The chips are down for principals in online gambling operations, and the cyberspace scenario is probably going to get worse. That’s because federal officials, already incensed over billions in gambling revenues leaving the U.S., are trying to link Web gambling to terrorism.
“The reason why a lot of land-based casinos have backed away from the Internet and offshore enterprises is because of the Patriot Act,” said Saverio Scheri of WhiteSand Consulting. “Investigators believe some of that money is being laundered and is ending up in the hands of terrorist groups.”
SOUND FARFETCHED? CONSIDER:
The prosecutor leading the charge against online operations is David Litterick, 45, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who has built a reputation as an expert in terrorism. He prosecuted some of the terrorists involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. His prosecutions of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania earned him death threats, as well as a position at the Department of Homeland Security.
All U.S.-based casinos with annual gambling revenue of more than $1 million are classified as “financial institutions” by the Patriot Act and subject to strict government regulations, including adopting money-laundering programs, identifying the identity of foreign nationals and filing a Suspicious Activities Report to the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Online operations skirt all these rules.
Law enforcement has arrested several principals of online gaming companies’ subsidiary operations in recent weeks. On Jan. 15, federal agents arrested Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, former directors and founding shareholders of Neteller. Their company is a publicly traded Internet-payment processor used by many online gambling sites, one of which continued serving American players after passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. BusinessWeek magazine estimates Neteller made nearly $850 million in fees during the first half of 2006 — the bulk of it from American bettors.
The U.S. is seeking the extradition of Gary Kaplan from Costa Rica. Kaplan is the former owner of BETonSPORTS, which has ceased taking sports bets from Americans. David Carruthers, former CEO of the company, was arrested in the Dallas last July and is currently under house arrest at a hotel in St. Louis, awaiting trial. Carruthers, a food connoisseur and wine expert, appeared in court in leg irons.
Last week, subpoenas were issued to at least four Wall Street investment banks to hand over details of their dealings with online gambling companies. The firms reportedly are HSBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Kleinwort, which have underwritten public offerings of some of the most popular and profitable online gambling sites, and have offices in London, a city that is the fundraising center of the online gaming industry. Shares in European online gambling companies, which already had been hit hard in recent months, fell as much as 14 percent after news of the subpoenas broke.
SCARE TACTICS
“There certainly have been a lot of scare tactics but they’re working,” said Sue Schneider, president of River City Group, which monitors the online gambling industry. Schneider says federal investigators are trying to link online gaming operations to terrorist groups.
“They’ve been saying that since 9/11,” Schneider continued. “At some point it gets to be ridiculous and, more probably than not, what they’ll do is drive the business underground.”
One who agrees is Anthony Cabot, a Vegas-based attorney who specializes in Internet-gambling law. “After a while, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and frighteningly similar to Prohibition,” Cabot said. “By forcing them underground, you increase the potential for less-reputable sites.”
Another gaming expert, who asked to remain anonymous, was more succinct: “(Terrorism is) a smokescreen thrown up by the right-wing Christian lunatics in the government who want to control every facet of human behavior from birth to death. As far as I know, there isn’t a scintilla of evidence there’s any link between online sites and terrorist groups.
“With the new legislation, though that is ironically more likely to occur,” the source continued, “since Russian mobsters and others are likely to see unregulated, rogue sites as a way to raise untaxed money.”
REGULATION & TAXATION
It’s hardly news to Cabot that investigators believe there is a link between online gambling sites and terrorist groups. “This argument has come up before,” he said. “There are probably 2,000 online gaming sites. Can you say that all of those have no relationship whatsoever to terrorism? No, but what you can say is that the larger companies operating out of the United Kingdom are completely transparent. They have public shareholders and dividends, and audited financial statements.”
Allyn Shulman, corporate counsel at Card Player magazine, added, “to specifically link terrorism to online gaming is disingenuous.” She believes that, rather than prosecute operators of online gambling operations, the federal government should investigate how to regulate and tax the industry.
