If you’re an online sports betting creator, it takes guts to put your picks Out There.
For that matter, if you’re an online sports betting creator, it takes guts to put yourself Out There.
Think about it: Maybe you took the Colts to beat the spread at home, and Carolina pulled the upset. Some of your followers might hop onto your Twitter feed and diss your prognostication skills in an exceedingly impolite manner. Others might hop onto your Twitter feed and diss…you. You might get hit with mean tweets about your credentials, or your videos, or your appearance, and it becomes a whole thing.
This is what Taylor Mathis faces every day…but the Illinois native and current Arizona resident faces it with bravery and confidence—and her confidence is justified, as Taylor has become a stellar MLB bettor, with a heaping helping of quality NFL and NBA picks thrown in for good measure.
The sports forecaster takes tangible delight in hopping onto IG and Twitter and sharing her picks, tips, and enthusiasm, often staging her prediction videos as a straight-up fun Aaron Sorkin-ish walk-and-talk. Playboy sat down with Taylor to discuss her road to betting enlightenment, her mental health advocacy, and her hometown Cubbies.
Playboy: One of the commonalities we’ve found with betting creators is that they got into sports through their families.
Taylor: Sports and family go hand-in-hand, and that’s how it started for me. My Papa is who I really credit my fandom to. He taught me how to do a baseball scorecard, and that was really what got me into baseball. I was a huge Cubs fan when I was younger in 2003, when it was Derek Lee and Moises Alou, and Steve Bartman. I would sit at home by myself and score the Cubs games.
Playboy: How did you begin your evolution from Chicago sports nerd to multimedia creator?
Taylor: I went to the University of Iowa [where I] got my degree in journalism and sports studies. I knew I wanted to do television broadcasting, and I knew I wanted to do sports, so I went the local television route and got a job as a sports reporter and anchor in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. After I moved to Arizona, I [did sideline reporting] for the Phoenix Suns for two seasons. Then during COVID, I was laid off and got a job with a small betting company called Karma Bet. They taught me pretty much everything I know.
Playboy: You’ve become known for your prop bets. Why so niche?
Taylor: What really drew me to player props was looking at the analytics. It’s fun incorporating my communication skills with the fact that I can do a dive deep into the analytics of specific pitchers. Now it’s just part of my morning routine: I wake up, I look at the slate of games and who’s pitching, then I break down the numbers to determine if I should pick a play or not.
Playboy: The MLB regular season is wrapping up, and you’re the prop queen, so give us some props for the rest of the year.
Taylor: Chicago Cubs pitcher Justin Steele will go under his strikeout total on the year. And some people might deem this to be crazy, but I’m going with the Arizona Diamondbacks to go back to get to the World Series. [As of this writing], they have not lost a series since June 28, and they’ve lost five games since the All-Star break. The pitching, the hitting, it’s all coming together at the right time.
Playboy: This is a sweeping generalization, but it seems that in the sports media space, women have to work twice as hard as men to go next-level. Have you found that to be the case?
Taylor: Climbing up a ladder is so much harder within sports media as a woman. It’s a man’s world within sports gambling, and some don’t want to hear from a girl who’s been betting for, like, three years. That said, I know [social media] is a forward-facing medium, and video aesthetics are part of the job. I might get noticed based on the fact that I’m a girl and I’m okay to look at. But there are a lot of negatives that come with that.
Playboy: Such as…
Taylor: Okay, I got hired by an all-male sports team at that station in Nebraska, and I left because I was being sexually harassed by my sports director; he was sending me extremely inappropriate photos. Oftentimes, you never know if men in the industry are genuinely trying to help you or if there’s an ulterior motive. I think another thing that you face as a woman in sports betting is the fact that you really have to know your shit, like 20 times more than men do. If you don’t, [many bettors] will think that I’m just another blonde with big boobs who got a job because of her looks. Well, no! I spend just as much time researching as they do. Nobody’s giving me my picks. It’s my own knowledge coming out of my own brain.
Playboy: Shifting gears, you get a ton of credit for being open about your mental health struggles. It’s super-cool that you’re willing and able to discuss your battles with anxiety and depression on social media.
Taylor: I sometimes get into these deep holes, and it’s hard to get out. Other times, I feel like the sky is falling. This started happening when I was 17, and when I was 23, I started to go to therapy. I’m not going to preach that therapy is for everybody, because everybody handles stress, anxiety, or depression in their own way. But I do preach to women—and men, for that matter—that when it does come to working in this industry, you’ve got to have a tough skin. [My work in the betting space] has become an outlet for me, and I try to be as vulnerable as I can because if [my honesty about my mental health struggles] helps one person, it’s worth it.