So, ideally you get a pop-up, right?
You got like five seconds in the air.
God forbid the guy drops the ball.
At the Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, sports betting takes center stage.John Locher/AP Images
Im sitting in the outfield with Scott Brody, who is not paying the fans around us any mind.
Hes not gonna score.
Scott Brody isnt his real name.
Its a pseudonym, and many of the other names in this story are as well.
Its already out of bounds.
Brody, like many, started taking betting more seriously during the pandemic.
With a masters in accounting and a knack for statistics, he got intosportsmodeling.
After discovering sports-betting guru Captain Jack on YouTube, he studied and built his own predictive models.
Within a few years, he was making enough to quit his job and gamble full time.
It seems like everyone who isnt betting on sports likely has someone in their life who is.
Revenues for sports-betting companies reached nearly $11 billion in 2023, up 44.5 percent from the year before.
America can survive sports betting.
It survived illegal betting for years.
And then there are the scandals involving athletes gambling and sometimes even fixing games.
This has given the impression that sports betting appeared out of nowhere and is corrupting sports.
I have a different perspective.
As a kid, I had friends whose family members were bookies.
Hell, there were bookies in the chamber of commerce.
By the time the PASPA repeal happened, I was the proverbial frog in the boiling pot of water.
The original professional baseball team owners would bet with one another on their teams.
In 1950,Lifemagazine declared America the gamblingest nation that ever existed.
Eye-popping endorsement deals and marketing budgets are being dramatically scaled back.
The tide feels like receding.
Back at the ballpark, as Ohtani readies himself for the pitch, Brody readies a $500 bet.
Brody smashes the button on the phone.
The ball sails deep into the rafters.
The Dodgers fans around us are so loud youd have thought the game was in Los Angeles.
The bet didnt go through.
The button man beat him this time.
Ah, that sucked, man!
That was a home run!
Hawaii will have to wait.
Under six and a half makes sense.
A lot of this adds up into a bet that seems reasonable based on everything I know.
The verdict: He likes it.
The problem: DraftKings doesnt like Captain Jack.
In a sense, he has.
By 2012, he quit and became a full-time pro.
Andrews probably doesnt fit your stereotype of a professional gambler.
Theres no tracksuit, no pinkie ring.
Hes a mild-mannered professional who youd never cast a suspicious glance at.
But despite his normal appearance, his life is quite remarkable.
Andrews is blacklisted from casinos all over the world, and lots of sportsbooks wont take his bets.
His real name is a well-kept secret.
Today in Atlantic City, he wears a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes.
Everybodys like, Oh, youre betting with a local bookie?
Is it a mob guy?
The stigma now has been removed.
Its an OK thing to do.
Theres corporations behind it.
So he settles for $250 a pop because action is action.
I cant bet a single penny on these at home, he says.
Andrews may shield his face from kiosk cameras, but it is well-known online.
If youve searched anything gambling-n him.
Too many people look at sports betting as a get rich quick scheme.
They want to bet a little to win a lot, he says.
Parlays are bets where multiple wagers are combined to make it create a bigger payout for a smaller investment.
The more bets you combine, the more you might win, but the longer the odds.
Sustainability is the tide that lifts all boats, from bettors to sportsbooks to state tax revenue.
Gamblers like Brody have used Unabated to turn their hobby into something that earns enough to go pro.
Andrews estimates that less than one percent of U.S. sports bettors earn more than $100,000 annually.
The major American sportsbooks apparently like it this way and want nothing to do with professionals.
Jason Robins, DraftKings CEO and co-founder, once stated that sports betting is an entertainment activity.
People who are doing this for profit are not the people we want.
Since PASPAs repeal, both the number of gamblers and the amount wagered has steadily grown.
This makes winners a problem for sportsbooks.
I was down $600.
I wasnt even betting a whole lot, Andrews says.
I was betting second-inning lines.
Back then, Spanky was trying to bet tens of thousands of dollars a game.
Casino games have odds set in stone and almost always favor the house.
you could win short term, but long term, the house knows it will win.
In sports betting, things are more dynamic.
Everyone else can bet any amount they want, whether $100 a game or $100,000 a game.
This practice is so widespread they have a name for it: Ban or bankrupt.
Andrews has made exposing it a personal crusade.
In May, he spoke at a roundtable on limiting organized by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.
Andrews had a captive audience, and the regulators took him seriously.
At that meeting, FanDuel admitted to limiting players.
Some users may have more information than we do.
Thats more the focus than Is this person customer punch in-A or punch in-B.
FanDuel claimed that its even less than one percent of its players who are limited.
This year, a new nonprofit called American Bettors Voice formed to advocate for sports bettors.