“This is just another example of the benefit of regulating and taxing online gaming, as they do in Antigua, where the online gaming companies must open their books to independent auditors who report back to the government,” Shulman said.
But other industry observers note it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen … at least not in the immediate future.
“You would think that officials would look at (the potential for tax revenue),” Schneider said. “This is an industry that has been advocating regulation and it would not be averse to some sort of tax structure. But this isn’t about regulation and taxation. It’s about control and (being) anti-gambling.”
http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2007/02/05/news/iq_12303811.txt

It’s a tough call, sports fans.
Will Peyton Manning complete two more passes in the Super Bowl than Zydrunas Ilgauskas’ combined points and rebounds during today’s Cavaliers game against the Detroit Pistons?
Or will Tiger Woods’ fourth-round score in the Dubai Desert Classic be higher than Bernard Berrian’s total receiving yards?
Welcome to Super Bowl Sunday, the biggest day of the year in sports and sports betting. Counting so-called “proposition” bets like the two mentioned above, there are more than 300 different wagers being offered for this year’s big game – the Indianapolis Colts against the Chicago Bears in Miami’s Orange Bowl. You can bet on how long it will take Billy Joel to sing the national anthem, the outcome of the pregame coin flip and an array of individual and team performances.
It’s no wonder folks who normally wouldn’t bet on whether a traffic light will change from red to green will gamble on the Super Bowl.
“For the professional bettor, it’s just another game,” said Las Vegas-based gambler Andy Iskoe.
“For the public at large, it’s the only game they’ll bet all year,” Iskoe said. “It’s sort of like an excuse for a New Year’s Eve party a month later.”
Nevada sports books are expected to accept more than $100 million in wagers for this year’s Super Bowl, topping last year’s record handle of $94.5 million. Worldwide, between legal sports books, offshore Internet gambling sites, hometown bookies and office pools, Super Bowl wagering is estimated at more than $1 billion.
“Punters” in Ireland and the United Kingdom are expected to bet $16 million on the Super Bowl at Paddy Power Plc’s 250 betting shops.
“It’s our biggest American sport of the year,” said Paddy Power spokesman Darren Haines. “For an event that takes place in the middle of the night here, that’s quite exceptional.”
Early last week, about 80 percent of Paddy Power bettors had put their money on the Bears, a seven-point underdog.
“People who know more about it than me think they’ve seen enough in Chicago that they can pull off an upset,” Haines said.
Five thousand miles away in Las Vegas, professional sports gamblers also think the Bears taking the points is a smart bet.
“I like the Bears’ defense more than the Indianapolis offense,” said John Kelly, who hosts a weekly radio show devoted to sports gambling. “With the seven-point head start, I think you’re obligated to take the underdog.”
(The point spread is not a prediction of a game’s outcome. Instead, it is a number that sports books hope will split wagering evenly between the two sides, minimizing their risk.)
Kelly said oddsmakers are acutely aware of professional bettors during the NFL’s regular season when setting point spreads and other odds. But Super Bowl betting lines are made with the general public in mind because casual bettors are much more likely to pick the favorite.
Jay Kornegay, executive direc tor of the race and sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton, said the Colts would be favored by only 4 or 4½ points if the game were played at a neutral site during the middle of the season.
“There’s no doubt the Colts are the better team,” Kornegay said. “But I don’t know whether they are going to win.”
By the middle of last week, most bettors at the Hilton also were putting their money on the Bears, Kornegay said. He expects – and hopes – that Colts money will pour in this weekend.
(For what it’s worth, the team picked by oddsmakers as the favorite in the previous 16 Super Bowls has “covered” the point spread 11 times. The favorite failed to cover three times, and twice the game resulted in a “push” – a tie on the point spread that resulted in bettors getting their money back.)
Steve Fezzik, who runs a Las Vegas-based sports betting syndi cate, also thinks the Bears will “cover” – lose by fewer than seven points. But the Dayton native thinks the real value is in the proposition bets.
Fezzik – a pseudonym he uses to protect his identity – said he’ll have as many as 100 wagers on the game. Oddsmakers often treat proposition bets as a “nuisance,” which can lead to mistakes that sharp players love to exploit, he said.
