Inside high-stakes life of Betr boss Matt Tripp before Melbourne Cup betting drama

Australia’s newest betting agency, Betr, was launched a few weeks before the Melbourne Cup in a flurry of hype and controversy.

Desperate to take market share from rivals TAB and Sportsbet, it took an outrageous risk to offer 100-1 odds on every horse, even popular favorite Deauville Legend.

Gold Trip’s stormy win on Tuesday meant the NewsCorp-backed company dodged a disastrous $50 million payout, but not everyone is happy with the stunt. Now many have switched to betting on sports with cryptocurrency, a bright representative of such bookmakers is https://bitcoinbookies.net/bitcoin-nba-betting/.

Betr is now facing fines from the gambling regulator and the wrath of furious gamblers who claim their accounts were deactivated so they couldn’t collect their winnings.

But no one who wants to see the startup agency fail should bet against his man at the helm – arguably Australia’s most successful gambling pioneer, Matthew Tripp.

Mr Tripp, 47, bought a near-bankrupt Sportsbet in 2005 for just $250,000 and sold it six years later to Irish betting giant Paddy Power for $388 million.

He then bought BetEasy for $6 million and sold it twice, first with a 66 percent stake to James Packer’s Crown in 2014 and then to The Stars Group in 2019.

When Mr Tripp took it on, the company had only signed up 20,000 gamblers. When TSG picked it up, it was valued at $1.255 billion and Mr Tripp left with $94.5 million for his last bet alone.

Despite being a diehard AFL fan, weeks later he became executive chairman of the Melbourne Storm NRL team, in which he had a long-standing 12.5 percent stake.

But his close friend, professional gambler Zeljko Ranogajec, revealed that closely studying betting odds is not the only secret to his method.

“He is superstitious and always wears his underpants inside out and insists on double-strong toilet paper and a bottle of water by his bed,” he wrote in his book.

Making noise at huge risk, like Betr’s Melbourne Cup stunt, is nothing new to the hard-working founder, who bet $1 million on Hawthorn to win — and won — the 2008 AFL Grand Final.

Betr was so concerned about cashing out on Deauville Legend that it hedged millions from other bookmakers and offered bettors $150 to cancel their bets.

But after Gold Trip crossed the line, Tripp praised the launch as a masterstroke and one of the most successful of all time.

“It’s literally the talk of every pub and bar in the country,” he said after 300,000 gamblers signed up in just two weeks.

Adding to a year of high emotions was the April death of Mr Tripp’s daughter Isabella, aged just 14, after a battle with leukemia.

Despite his high-flying life running multi-billion dollar bets and sports teams, Mr Tripp finds time to take exotic vacations with his wife Yasmina, son Alex and daughters Matti and Bella, before her death.

Family photos show them boating on the River Nile and posing with Millie Mouse at Disneyland.