But should anybody be sympathetic to the pro gambler?
Isnt it true what DraftKings CEO Robins says that sports betting is simply entertainment?
Andrews says focusing on professionals like him misses the point.
No state has said weve screwed up sports betting so badly were going to rescind it.
Pivetta has six strikeouts, and I swallow hard, figuring this is going to be an expensive meal.
I dont hate our chances, he says.
A couple of walks later, and theres a meeting on the mound.
Pivetta is pulled, one strikeout shy of going over.
I look to Andrews for a fist bump.
His head is buried in his iPad, studying the numbers on Unabated for the next game.
I meet Alex Kane at Citizens Bank Park on a blistering Juneteenth for a Phillies-Padres matinee.
The ballpark is packed, and the sun beats down on us.
Kane and I are sweating, literally and figuratively, because we have a bet on the Phillies.
This is notable, as Kane is the CEO and co-founder of Sporttrade, a startup sports-betting company.
Hes a sports fan, but a bit of a nerd about it.
Trading has been around as long as betting, he says.
I started to realize they were very close to the same thing.
He envisioned doing this for sports bettors building an exchange to eliminate the bookmaker.
By the time PASPA came down, Kane started building Sporttrade.
It was an uphill battle.
After partnering with Ballys for a license, Sporttrade began taking bets in 2022.
Sporttrades growth has been modest.
FanDuel and DraftKings control about 60 percent of the New Jersey sports-betting market.
MGM and Caesars have struggled to keep up with them.
Today, sportsbooks are rethinking this, as theres little market share left to capture.
Some sportsbooks have surrendered.
While there were 27 companies in New Jersey at legalization, today there are only 13.
But bigger sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings already have customers.
It turns out small companies dont have anything to offer unless they have better technology.
And they dont, so you might just let them go broke.
Sporttrade may be among the smallest operations, but its still standing.
The Padres hit a home run near us.
The Phillies, however, are losing, and our bet is in jeopardy.
I turn to see myself on the jumbotron high above Acrisure Stadium.
Next to my awkward mug is the image of a young bearded man smiling in a suit and tie.
I do not have the political pedigree whatsoever, he tells me.
But today, in Acrisure Stadium, hes the man.
Hes the president of the National Council of Legislators From Gaming States.
Theyre here for more serious business than pretending to be Steelers.
Its at these meetings that NCLGS members work together to write the laws that regulate gambling.
Fluharty paid attention to the effort to overturn PASPA early, and felt bullish about its chances of winning.
Many state legislatures adopted sports betting with the hope it would generate new tax revenue.
But sports betting is a low-margin business.
There are more than just state legislators at NCLGS in Pittsburgh.
There are also gamblers here.
It seems everyone wants an audience with the politicians.
At the bar, I run into Spanky, gregarious and baby-faced in a bright-blue-checked blazer.
In one hand, he clutches a lighter he uses to light everyones cigars.
In the other fist, he clutches a wad of hundred-dollar bills.
Everyone was there to see Billy Walters.
Walters is as close to a celebrity as youll find in this world.
Im here all on my own.
Im no ones hired gun, Walters says to begin the panel.
Hes got a point.
Over that time, plenty of people have learned this business inside and out.
Today, however, the major sportsbooks are publicly traded and run by people with business and tech backgrounds.
I was accessing adrenaline regularly, fighting, then went from that to nothing.
There was one place where I felt something similar at a casino.
Most Las Vegas sportsbooks dont offer as many bets, because its simply too much to manage.
At a certain scale, bookmaking becomes a technology issue rather than one of human expertise.
Its important to understand that this is only year six of legalized sports betting, Jones says.
Those tasked with regulating and writing legislation are neophytes, too.
Some, like Fluharty, turn to experts like Walters for guidance.
Im big on letting the experts tell me, Fluharty says.
They have no choice.
As Fluharty puts it, the toothpaste is already out of the tube.
Thats not going to happen with anything still making money.
Elizabeth Thielen has always been a fighter.
Three months into training, she won her first fight by breaking her opponents nose.
She went on to win back-to-back Pennsylvania Golden Gloves titles.
She came back home with the national championship.
She was profiled in a book and inThe Washington Post.
She was going to be the next big thing in womens boxing.
Then she injured her wrist and arm.
I was accessing adrenaline regularly, fighting, then went from that to nothing, Thielen says.
And there was one place in my life where I felt something similar at a casino.
That was extremely costly.
Shed lose money, then chase those losses by betting more.
Ironically, this was exactly how she was trained as an athlete: Never give up.
But at the casino, it was devastating.