“There are a lot of proposition bets that have a lot of value if you’re a savvy pro and know what you’re doing,” Fezzik said.
One of those proposition bets Fezzik said he always makes is whether there will be overtime. There has never been overtime in the previous 40 Super Bowls played. (You would have to bet $1,200 at one online sports book to win $100 on a no-overtime wager.)
“I know one of these years I’m going to get burned,” Fezzik said.
Just in case you’re interested, Ilgauskas, the Cavs center, is averaging a combined 20 points and rebounds a game this season; Manning is averaging 22 completions a game.
Good luck. Chances are you’re going to need it.
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer

Nevada basketball fans will bet on their 15th-ranked Wolf Pack against just about anybody, but they won’t get a chance this weekend to pit their star players against the Chicago Bears.
At the request of school officials citing NCAA rules, a Reno casino discontinued a wagering proposition Wednesday on who would score more points – Nevada star forward Nick Fazekas in Saturday night’s game against Hawaii, or the Bears in Sunday’s Super Bowl against Indianapolis.
Wacky Super Bowl propositions are a way of life at Nevada sportsbooks, which raked in a record $94.5 million from last year’s big game. Among this year’s props:
• Colts quarterback Peyton Manning’s total passing yards vs. Phil Mickelson’s four-round total at the FBR Open in Scottsdale, Ariz., where even par is 284.
• The Colts’ total score vs. Lebron James’ total points in the Cavaliers NBA game against the Pistons on Sunday.
• The Bears’ total touchdowns vs. goals scored in Sunday’s English Premier League soccer game between Manchester United and Tottenham.
The Club Cal Neva Hotel-Casino decided to add a bit of local flavor to the pot by adding wagers involving the Wolf Pack, who were 19-2 entering Wednesday night’s game at Louisiana Tech.
In addition to Fazekas, who is averaging 20.2 points per game, they offered a bet on whether the Bears and Colts combined would score more in the first half than Wolf Pack sharpshooter Marcelus Kemp, or whether guard Kyle Shiloh would have more assists than the number of field goals made on Sunday.
The problem is, NCAA rules prohibit the use of student athletes to promote a business in any way, shape or form.
“They were just trying to generate some local interest and had no idea that what they were doing was a violation of NCAA policy,” said Jean Perry, the school’s special assistant to the president for athletics, academics and compliance.
“As soon as it was brought to their attention, they immediately withdrew the bets,” she said Wednesday.
Perry said she already has reported the situation to the Western Athletic Conference and was preparing a formal report for the NCAA.
“In a nutshell, the NCAA bylaws say you can’t use a student athlete’s name or picture without his or her consent and you can’t use it in any commercial way,” she said.
“If we as an institution finds out someone has done that, we have the burden of asking them to stop that, which is what we did.”
The Reno Gazette-Journal first reported the wagers on its Web site Tuesday afternoon, which is where university officials first learned of it.
It was not immediately clear whether bets made prior to Wednesday would be honored or if gamblers would receive a refund. Cal Neva officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Sportsbook manager Tony DiTommaso told the newspaper on Tuesday that he “wanted to do some more of the local stuff.”
“One of the things I wanted to do this year was capitalize on UNR,” he said.
Perry doesn’t expect the incident to result in any penalties against the school.
“This is a thing that was not instituted by us.
The student athletes that were involved had no idea about it,” she said.
Source: North Lake Tahoe Bonanza

Super Bowl Sunday at the sportsbook often looks like this: Frenzied betting starts in the morning and continues up to the 3:25 p.m. kickoff. Experienced bettors lay down their greenbacks, knowing who is injured and who is favored. Novices scratch their heads over the spreads and propositions, some even over the basics of football.
This is the game that attracts old-timers and newbies. It’s the culmination of a season for the avid fan. For those who aren’t so obsessed, it’s a social event highlighted by commercials. It’s all about fans who have an opinion who then spice up the game by putting money on the line, said one local sportsbook manager. And that’s what makes this the most profitable day of the year for sportsbooks. Nevada sportsbooks collected a record $94.5 million from last year’s game.
