What's A Bookie In Sports

4/4/20224/4/2022

He checks his phone.

What's A Bookie In Sports Gambling
What's A Bookie In Sports Illustrated
Bookie Sports Betting

Puts it down, shifts his position on the couch, picks it back up again.

The visiting team scores.

Emotion comes - is quickly restrained.

'I don't usually watch the games,' he says, now standing. 'Too superstitious.'

Bookie A shady character that takes illegal bets on horse races, fights, sports games. Such people usually are robbed regularly as they have large amounts of money. What is a bookie in sports betting? A bookie is someone who facilitates gambling by setting odds, accepting and placing bets, and then paying out the winnings. It's short for the term bookmaker. A bookie was a slang term more often used when online sports betting wasn't readily available.

Instead, he'll usually watch TV with his kids. Go hang out with his girlfriend. Take care of the myriad other trivial daily life tasks we're all forced to endure.

He's not some big wig, some shark in Vegas or Reno, planning to break your legs if you don't come up with cash. He's not some guy in a suit and tie, showing up on your doorstep to collect or grudgingly make payouts that come in digits greater than three.

No, he's just another guy, looking to make cash on the side, to help feed his kids and pay his bills.

He's no shark - at least not in the sense you're probably thinking. He's your friendly, neighborhood bookmaker - or 'bookie' for short. He's the guy you hit the bar with, the guy whose kids you pick up from football practice. He's the guy you went to high school with.

And to you, he's Vegas.

Only don't mistake the fact that he's not a shark for meaning he's a minnow.

He'll goad you; maybe he'll even tempt you. The only thing he won't do is pressure you and, more often than not, there's really no need.

He knows what he's doing - and even more important, he's good at it.

***

'People plead for their ability to gamble,' says the bookmaker, who spoke to HNGN on the condition of anonymity due to the illegal nature of his work. He makes no attempt to hide the incredulity in his voice as he says this, leaning over to show me messages from clients on his phone.

But even as he's showing them to me, even as he's laughing at the unbelievable ridiculousness of it all, he can't help his softer side, his prideful, compassionate nature from coming through.

'Have I ever cheated anybody? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because I wouldn't want that done to me,' he says.

Sports-betting, both legal and of the kind the bookmaker engages in, has lived an inconceivably healthy existence in the U.S. for decades. From 2006 to 2012, the average total amount wagered legally on sporting events rose from $2.43 billion to $3.45, according to the website Statista.

According to sportingpediaat the moment, four states - Nevada, Delaware, Oregon and Montana - allow some form of sports-betting with the majority of sports-based gambling done in Las Vegas. New Jersey governor Chris Christie recently lifted his state's ban on sports betting, but no racetrack or casino will allow it due to concern over federal sanctions.

American's are expected to make $3.8 billion worth of illegal bets on the impending Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, according to the American Gaming Association. The average annual legal wagers on the Super Bowl amounts to approximately $100 million, meaning the illegal market is 38 times greater than the legal one.

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission estimated that illegal sports gambling in the U.S. could amount to somewhere between $80 billion and $380 billion annually, per the New York Times.

In the small town in the Northeastern portion of the U.S. the bookmaker lives in - full of second-generation immigrants, the relics of a bygone age, the glitz and glamor of Las Vegas a million miles, a lifetime, away - these figures are beyond meaningless.

Most of his clientele is made of friends, friends of friends, casual acquaintances and even some family. These are people you see around town. People, who frequent all the same bars and restaurants, take their kids to the same schools, drive the same roads and attend the same churches.

And so he, this bookmaker, this bet taker, does his work - his shadowy back-room work, accepting illegal bets on sporting events - with a knowing, friendly, oftentimes personal touch.

'I've got a guy, a close friend; our kids are very, very close,' the bookmaker explains. 'We spend time at each other's houses in the summer, we do activities together, and our families are close. Not that it got weird, but it got different. It didn't change the relationship that much but, he got down - a lot.

'I didn't even want to take his money because it was just weird to me, and when I went down just to hang out at his house with the kids and everything and he tried to hand me money, I tried not taking it. And his response to me was, 'If I won this week, I would take your money.'

'And that made me feel better.'

The symbiotic nature of the relationship is hard to ignore. The gamblers want to gamble. The bookmaker wants their money and, in all reality, probably enjoys a bit of the 'gambler's high' himself.

But, whereas it's a tight rope for the gambler, it's a broad, well-kept bridge for the bookmaker.

The bookmaker might lose certain games, he might have bad weeks. That's where the trick lies though. That's where your friendly neighborhood bookmaker thrives, where he - literally and figuratively - makes his money.

'Even though it felt weird taking his money, I felt justified knowing that he knew the stakes going in,' he says. 'I didn't hammer him, he was probably down $2,500 and we settled for $500.'

And this is at the heart of the bookmaker's operation - a willingness to work with his clients. They know him. They like him.

Why?