Its called the gamblers fallacy the belief that if you keep trying, things will eventually break your way.
Things never broke her way.
She lost more money than she can remember.
Its safe to say it was in the six figures.
She had sold so much gold to the pawn shop they had come to depend on her.
A growing number of states now require sportsbooks to fund responsible-gambling initiatives.
Counselors like Thielen are needed because young people and problem gamblers are especially vulnerable.
Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was caught betting against himself and shaving points.
Alabama coach Brad Bohannon gave inside information about his pitcher to a gambler for betting purposes.
The industry argues such scandals prove the system is working.
Sports-betting scandals arent new.
Now, theyre being brought into the light.
We have a legal, regulated industry to do that, and the technology to identify it.
While it may be in the industrys interest to frame the issue this way, that viewpoint isnt wrong.
And its true were better equipped to catch them now.
Professional gamblers, often blamed for athlete corruption, also play a role.
They can spot irregularities before regulators or sportsbooks because they monitor the markets constantly.
Earlier this year, Temple University basketball players were suspected of shaving points.
Gamblers tipped off sportsbooks.
Elihu Feustel was asked by a sportsbook to look at three Temple games where the first halves seemed off.
(No action has been taken against any players, and the Temple investigation is ongoing.)
According to NCPG, 16 percent of sports bettors meet the criteria for clinical gambling disorder.
That, too, is a problem that exacerbates the issue of responsible gambling.
The industry would like to believe that the VIPs responsible for its profits are wealthy enough to afford it.
Handle refers to the total amount of money wagered.
It can be very dangerous.
When she entered the casino, everything was on the house.
Shed treat her friends and family to lavish meals, all paid for by the casino.
And in that moment, my gambling life flashed before my eyes, Thielen tells me.
All the late nights.
All the significant financial problems I had.
Now she was face to face with how badly things had deteriorated.
She resolved to get help.
It took her nearly 11 years to make back everything she had lost and get back on her feet.
Many of the companies now believe their future lies in slot machines, not sports betting.
Sportsbooks tell lawmakers that mobile casinos will deliver the tax revenues sports betting didnt.
Currently, only seven states have regulated mobile casinos.
But it was actually a pitch.
What would happen if these states actually passed iGaming?
he asked, referring to an industry term for mobile casino apps.
There was scant discussion, however, of preventing problem gambling.
According to aBusinessweeksurvey, less than two percent of sports-betting revenue goes to problem-gambling initiatives.
Adding more addictive games will only worsen the problem.
America can survive sports betting.
It survived illegal betting for years, Roxborough says.
Whether it can survive a casino on everyones phone that I cant answer.
That might be the tipping point.
Sportsbooks are in a tough spot.
Regulated American sportsbooks want to deprive it of American customers.
I wanted to see the impact for myself, so I flew down to Central America.
The casino at the Amapola Resort in Jaco Beach, Costa Rica, is slow tonight.
A woman feeds colones into a slot machine.
A group of men shoots pool.
J.R. was once a prominent bookie in the U.S. Over the past three decades, J.R. has gone from boom to bust and back again.
This is where I decided to plant my flag, he tells me.
J.R. asks who I like in the game.
I say I like the Ravens +2.5 and ask if I can bet it with him.
He agrees, on one condition: I have to parlay it with the Costa Rican national team.
I agree, and we put the games on the two big screens in the office.
But on further review, Likelys toe was on the line, and the touchdown doesnt count.
(Costa Ricas national team did its part and won in a rout.)
Lets go eat, he says with a smile.
He did an interview with60 Minutesin 1992 that many cite as the inspiration that fueled a massive bookie diaspora.
It may have also inspired the feds to pursue him.
That same year, Congress passed PASPA, and two years later, they had Sacco in cuffs.
All told, Saccos rap sheet included more than a dozen convictions and over five years in prison.
At the time he went away, they said he was doing $100 million in business a month.
It had a considerable impact and forced a lot of offshore bookies to reconsider their businesses.
Sacco sold CRIS to a Costa Rican businessman named J.D.
Duarte, who stopped doing business with Americans and focused instead on Latin America.
Some converted into pay-per-head shops, licensing their technology to local bookies in the U.S. for a per-user fee.
Some moved back to America and returned to their roots, becoming bookies themselves.
Some, like J.R., went broke.
For the next decade, J.R. tried to build his business back up from nothing.
A gambler he owed money to sent someone to Costa Rica to collect.
J.R. gave him his car.
It was a slow death, he says.
He ended up hearing about an aging resort hotel in need of some upkeep.
It had a casino license, but the casino had been closed for a long time.
J.R.s wheels started spinning.