“The thing about the Super Bowl is, it brings out people who never bet on anything, making it the highest-grossing vetted game in the U.S. – that’s legal,” said Steve Napoletano, sportsbook supervisor for Leroy’s Race & Sportsbook in the Carson Nugget. “We take more Super Bowl bets than anything else.”
Using sports knowledge and luck, a gambler can walk out with a heavy wallet. Or not.
Louie Sanchez, of Carson City, has bet on Super Bowls since Joe Namath won Most Valuable Player in 1969, that was Super Bowl III. The game takes on a greater meaning when you have money on it, he said.
The most the 57-year-old has ever won on a game was $420, which may still be a comfort when he thinks about how much he’s bet and lost.
Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal Ed O’Donnell, of Minden, holds his Super Bowl betting tickets Tuesday at the Carson Station.
Browse and Buy Nevada Appeal Photos
Sanchez made his picks this week at the Cal Neva Sports Book inside the Carson Station with his friend Freddie Melendez, a warehouse manager from Carson City. They eyed the special “in-house” props, which are bets specific to the Cal Neva sports books. Sometimes the props can get a little odd.
This week, the Cal Neva pulled its bets that included members of the Wolf Pack basketball team. University of Nevada, Reno officials said the wagers violated an NCAA rule that prohibits the use of student athletes to promote a business.
That’s unfortunate for Sanchez and Melendez, who believed they could win money favoring a star on the 15th-ranked Wolf Pack over the Super Bowl.
The special prop: Kyle Shiloh, a Pack guard, total assists during the Saturday game against Hawaii vs. the total number of field goals made in the Super Bowl.
They’ll have other options, such as: total goals scored at this morning’s Manchester United soccer game vs. the Bears’ total touchdowns.
Vince Carter’s total points scored today during the Hawks and Nets game vs. Colts-Bears total points in the first half.
To grab a greater share of gamblers, sportsbooks offer these creative props for basketball, golf, soccer, NASCAR and hockey fans.
“It’s crazy,” said old-time sports bettor Allen “Ozzie” Osborn, 77, who then laughed at the unusual props.
He’ll place a bet on Sunday, probably for the Colts (who are favored) after watching the newspaper for the injury report. It’s not his favorite game on which to bet. The most he’s ever won is $1,000. It can be difficult to pick between the two best teams in the league.
Osborn, who divides his time between home and the casino, said he’ll probably watch his pick from home.
“It can get nuts here,” he said.
There’s an even stranger bet at Casino Fandango, but it’s for those who have the patience.
At Fandango’s sports book, fans can place a bet on whether the highest-scoring game will be in 2007 or 2008.
“It doesn’t matter which side you bet on, you’ll have to wait a year to find out,” said Jason Kolenut, Casino Fandango race and sport book supervisor.
Just don’t lose your winning ticket.
Source: Nevada Appeal

If the U.S. government gets its way on Super Bowl Sunday, all bets will be off — all online bets, that is.
Federal prosecutors and agents in the FBI’s organized crime unit have been mounting a large-scale crackdown on Internet gambling, with indictments against executives at gaming Web sites, arrests of foreign businessmen who process payments, and subpoenas to investment banks that may have helped bankroll the operations.
The aggressive campaign has gathered steam in recent weeks, as Americans prepare to wager more than $5 billion on tomorrow’s game between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts, the biggest betting day of the year, according to industry experts.
The arrests in California and in the U.S. Virgin Islands last month of two board members of Neteller, a British company that facilitates online money transfers, is spurring overseas executives with even modest gambling connections to avoid traveling to the United States lest they be nabbed. And it is leaving legal analysts and bettors crying foul about the government’s approach.
“This escalation or, no, we should say surge, in this war of intimidation Justice is waging right now really has had an effect,” said I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in California and author of a textbook on gambling law.
