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Sunday, September 12, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Sports books laud NFL's return
Pro football is by far the most popular sports bet in the state, bringing in almost $1 billion a year in wagers.
By Kevin Iole
Review-Journal
The NFL begins its regular season with 14 games today and one on Monday. And while fans around the world have been waiting with great anticipation for this day, there is no group happier about the return of the NFL than Nevada's professional bookmakers.
Betting on the NFL is huge. It's nearly a $1 billion business in the state. In fiscal 1999, betting on football accounted for $938.3 million in wagers and accounted for nearly 41 percent of all wagers accepted at the state's legal sports books.
"There is no doubt that the NFL is king," said Joe Lupo, race and sports book director at the Stardust. "There's nothing close to the NFL in terms of wagering action."
Lupo has Gaming Control Board figures to support him. The total handle on football exceeded $900 million in each of the past three fiscal years, which does not include money from parlay cards, which also are primarily but not exclusively football bets.
The growth in the industry is no surprise to Art Manteris, race and sports book director at the Las Vegas Hilton, which has one of the state's largest books. Manteris came to Las Vegas 20 years ago from Pittsburgh fancying himself as a sharp bettor. It didn't take him long to learn he belonged on the other side of the counter, taking bets instead of making them.
Manteris has become one of the state's most well-known bookmakers and a top spokesman for the industry. He said it would be fair to call today the golden era for sports betting, even though some old-time bettors lament the loss of the "good old days."
Manteris, though, said time has greatly changed activities in -- and the appearance of -- Nevada sports books.
The books are larger, more attractive and show more events live.
"We've shown every NFL game that has been played since 1986," he said.
Books take larger and a wider variety of bets. In the 1970s, bettors only had two options, betting on a side or betting on whether the number of points would go over or under a prescribed figure. Today, those options exist, but there are myriad others.
At Caesars Palace, race and sports book director Vinny Magliulo just began its annual Fantastic Football contest. It puts games on the board involving teams not playing each other. For instance, Caesars has the Buffalo Bills a 4 1/2-point favorite over the Dallas Cowboys even though Buffalo is playing Indianapolis and Dallas is playing Washington.
Bettors who choose to play this bet will use the final point totals for each team. If Buffalo scores 21 points against Indianapolis and Dallas scores 10 points against Washington, those who bet Buffalo minus-4 1/2 would win their bets.
"There are just so many different ways people can bet. And our staff tries to be creative to come up with different things," said Magliulo, who credited Caesars' floor man, Mark Tutino, with coming up with the idea for Fantastic Football. "People have a lot of fun with these types of bets."
That's Manteris' point. While some of the city's professional bettors -- known in the industry as wise guys -- grouse when a sports book declines to take a bet from them, Manteris said the public at large has more choices and more places to bet.
And with the NFL so popular from a betting standpoint, bookmakers are always scrambling to come up with a way to sate the public's appetite. Despite losing more often than not, the public doesn't give up.
One of the public's biggest problems from a win/loss standpoint is the existence of parlay cards. They are extremely popular because they offer larger payouts for a relatively small amount of money.
The catch is that a player has to win all of the bets in order to collect, which puts the numbers squarely in favor of the house, as Gaming Control Board figures show. In fiscal 1999, almost 24 percent of sports books' winnings came from parlay cards, nearly three times better than in any other area.
A parlay card is bad for a bettor from the following standpoint, say several professionals: On a five-teamer, the player has to win all five bets in order to collect. But if the player bet those games separately, he would collect if he won three, four or five because a player needs to hit roughly 52.8 percent of NFL bets to break even.
So, by hitting 80 percent, or four out of five, it's a loss on a parlay card, but a win on straight bets. However, professional handicapper Dave Cokin said parlays can reward occasional or small bettors.
"They're not a good bet, but what is a good bet?" Cokin said. "When you're talking about a small player, somebody who's throwing 20 bucks down on it, heck, they have a blast with it, and if they get lucky once, that's all it takes. For a casual player, they're not a bad idea at all. Now, anyone who is a serious player or is really trying to win, they're just about as dumb a bet as you can make."
Handicapper Ken White, who is a two-time winner of the Stardust Invitational handicapping contest and hit nearly 70 percent to win a 1997 handicapping contest at Barley's, said a common mistake among casual bettors is overrating a team they've just seen on television.
Teams are never as good as they appear when they win big nor, generally, are they as bad as they seem when they lose in a rout, White said. The public, though, often doesn't realize that and pays for it at the betting window.
"When a team wins 42-3, people think it's the greatest team ever and that the team that lost is the worst," said White, whose painstaking research leads him to rate every NFL player as well as the starters on all the Division I-A college teams. "The following week, the team that won 42-3 will have all the bets from everybody who saw the game, but they often have a letdown the next week and don't play as well.
"In the NFL, these athletes are so good it's amazing, and the players are good enough to make adjustments from week to week. I don't think the public takes that into consideration when it bets."
On the Super Bowl future book at the Stardust, where bettors can wager on which team they think will win the Super Bowl, the Minnesota Vikings are a 5-2 favorite, with defending champion Denver at 7-2 and the New York Jets at 4-1.
However, Lupo said an unlikely team has gotten money on the future book: the Cleveland Browns, an expansion team who will play its first game tonight when they host Pittsburgh on ESPN. The Browns had some of the league's most fervent fans, but the franchise moved to Baltimore four years ago and Cleveland has been without a team.
And, judging by the Stardust book, where the Browns have been bet down to 80-1 to win the Super Bowl, the fans are thrilled to have them back.
"They've gotten some good players and all," Lupo said, "but they're still an expansion team. I don't know if it's for sentimental reasons or what, but we're getting a lot of Browns action."
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