I can promote a sportsbook behind this license, he thought.
J.R. persuaded the owner of the Amapola to let him take it over.
Big bets in mature markets, pay quick, no bonus.
Thats my model, he says.
And whoever wants to bet on that model is more than welcome.
Win whatever they want, theyre gonna get paid on demand.
They make an unusual pair.
The legals have definitely affected us, 100 percent, Bill says, referring to the regulated U.S. sportsbooks.
The agents drum up new business, sometimes receiving a cut of losses as their payment.
But a lot of small guys added up to big business for offshore operators like Bill.
The local bookie just couldnt compete with a $1,000 risk-free bet.
Where its dipping is the small retail player, says J.R.
The guys that bet the parlays and whatnot are not returning to agents anymore.
Theyre giving away money hand over fist.
We have a house of shit.
The legals dont care about profits.
They only care about market share, J.R. says.
Now, theres more people that are trying to get outs.
By outs, J.R. means places to bet.
And that pool of players looking for outs has only grown in the U.S. in the past six years.
Back in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, it was considered taboo, Bill says.
Everybodys like, Oh, youre betting with a local bookie?
Is it a mob guy?
The stigma now has been removed.
Its an OK thing to do.
Theres corporations behind it.
You name a state, we have customers, Bill says.
Thats why its good for us to be out there, he says.
Just to know whats going through their head.
Spanky, Fats, Chinese Mike, Stevie the Pencil theyre all here.
Theyve come from around the world to downtown Las Vegas for BetBash.
Some to internet, some to learn, and many to party.
Tonight, the partying begins at the first of several open bars at Circa Resort and Casino this week.
Derek Stevens is here, too.
Hes hard to miss tall with the frame of a pro athlete and a cornflower-blue suit matching the hotel.
I assume thats intentional he owns the joint.
The 57-year-old Michigan native always loved Vegas.
He and his brother moved their investments to Nevada in the early 2000s to avoid state income tax.
Soon, he was buying small downtown casinos.
Eventually, Stevens aimed to develop a large-scale, high-class resort in downtown Las Vegas.
It was a bold move nobody had built anything new downtown in more than 40 years.
But Stevens liked the area, and the prices were good.
He opened Circa in 2020, and its been a hit since.
Circa is unique among Vegas casinos.
Its main feature is its sportsbook the largest in the world.
While sportsbooks are a staple in most Nevada casinos today, nobody has one as big as Circas.
Thats because in the casino business, sportsbooks have never been very profitable.
Caesars had a sportsbook for one reason, says professional gambler Walters, to service their casino customers.
They really didnt even care about being in the sports business.
It was there as an amenity to their hotel customers.
Casinos had guaranteed profits from slots and games.
They wanted nothing to do with sports.
Eventually, the state lowered the taxes, and casinos reluctantly waded in.
And that line goes straight to Circa.
Stevens bookmakers run it old-school, taking bets from all players.
Theyre not afraid of a little risk.
We book a losing day pretty often, he says.
Were not trying to shun away professional or big-bet players.
We want to work with players.
If Circa has a customer, BetBash attendees are likely their ultimate form.
Theres speed networking, seminars, workshops, and even a golf tournament.
J.R. isnt only in town to attend BetBash.
Andrews has long attended the Blackjack Ball, having started his career as a card counter.
This is the gold rush, and theres a lot of money to be made.
I sit at Roxboroughs table, which is almost entirely sports bettors.
There are multiple attendees whove won over a billion dollars gambling.
There are also a lot of younger people, including those in the 18-to-24 demographic Keith Whyte worries about.
(Whyte is here, too, believe it or not.
But he need not worry about these young men.
If anyone in this room is addicted to gambling, its only because gambling is making them filthy rich.
This ballroom holds the most successful gamblers in the world, and a lot of them started in blackjack.
Many would say that game is now dead.
Casinos today are too good at stopping card counters.
The ones who did it for a living have moved on.
The sports bettors at the ball, veterans and newcomers alike, would be wise to heed this lesson.
In the gambling world, no edge lasts forever.
Right now, the sports bettors are having their moment.
But the industry is at a crossroads, and the future is uncertain.
Hopefully, somewhere in those screens of flashing numbers, they can deduce and project what happens next.
Businesspeople love to think of themselves as risk takers.
If anything, they made it easier than ever to lose.
The government, the shareholders, the CEOs, they all want their money guaranteed.
As I stare at the tote board, I ask Rufus Peabody for advice.
He may be a pro, but on this he has no pick.
He only tells me not to bet on the sports bettors, because they dont stand a chance.
I hand the teller a hundred bucks, and ask him to bet it on the Field.