Justice Department officials have long been on record as saying that Internet gambling breaks the law. They cite the long-standing Wire Act, a statute making it a crime to use telephone lines to place a bet within the United States or overseas. The 1961 law, which applies to businesses instead of individual bettors, was designed to eradicate the Mafia from the gambling arena.
But after the 2000 wire-fraud conviction of sports betting entrepreneur Jay Cohen for operating a Web site in Antigua, federal prosecutors enforced it only sporadically. The campaign heated up last year, after the government indicted two popular sports betting Web sites: Antigua’s WorldWide Telesports Inc., and London’s BetOnSports PLC. Both companies have announced they will no longer accept wagers from U.S. clients.
Then Congress dealt in. At the last minute, lawmakers inserted an online-gaming measure into the port security bill that chokes the flow of money by barring the use of credit cards, checks and fund transfers to make and settle bets. President Bush signed the bill into law in October.
But it has been the wave of criminal charges against individual executives and businesses that prompted a real exodus from the U.S. market. Americans bet nearly $6 billion online in 2005, but the flood of public companies out of the country has made it difficult to estimate current amounts, said Eugene Christiansen, who tracks such spending.
Meanwhile, U.S. authorities show few, if any, signs of folding, even in the face of rulings by the World Trade Organization that the United States cannot put foreign rivals at an economic disadvantage on the Internet gambling issue.
“Criminal prosecutions related to online gambling will be pursued even in cases where assets and defendants are positioned outside of the United States,” Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said last month.
Yet legal experts say there are questions about whether Internet gaming is a crime worthy of extradition in most foreign jurisdictions, and whether the executives meant to break the law, given that their operations are legal in their home countries.
Moreover, although the Justice Department has suggested that all forms of Internet gambling violate the law, analysts say that online horse racing, poker and fantasy leagues may be exempt. Gambling in some form, from state-sponsored lotteries to race tracks and slot machines, is legal in a majority of the 50 states, which collect billions in tax revenue from the enterprises each year.
A. Jeff Ifrah, a defense lawyer in the District office of Greenberg Traurig, said the Justice crackdown is confounding some legal analysts because “it is unclear how the government randomly targets members of this industry for prosecution, and why it is doing so on the heels of legislation that only recently prohibited facilitating certain gaming activity.”
Neteller, which had provided payment services to more than 80 percent of worldwide gaming merchants, watched its business swell after PayPal and parent company eBay agreed to leave the business and forfeit $10 million to settle civil charges three years ago over financial transfers to offshore and online gambling firms.
Now, however, with the arrest of two of its founders, the British Web site is scrambling to exit the U.S business. Neteller is besieged with requests from frustrated bettors who want to recoup billions in deposits and winnings. The money is being held in trust accounts while the company holds conversations with the Justice Department about the status of its executives and other board members.
“The answer is, it’s a bit confused at the moment,” Neteller spokesman George Cazenove said. “I’m sure they will get their money back. You’ve got to give Neteller a bit of space.”
Prosecutors have increased efforts to force advertising companies and Web sites to reject paid ads for Internet gambling sites. They also sent subpoenas to at least three investment banks, HSBC, Dresdner Kleinwort and Credit Suisse. Richard Lindsay, spokesman for HSBC, said the subpoena it received late last year requested information “pertaining to some Internet gambling companies.”
The crackdown against public, regulated foreign businesses has left small private companies to fill the void, an issue that worries industry officials and consumer groups who say the smaller entities are less subject to oversight and more difficult to police. In essence, they argue, the government drive could turn into another prohibition, and have the perverse impact of fostering underground, illegal activity.
“The net effect of this is, responsible people are out of the business,” said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., president of the American Gaming Association, a casino industry trade group.
But federal officials disagree. Mark J. Mershon, FBI assistant director, last month cautioned that companies handling Americans’ offshore bets “amount to a colossal criminal enterprise masquerading as legitimate business.”
Source: Washington Post

law prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from processing payments to online gambling sites hasn’t stopped U.S. employees from visiting sports betting sites, according to cybersecurity vendor ScanSafe.