Because he'll work with them, he'll cut them deals, he'll take $50 when they really owe $200. To them, he's doing them a favor. To him, he's keeping them as clients.

'If the Patriots are beating the Bills by 14 points and the line is 8 points and the Bills score a touchdown with 35 seconds left, where it doesn't really count but they cracked the line and everybody who took the Patriots loses, and they get upset, I'll say 'Hey listen, it was a backdoor cover,' he explains. 'Let it go. Don't worry about it.'

'I'll just charge them the vig. So if they bet $100, instead of losing $110, they lost $10 bucks. To them they feel great and I did them a favor - which I did - but that keeps them with me.'

The vig - short for 'vigorish' - is the fee charged by the bookmaker. It, like many aspects of the operation, highlights why the notion of taking bets is so appealing. No matter what happens, win or lose, the bookmaker makes money. If he loses a 10x (times) bet with a client - x means multiplied by five, the bookmaker's standard betting format - he must pay out $50, minus the vig - in the bookmaker's case, a flat fee of 10 percent, or $5.

So even though he's lost the bet - something that, as Vegas, he does not often do - his payout to the winner will only be $45.

As for his close friend, some people may view that as a loss - taking $500 when the real debt is much heftier. Not the bookmaker. This job, this station, both is and isn't about the money.

'Did I lose $2000? Yes and no,' he says. 'But it's $500 I didn't have ten seconds earlier and I still had a friend. And since then, he's done the same thing every week, but on a much lower scale. And he asks me for advice on who I think is gonna win, and I'm completely honest with him about if I think a certain team is going to cover the spread or the over is going to come in.

'...For the most part that's worked out where he hasn't had to pay that much and if he has it's probably about $100 every two weeks or so.'

'Settling' is one of the bookmaker's key methods of keeping the juice flowing.

If a client owes him $300, he'll 'settle' with them for $180 right there and wipe the bettor's slate clean. The gambler gets away without having to pay as much he really owes.

'I have people thanking me - really, thanking me - for them owing me money,' the bookmaker says, showing me a recent text from a client and favoring me with a knowing, 'can you believe this?' type of grin.

'I'd rather take $180 right there than take payments or have them duck me, because then you lose a friend,' he says. 'Then you don't get paid. Something's better than nothing in this world. Even if you get $30, it's still better than having somebody hide from you.'

For the bookmaker's clients, winning is the ultimate prize, the end all, be all.

But settling is, more often than not, the reality. Settling means a glimmer of hope, it means finding the light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how fleeting, no matter how small, and it means they'll keep betting. And that's all he wants. That's all he really wants. It's the basis of his operation, the meat and potatoes of his schtick.

The bookmaker wants his clients to periodically taste victory, to remember what it feels like to win - but he really wants them to lose, at which point he has no issue settling with them, because it means he wins and they'll keep betting. They'll keep using him and paying him and acting, essentially, as a free source of income for him.

And so the bookmaker makes a nice second living off this principle.

'Where you make the real money is by settling, is by the little guy,' he explains. 'The guys who bet heavy are so up and down that they'll only be with you for one year and they'll move onto someone else, or they stop or they get in trouble with their family or somebody around them realizes what's going on and they have to stop.

'But the people - for example there's a local high school coach - him and two or three other coaches, they do it together, but they call it in as one bet. They have been a steady, $300 to $500 a week income for me just by taking a bet. I always settle with them because they place a lot of bets on Saturday's, especially on college football is heavy. And now college basketball is going on, it's nothing for them to do 25-30 individual bets on games.'

Settling, making a deal and ensuring the client comes back for more, even if the bookmaker never sees the full amount of their losses, is key for business. When the NCAA bowl games wrapped up, the bookmaker estimated he had discounted a total of about $3,000 just to keep people going.

The bookmaker knows and, in many instances, carries a certain and sometimes deep affection for these people that bet with him.

But the bookmaker is also shrewd.

He knows that these people - his friends, his neighbors - want to bet and they want to win. They want to take his money.

He wants them to stay with him. He wants to take their money.

So he settles, almost always settles, because something is better than nothing. A happy client is better than no client at all.

It's the same principle as knowing that human nature means people are much more willing to do a small favor after being asked to do a larger one. The lesser pain of the smaller payout makes the clients happy. They're still losing, but they're appreciative of the bookmaker for taking a smaller chunk of their money.

'They literally send heartfelt messages thanking me and in a strange way it's a compliment, but at the same time I'm thinking, 'I did one aspect of my job, of keeping my business up and running, by keeping my customer,' he says.

He estimates that his to-be-collected balance for 2014, as of early January, is around '$25,000-30,000,' the bulk of which is owed to the bookmaker by one heavy hitter - a local politician with whom the bookmaker has a special arrangement.

'Another close friend, he's got a settlement coming, we've got a mutual agreement, so I know he's not gonna burn me,' the bookmaker explains. 'He just has a continuous running tab. I get a couple hundred bucks here and there from him just out of good faith - he gave me a couple grand early in the year - but he's down a lot.

