned to the Premier League. Their expansion to the UK market was a timely one, as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) would pass in the United States one month after Pinnacle began sponsoring English football. With this sponsorship intact and the big changes in the US, for the next year most of the Pinnacle Pulse columns focused on English Premier League betting, as well as other European Sports.