Attempted visits to online gambling Web sites by employees of ScanSafe’s U.S. customers were up 77 percent in the week between Jan. 23 and 31. The Super Bowl, the National Football League’s championship game, is Sunday.
ScanSafe provides a Web-blocking service to large businesses, and it examines 6 billion Web requests a month.
In October, President George Bush signed into law a measure prohibiting financial institutions from processing payments to gambling sites. The government has until mid-July to develop the processing regulations for financial institutions.
But some online gambling sites have begun telling U.S. customers that financial institutions are already distancing themselves. On Wednesday, PokerRoom.com told U.S. customers to cash out.
“The remaining companies that process cashouts from PokerRoom.com to our players in the United States have contacted us to say that in the near future they will no longer facilitate these transactions,” said a message on PokerRoom’s home page. “As such, we would advise all American players who have not cashed out already to do so immediately.”
The gambling provision, amended by Congress onto a ports security bill in late September, has had no impact on the number of people visiting gambling Web sites, said Dan Nadir, vice president for product strategy at ScanSafe. ScanSafe doesn’t track whether those people completed bets, he said.
“We suspected [the law] wouldn’t have much of an impact,” Nadir said. Some gambling sites will develop alternative payment mechanisms, he said.
ScanSafe didn’t provide the raw numbers of visits to gambling sites this past week, but gambling represented about 3.4 percent of the content it blocked for clients in 2006. By comparison, 15.1 percent of the blocked content was chat or instant messaging, 14.6 percent was advertising, 7.2 percent was Web mail, and 3.9 percent was pornography.
Visits to sports betting sites such as Bodog.com were common this past week, Nadir said. About 53 percent of the U.S. visits to gambling sites ScanSafe observed this past week were to sports betting sites as opposed to casino or lottery sites. Bodog didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail asking if its business has been hurt by the U.S. law.
About 84 percent of ScanSafe’s customers blocked employee access to gambling sites. Companies block employees from gambling sites for a couple of reasons: because they don’t trust that gambling sites are safe, and because they don’t want employees playing games on company time, Nadir said.
Source: Infoworld

New Jersey is home to plenty of slot machines, Roulette wheels, blackjack tables and poker hands, but its gambling mecca, Atlantic City, lacks one attraction rival Las Vegas can boast – legalized sports betting.
And with the Super Bowl as a backdrop, a state senator is renewing efforts to bring legalized sports betting to the Garden State.
However, odds may be slim that gamblers one day will be able to go to Atlantic City and lay money down on a Super Bowl or any professional sporting event.
Federal law restricts legalized sports betting to Delaware, Montana, Nevada and Oregon. But Sen. Raymond Lesniak said Friday that he was willing to gamble that sports betting will come to New Jersey sooner rather than later.
“With the biggest sporting event of the year taking place this weekend, it’s naive to think that sports betting isn’t taking place right now in the Garden State,” said Lesniak, D-Union County. “But because of an act of Congress, we’ve surrendered sports betting to organized crime, offshore casinos and Las Vegas. Why should millions of dollars go to Las Vegas, offshore casinos and the mob?”
Lesniak plans to introduce a bill that would ask New Jersey voters whether professional sports betting should be allowed in the Garden State and to call on Congress to rescind the federal law restricting sports betting.
He’s not the first New Jersey lawmaker to propose the move.
Assemblymen Lou Greenwald, D-Camden, and Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, have pushed similar legislation for years, but it’s never received a full Assembly vote. Bills also passed the Senate in 1992 and 1993 that would have paved the way for sports betting in New Jersey, but they never passed the Assembly.
“It’s not possible unless they change the federal law,” said Republican Sen. Bill Gormley, whose district includes Atlantic City. “Sure, I’d like to see it, but what I don’t like doing is offering people false hope.”
The NFL and NBA have rallied against talk of legalized sports betting in New Jersey.
NFL attorney Jay Moyer was not immediately available for comment Friday, but he previously told New Jersey officials that legal sports betting in the state would “create a pervasive climate of suspicion about any controversial play in a game.”
