It was a fall Saturday morning in Vegas. Matty Simo was carrying precious cargo. He had not slept well and now a road race was blocking Las Vegas Boulevard.
Next to Simo in the car sat the NFL picks of more than 200 handicappers, including the eventual winner of the prestigious LVH SuperContest. They needed to be submitted by the contest’s strictly-enforced 11 a.m. deadline. Luckily, Simo is a pro and allotted himself more than enough time to get to the Las Vegas Hotel & Casino.
“There was never any danger of not getting them in,” said Simo, known as Vegas Matty in sports betting circles and on social media. “But the 15 minutes I waited for that race to pass by did seem like an hour.”
Simo is a Las Vegas proxy and owner at Footballcontestproxy.com. They provide a valuable service for out-of-state handicappers interested in competing in one of the football contests held by Nevada sports books. Simo says his clientele is a combination of first-timers and regular handicappers. They come via word of mouth and social media (@FootballContest).
For a fee and small percentage of any winnings, contestants can submit their weekly picks to Simo, who, in turn, transcribes them onto the contest entry forms and submits them at the LVH for 17 consecutive weeks during the NFL season. It can get stressful.
What if you write down the wrong team? What if you get into a wreck on the way to enter the picks?
“It feels like you’re worried about oversleeping. But I’m up at 5 or 6 a.m. on Saturday,” said Simo, who has been a proxy since 2005. “I don’t sleep real well during the season, especially on Friday nights, though.”
The pressure was cranked up a notch this season. Simo’s service handled 20 percent of a record SuperContest field, most notably champion David Frohardt-Lane. A Chicago-based trader and mathematician, Frohardt-Lane had used Simo’s service before to win $75,000 in a 2011 handicapping contest put on by CG Technologies, formerly Cantor Gaming. This year, Frohardt-Lane was near the lead of the SuperContest for most of the second half of the season.
“I knew for the last month that he was our horse going down the stretch,” Simo said.
This was the fifth straight year one of Simo’s clients finished in the Top 6, but they’d never had the winner. Frohardt-Lane entered the final week ½-point out of first place. Any miscommunication could be disastrous.
“It’s always in the back of your mind,” Simo said. “You’re turning in David Frohardt-Lane’s picks, and if you get one wrong, it could cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Trust me, I probably checked his email with his picks and the entry form a dozen times.”
After taking special care of Frohardt-Lane’s Week 17 entry, Simo headed to Buffalo Wild Wings with his wife. He had all the contest scenarios written down on a piece of paper and was well aware of what was at stake, when the San Francisco 49ers began blowing a 17-0 lead against the Arizona Cardinals. Frohardt-Lane had the 49ers -1; the leader had Arizona. The game would decide the championship. There was a $330,000 difference in prize money between first and second place.
“For the 49ers to blow that lead and then win it on a last-second field goal was pretty crazy,” Simo said. “I can’t imagine what David was going through. He was at a reception for his brother-in-law. “
Including the 49ers’ 23-20 win over the Cardinals, Frohardt-Lane went 4-1 in Week 17 to capture the title. He was one of three of Simo’s clients to finish in the Top 6.