My sports survey shows that betting on the outcome of local and national sporting contests is the number one illegal form of gambling in the United States-illegal off-track race betting is second. This great upsurge in sports betting is due primarily to extensive television sports coverage on all sorts of sporting events and the great team expansion of professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey. Today about 60 million Americans are wagering approximately $30 billion yearly on all sorts of amateur and professional sporting contests. My New York City sports survey agrees with the one conducted by the Oliver Quayle organization for the city of New York. Both estimates state that New York City”s sports fans bet over $1 billion yearly.
About half, or $15 billion, of the total national sports handle was wagered with friends and acquaintances in bets ranging from a dollar to several. thousand dollars. These private wagers on sports and other events rank in volume as follows: football, baseball, basketball, hockey, boxing, golf and political elections, and such skill contests as bowling, horseshoes, Checkers, Chess, billiards, pool and Teeko.
The remaining $15 billion is wagered each year by countless millions of Americans with thousands of sports bookmakers and hundreds and hundreds of horse bookies. The books retain about 4¢ of each dollar they handle, gross revenue on the $15 billion of $600 million. About 60% of this goes for operational expenses-salaries, gamblers” losses not collected, phone charges (one such bookie is known to spend $10,000 a month on phone calls in order to operate his trans-country sports business) and graft paid to corrupt police officers and politicians. This leaves a net profit of $240 million. One example of how important sports betting in this country has become is a Federal investigation and trial of the operators of a sports office in Terre Haute, Indiana. The government subpoenaed 175 of the country”s big time bettors-a list which included several multimillion¬aires, movie people, hotel owners and other business tycoons. The evidence indicated that some of these bettors wagered as much as $25,000 on a single football game.
SPORTS OFFICES AND BOOKMAKERS
There are now about 4,000 bookmakers in America who handle sports wagers exclusively, most of whom will not take horse-race bets. Two of these, both big ones, are women.
In addition, there are more than 300 sports offices. A sports office is a combine or syndicate of three or more of the top sports bookmakers who have joined together so as to be able to handle the sports betting of the nation”s biggest bettors. As a rule, the smallest bet these offices will accept is $100 on a single contest, the largest, $20,000. But this $20,000 maximum limit is sometimes upped for special customers; and for the Super Bowl and World Series play the sky is the limit.
The day”s handle for one of these offices may run from a low $50,000 to a high of $500,000 or more.
Baseball sports betting accounts for about 40%, or $6 billion of the bookies” yearly sports handle; football, about 45% or $6.75 billion, and basketball, hockey, prizefights and state and national political elections, 15% or $2.25 billion.
The bettors who patronize the big time bookies or sports offices are tens of thousands of people in all walks of life: industrialists, politicians, judges, lawyers, stock brokers and manipulators, oil and movie magnates, as well as Numbers operators, bookmakers, casino operators, racketeers and other easy-money boys.
Most of the betting online involving the big bettor and the bookie or sports office is conducted by phone and courier. The courier, or runner, merely collects from the losers and pays the winners. This is done strictly on a cash basis-"No maps (checks) accepted." If the sports office and the big time bettor are in different states the winner of a big wager (bookie or player) must travel to the loser to collect.
Betting conversations by phone are usually in code, and no names are ever mentioned. The necessary bookkeeping is also coded, numbers representing the names of superstars, teams, etc. These codes are used primarily to make it tough for Federal law-enforcement agencies to get evidence. Formerly, bookies operating within the borders of a single state had no fear of Federal prosecution, but the enactment of the 1951 Federal gambling law requiring a bookie to purchase a $50
license stamp annually and pay 10% of his gross handle as a Federal tax changed that.
The 10% tax is highly unrealistic. As one bookie told me disgusted, "I would go broke in one day if 1 paid the 10% Federal bookie tax. Look what would happen when a player bets me $1,050 to $1,000 on a Pick ”em ball game and he wins. 1 lose $1,000 and must still pay Uncle Sam $105 for accepting the bet. If 1 take a $1,050 baseball bet on each of two opposing teams, I”d earn only $50 on the $2,100 worth of action, and would have to pay Uncle Sam $210. That would put me out of business in short order-so 1 don’t buy the stamp. 1 just pay Uncle Sam what he rightfully has coming when 1 file my income tax."
The nation”s number one sports betting online contest is the annual Super Bowl. The runner-up is, of course, the World Series, with the Kentucky Derby running third. Approximately $600 million changes hands on the Super Bowl game and about $500 million is wagered on the outcome of the World Series plus the single games. The largest single bet to this author”s knowledge was made by a Midwestern betting combine with a number of western sports offices. They wagered $825,000 on the outcome of a World Series game. A $200,000 wager is the largest single wager known on a Super Bowl game.
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT BETTING SCALPERS
Many bookies who handle baseball action believe that scalpers (bettors who wager on two opposing teams in order to minimize their losses through some mysterious mathematical formula unknown to the bookies) have a sure-fire winning proposition when they scalp a World Series. As one New Jersey bookie told me, "Scarne, these baseball scalpers bet big on the Series favorite, then turn around and bet the underdog in each single game. They are sure to win money. How they do it 1 don”t know, but, believe me, they do it." This is like the old joke about the woman who thinks the department store loses money on every item it sells, but makes millions yearly because it sells so many thousands of each item.
This misconception about scalpers arose years ago when a sports office considered its price maker, or handicapper, not only a baseball whiz and a mathematical genius but a prophet to boot. They would quote a price and accept bets weeks before game time not only on the outcome of the Series, but also on each of the seven scheduled games. With this betting setup a sports scalper with a fair knowledge of simple arithmetic would seek a sports line on the World Series and the individual games from as many bookies and sports offices as possible.
He would then select the best price on the outcome of the Series and the best price on each of the individual games. This could involve selecting as many as eight prices each from a different bookie or sports office. By comparing the World Series price with the combined price line of the individual games, he could easily determine if the difference resulted in a minus or plus expectation. If it was minus he forgot the matter. If plus, he would bet his money with the different bookies, laying the shortest price on the Series favorite and taking the longest odds on the underdog in the individual games. This would guarantee him a profit, no matter what happened.
But the scalper can”t do this today because he can”t get a bet down on any single game until the day of that game; bookies only quote prices day by day on World Series games. The only sure thing about scalping the Series today is that the scalper is paying the bookie a greater profit because he is making a greater number of bets.