“It would send two very bad messages,” Moyer said. “One is that anything goes when it comes to raising revenues and, two, that gambling and sports are natural partners.”
Lesniak challenged such reasoning.
“These sports organizations turn their backs on steroid scandals and thug behavior from players because it puts fans in the seats,” Lesniak said. “It’s hypocritical to say we need to ban sports betting to protect the integrity of the sport when the owners are tacitly endorsing so much worse.”
Lesniak, an attorney, also questioned whether federal law gives Las Vegas casinos an unfair advantage, making it vulnerable to a legal challenge through anti-monopoly laws.
Proponents of sports betting in New Jersey estimate the state might bring in up to $8 million in additional annual casino tax revenue through sports betting, plus boost the number of visitors to Atlantic City casinos.
Source: AP

Inveterate gamblers, rejoice.
If the Super Bowl wasn’t occasionally deadly dull, you probably wouldn’t be able to bet this week on which will be greater Sunday, the number of passes caught by Marvin Harrison against the Chicago Bears in Miami or the number of free throws made by LeBron James against the Detroit Pistons in Cleveland.
Or whether Bears Coach Lovie Smith or the Indianapolis Colts’ Tony Dungy will slam his headset, what color the sports drinks consumed by the players will be or whether Prince will split his pants open during the halftime show.
Side bets, known in casino parlance as “propositions” and encompassing just about anything under the sun, have grown so wildly popular that they rival more traditional wagers made on the Super Bowl, Las Vegas sports book operators say.
About $100 million is expected to be bet in Nevada on the Super Bowl this week, according to Las Vegas Sports Consultants.
Jay Kornegay, executive director of the race and sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton and the so-called king of propositions, estimated that 55% of the money wagered at the Hilton would be put down on “props.” Fifteen years ago, he said, that figure probably was closer to 15%.
“They’re a huge piece of the Super Bowl pie,” said Robert Walker, sports director at the MGM and nine other properties on the Las Vegas Strip, who guessed that props would account for about 30% of the bets placed at most sports books.
Brian Girard of Las Vegas will put money down on a few props this week, he said, including two he has bet every year since 1999: that the game will go into overtime and that a safety will be scored. (The Super Bowl has never gone into overtime, and none of the last 15 has produced a safety.)
“My millennium mutual fund, as I call it,” said Girard, who increases his wager on the two bets every year in the belief that they’ll pay off in his lifetime. “I started out with a little bit of money on them and I’m kind of doing the ultimate chase.”
The odds this week on an overtime game or a safety being scored are each about 7 to 1. That means, for example, if Girard bet $20 on each and both happened his profit would be about $280.
Girard said he had bet props for more than 20 years, recalling that he was a winner, at odds of 10 to 1, when lineman William “The Refrigerator” Perry scored a late touchdown for the Bears against the New England Patriots in 1986.
“That was probably the best one I did,” Girard said, but he has also bet on the Bud Bowl, a mock game matching animated bottles of Budweiser against Bud Light during Super Bowl commercials, and four years ago got 2,000-1 odds when he wagered that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would score only four points against the Oakland Raiders.
The Buccaneers won, 48-21.
“I remember Tampa Bay had a terrible offense,” said Girard, still holding what would have been a $20,000 winning ticket, “but I was way off on that one.”
NO matter the score, props keep bettors engaged from the national anthem — wagers are being taken on how many seconds it will take Billy Joel to get through it Sunday — to the awards ceremony, when the correct most-valuable-player choice could send a gambler home a winner.
Which is why props have been so heartily embraced, of course.
The number of props offered has mushroomed, bookmakers said, because a string of lopsided Super Bowl results left bettors searching for something new.
“These games were so boring, always blowouts,” said Kornegay, who moved to the Hilton three years ago after spending 15 years at the Imperial Palace. “If you were to look through the sports book, maybe halfway or three-quarters of the way through the game, people had left because they were bored with the game.
