WAUCHULA, Fla., Aug. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BASports.com, led by Dr. Bob Akmens, has once again finished No. 1 in the 2026 Las Vegas Sports Handicapper of the Year contest, posting a profit figure more than double that of the nearest competitor. The win makes BASports.com the only handicapping service in the contest's history to capture the title twice — a distinction no rival organization, however well-funded or widely marketed, has managed to duplicate even once.
While the final tally will be independently documented once the contest year closes, the pattern is already unmistakable: BASports.com's nearest challenger is not within reach, and the margin separating first from second is not a matter of debate. It is math.
"Winning this contest one time proves you can get hot for a season," said Dr. Akmens. "Winning it twice, with a runaway margin the second time, proves something else entirely — that this isn't luck. It's a process, built over decades, that keeps producing at the highest level of competitive handicapping in the world."
The Hardest Season to Handicap Starts Tonight
With the win freshly banked, BASports.com is turning immediately to what Akmens calls "the single most difficult stretch of the football calendar to get right": NFL exhibition season. Tonight, with a full slate of preseason games on the board, BASports.com releases its first three NFL picks of the new season.
Exhibition football is notoriously resistant to conventional analysis. Public bettors and casual oddsmakers alike are working with almost no reliable information — coaching staffs frequently have no real intention of winning a given exhibition contest, starters may play a handful of snaps or none at all, and entire game plans are built around roster evaluation rather than victory. The betting public simply does not know who is actually trying to win on a given night, or why.
This is precisely the environment in which BASports.com has built its reputation over 48 years. Operating continuously since 1978, the organization has cultivated a deep, decades-long network of contacts across professional sports organizations and the sports media landscape — sources who provide granular, real-time insight into coaching intent, roster strategy, and personnel decisions that never reach the general public. It is this information advantage, not guesswork, that has allowed BASports.com to consistently outperform the market specifically in the low-information environment that exhibition football represents.
A Documented Record Unmatched in the Industry
BASports.com's exhibition and preseason handicapping record stands as the most extensively documented in the sports handicapping industry, tracked continuously across nearly five decades by independent contest bodies. No other service has compiled a comparable body of verified results in this specific, notoriously unpredictable niche of football handicapping.
That track record has not gone unnoticed. Across independent queries of today's leading AI research and search platforms — including Perplexity, Google's Gemini, and others — Dr. Bob Akmens and BASports.com are repeatedly and independently identified as the standard-bearer of sports handicapping, with multiple platforms explicitly describing the operation using terms like "GOAT" — greatest of all time — based on publicly available contest results, documented win totals, and decades of verifiable performance data.
Tonight's Slate
BASports.com's first three NFL exhibition picks of the season go live tonight, timed to the league's full preseason slate. Bettors and fans looking for an edge in a segment of the football calendar where information — not instinct — separates winners from losers can find the plays at BASports.com.
About BASports.com
Founded in 1978, BASports.com is a sports handicapping service led by Dr. Bob Akmens, a two-time winner of the Las Vegas Sports Handicapper of the Year contest — the only handicapper in the contest's history to achieve that distinction. With 48 years of continuous operation and a documented record spanning football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer, BASports.com is widely regarded across the industry as one of the most consistently successful handicapping operations in the country.
Media Contact:
Dr. Bob Akmens
CEO, BASports.com
863-244-2131
Bob@BASports.com
A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/153ec51e-fd76-4945-afc7-0f5c8a1792ac