'His lowest bet that he calls in are between $1200-$1600. It's nothing for him to lose $10,000 in a day then win back maybe $6,000. He calls in $400 parlays, which, if he hits on a three-teamer, it's thousands. If he loses, it's about a thousand.'

A parlay is a combination bet - it's the linking together of two or more individual wagers, with the outcome dependant on each bet hitting. The probability of the bet actually coming in decreases, but the potential payout increases.

But the close nature of all these relationships, coupled with the focus on money - the ultimate asset, the medium of the wealthy elite and the poor alike - lead to strained and, if the bookmaker isn't careful, broken relationships.

'There are a small handful of people who, in the beginning of the year, got down big, early - too much money too fast. Couple I haven't heard from since. It angers me, obviously, because they owe me money,' he says.

This is where the bookmaker shows his true colors, where he bares his teeth.

He's no shark, but he's also no minnow.

Part two of this series will be published Sunday morning.

Sportsbook at Wynn Las Vegas, during Super Bowl XLII, February 2008

In the United States a sportsbook or a race and sports book (sometimes abbreviated as book) is a place where a gambler can wager on various sports competitions, including golf, football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, horse racing, greyhound racing, boxing, and mixed martial arts. The method of betting varies with the sport and the type of game. In the US, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 only allowed Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware to legally wager on sports (other than horse racing, greyhound racing, and jai alai); the law was ruled unconstitutional on May 14, 2018, freeing the states to legalize sports betting at their discretion.

Winning bets are paid when the event finishes, or if not finished, when played long enough to become official; otherwise all bets are returned. This policy can cause some confusion since there can be a difference between what the sportsbook considers official and what the sports league consider official. Customers should carefully read the sportsbook rules before placing their bets.

The betting volume at sportsbooks varies throughout the year. Bettors have more interest in certain types of sports and increase the money wagered when those sports are in season. Major sporting events that don't follow a specific schedule, like boxing, can create peaks of activity for the sportsbooks.

Nevada[edit]

Odds boards in a Las Vegas sportsbook

Most of the United States sportsbooks are located in Nevada. Now that many casinos share the same parent company, they offer exactly the same wagering choices and odds, which is a disadvantage to the astute gambler who in the past could do more shopping for better prices.

In 1949, Nevada allowed bookmakers to accept bets on horse racing and professional sports.^[1] The first Nevada sportsbooks were called Turf Clubs. They were independent from the casinos and had an informal agreement with the hotels that they would stay out of the casino business as long as the hotels stayed out of the sportsbook business. The sportsbooks had to pay a 10 percent tax so they charged a high vigorish to gamblers, but they still brought enough business to make a profit.

In 1974 the tax was lowered to 2 percent,^[1] in 1983 to 0.25 percent, and in 1975 Frank Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust Casino, convinced legislators to allow sportsbooks in the casinos, and soon nearly all of the casinos added them. The turf clubs were no longer able to compete and eventually all closed.

Nevada casino sportsbooks generally feature betting windows, big screen televisions, interactive betting stations, odds boards (usually computerized), papers with different odds for the day, and places to sit and watch games and races.

Some casinos use third-party operators for their sportsbooks, such as Cantor Gaming, Leroy's, Lucky's, and Club Cal Neva. In 2011, British bookmaker William Hill agreed to buy the Leroy's, the Lucky's, and the Cal Neva chains, which would give it control of 115 of the state's 183 books.^[2]

The Super Bowl is the most popular event for the Nevada sportsbooks. They earned $7.2 million on the $99 million wagered on it in 2013. Because it attracts many unsophisticated bettors, as of January 2014 the books had made money on 21 of the previous 23 Super Bowls, with an average win of $5.5 million over the previous 10 years. The most profitable Super Bowl was in 2005, when the Philadelphia Eagles covered the spread against the favored New England Patriots, earning the books $15.4 million. The two losses were in 1995—when the San Francisco 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers—and 2008—when the favored Patriots lost to the New York Giants, costing the books $2.5 million.^[3]

Delaware[edit]

The sports book at Dover Downs Hotel & Casino.

In 2009, a bill passed to allow betting on almost every sport.^[4] That year, the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, and NCAA filed a lawsuit against the state of Delaware, claiming their sports books were violating federal law.^[5] The US Supreme Court ruled that the law partially violated the federal law, and Delaware was only allowed to offer parlays on NFL games.^[6] Delaware's three racetrack casinos—Dover Downs, Harrington Raceway & Casino, and Delaware Park Racetrack—have sports books.^[7] Each sportsbook has multiple televisions, large tote boards and stations for people to wager. During the 2011 NFL season, the three sports books generated $4.4 million in revenue for the state.^[8] On June 5, 2018, the casino sportsbooks in Delaware expanded sports betting to single-game and championship wagers on professional and college sports (excluding Delaware college teams) including football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, boxing/MMA, golf, and auto racing.^[9]^[10]^[11]