“One way we decided to try to keep them in their seats was to make up different propositions that affected the third and fourth quarters, or wouldn’t be decided until the third and fourth quarters, so we expanded our prop menu in the early ’90s, and it really took off the year the 49ers played the Chargers,” in 1995.
The 49ers were favored by nearly three touchdowns.
“There was no doubt who was going to win that game,” Kornegay said, “so while most books had probably around 30 to 40 props, we put up about 100 to 120 for that game. That was the year we realized we really had something.”
This year, Las Vegas sports books are offering as many as 300 props, many of which are shunned by professional gamblers and dismissed as “sucker bets,” and offshore betting sites are offering more than 1,000 over the Internet.
Kornegay said that he and his staff hunkered down for 26 hours over two days last week dreaming up props and calculating what odds to assign them.
“A lot of it is number crunching, but the other half of it is just booking experience and what we’ve experienced in past years in terms of how the general public normally bets certain props,” Kornegay said. The props range from the traditional — Which team will win the coin toss? Will the game go into overtime? Will the first player to score be wearing an odd- or even-numbered jersey? — to the more exotic.
An example of the latter: Which will be greater Sunday, the number of passing yards racked up by Colts quarterback Peyton Manning or the number of combined points scored by the four Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference college basketball teams — Canisius, St. Peter’s, Niagara and Siena — playing that day? Or, which team will lead by the widest margin Sunday: the Colts, Bears, Clippers or Toronto Raptors? The Clippers play the Raptors in an NBA game Sunday morning at Toronto.
“We get a fair amount of people
who are interested in more than the over/under” — the total number of points scored by both teams — “and the point spread,” said Reed Richards, a spokesman for the gambling website, http://www.betus.com . “They’re interested in a variety of different things, from who will be the first team to score to how many times Peyton Manning will be sacked.”
PROPS are not limited to the game. The halftime show also is in play. Through http://www.betus.com , bettors can wager whether Prince will suffer a wardrobe malfunction, make an obscene gesture or announce plans to run for president.
Just about anything and everything, it seems, is fair game.
Two years ago, for instance, a gambler would have been a winner, at 80-1 odds, if Sam Rayburn of the Philadelphia Eagles had recorded the first sack against the New England Patriots and “Ray” had won the Academy Award for best picture.
“The over/under and the spread are for the real hard-core gamblers, the real stats junkies,” Richards said. “But I think the people who really appreciate the game, really appreciate the drama and the characters, they become less interested in the score than in the people and the strategies that affect the outcome.”
Or, they just want to see if Prince will split open his pants.
“I bet more on the fun ones than on the actual, ‘Who’s going to win the game?’ ” said Brad Randolph, a 26-year-old graphic design artist from Austin, Texas, who correctly wagered last year that the Rolling Stones would open their halftime performance with “Start Me Up” and this year is betting on a Prince wardrobe malfunction.
“It just makes the game more interesting — all aspects of it. If it’s 28-0 at halftime, normally I wouldn’t watch the rest of the game, but if I’m wagering on touchdown celebrations, I’ve got to stay tuned,” he said.
So-called crossover props tend to draw the most media attention but are not the most appealing to bettors. One example: Which will be greater, the number of points scored by the Bears in the first quarter or the number of birdies carded by Tiger Woods in the fourth round of the Dubai Desert Classic?
“The most popular prop is the first player to score,” Walker said. “It might be the most boring prop, but the first player to score is always paramount. I think everybody puts $5 to $10 down on that one.”
BECAUSE of the popularity of such props, Walker added, “the first eight to 10 minutes of the game in a sports book is like the Kentucky Derby because it’s so loud in here, the roar of the crowd. After the first pass completion, the first rushing first down, etcetera, it quiets down and people settle into the game.”
Not that it’s ever quiet.
“Props make the game a lot more enjoyable,” Walker said.
But the popularity of some props, Walker said, defies logic.
“Every year people bet that the final score will be 4-2,” he said. “Sure, you can great odds on that, but I marvel at that because, is that a game you’d really want to see? Is that a game you would even want to watch?”
Odds are, probably not — unless you factor in the props.
Source: LA Times