You can widely bet on Super Bowl XLVI at Nevada's casinos, though good luck finding the words "Super Bowl" on any casino signage. The term is the NFL's, and the NFL cares not for gambling on its product — and you can put that in lights.
Nevertheless, gambling on pro football is big business, even if the NFL isn't keen on that business. So you can be sure that some of the most interested observers of the labor battle between NFL owners and players are the oddsmakers who set the lines and the bettors who try to land on the right side of those lines.
Football is king in the sportsbooks. And the prospect of losing some of the NFL season — or even all of it — has oddsmakers nervous. A cutdown or complete elimination of NFL games from the betting card means fewer wagering opportunities, which could be bad for the bottom line.
"Week One is where we start feeling the impact," Jay Rood, race and sports book director at MGM Resorts International, said in late May. He noted that the NFL's opening week is the highest-handle week of the regular season.
Jay Kornegay, the vice president of race and sports book operations at the Las Vegas Hilton, is already prepared for the prospect of no preseason football in August.
"I think this is going to be an 11th-hour decision," Kornegay predicted of a potential resolution to the NFL work stoppage.
Jimmy Vaccaro, the director of sports operations and public relations at Lucky's Race and Sports Book, which operates 16 sports books, noted that if the NFL goes away, so goes a major revenue stream for Lucky's oddsmaking-focused business.
"All we derive our money from is booking races and sports," Vaccaro said.
According to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which regulates casinos in the state, the 181 sportsbooks that took football wagers (single bets, not parlays) in 2010 cleared about $56.4 million in profit on such bets in the calendar year. Handle on football games was roughly $1.185 billion, per PFW's calculation (the board did not release football handle numbers for the year, but does release profit and win percentage figures). Though the gaming control board does not distinguish between wagers on the NFL and other football leagues, three oddsmakers interviewed by PFW all said the annual handle, or money wagered, on NFL and NCAA games is similar.
Football wagers also drive the sportsbooks' parlay card business, too, as Dan Shapiro, the director of marketing at Lucky's, pointed out. One example: in August 2010, 135 reporting casinos made about $170,000 off sports parlay cards in Nevada (the data does not distinguish between parlays on football and other sports). In September — when the NFL regular season begins and college football gets into high gear — 174 reporting casinos cleared a little more than $5.2 million in profit on parlays.
All three sportsbook directors interviewed by PFW agreed that should the work stoppage result in the cancellation of games, some money normally devoted to NFL betting would find its way to college football games, thus filling some of the void. And know this: Oddsmakers would be some of the biggest proponents of college conferences moving some games to Sundays if the NFL shutdown drags well into the fall.
However, that's a scenario oddmakers would rather not face. In May, over lunch at the Riviera, whose sportsbook Lucky's will soon manage, Vaccaro explained why NFL Sundays are so important.
"What you have going for you with (Sunday) is the absolute churn," he said, referring to the stream of bets taken by the book. "You've got multitudes of people running in there between 7:30 and 10 o'clock (a.m. Pacific). They sit down, bet their halftime bets and they stick around. And then they run up to the counter and cash their early bet or re-bet their second bet.
" ... We have 16 shots on Sunday, with 16 halftimes, 16 (first-half lines), 16 totals, 16 everything else. That's the great mix in booking — the more events you have, the better off you are. As great as Auburn-Alabama would be on Sunday, you get one shot. That's the difference.
" ... If you have Auburn-Alabama, if you get high on one side, that's going to be your day, win or lose. And you don't want to book that way."
Should NFL games disappear from the slate, Kornegay estimated that about 40 percent of the handle that would have been wagered on those contests would end up being wagered on college games. He's heard a wide variety of opinion on the subject.
"It's anyone's guess as to how much it's going to cost us," he said.
In the short term, pro football bettors can still get a bet down on Super Bowl XLVI at various Nevada casinos, and lines for Week One are already up at Lucky's and the Hilton. (However, Bryan Leonard, a professional handicapper, said that because of the labor uncertainty, breaking down the opening-week games was tantamount to studying a baseball game where there was an 80 percent forecast of rain.)
One common concern of Super Bowl bettors, according to oddsmakers, is whether they will get a refund if the season is cancelled. The answer: Yes.
Rood reported that Super Bowl wagering was a little down at the MGM properties and chalked that up to the lack of trades and free agency this offseason. A lack of such moves hasn't allowed teams to add veteran quarterbacks — exactly the type of splash moves that get bettors dreaming of better days to come.
"We're missing out on those wagers," he said.
Rood said he's had to be careful setting Super Bowl odds, lest he be caught with too high of a number should transactions resume and teams' fortunes change.
"We don't want to get ourselves for serious liability on a team that may jump into the free-agency market big-time," said Rood, who added that MGM's Super Bowl odds are discounted 10-20 percent because of the uncertainty.
Wagers on Super Bowl XLV totaled nearly $87.5 million in Nevada, with sportbooks clearing about $724,000 in profit, according to the state's gaming control board, citing handle data from 183 books. Handle increased about 5.9 percent compared to 2010, the second year in a row betting revenue has risen after three years of declines. Nevada sportsbooks have done well on the Super Bowl recently, collectively making money in 15 of the last 17 years, with profit reaching seven figures for 13 of those Super Bowls.
That's one of the many reasons it's not too early for oddsmakers to be just a little wary of the prospect of the NFL slip-sliding off the league calendar, with owners and players pointing fingers at each other all the way.
At the Riviera, Vaccaro asked a waitress if he she wagers on the NFL. She answered in the affirmative.
"There's a Sunday customer for a $20 parlay card," Vaccaro said after she walked away.
"There won't be any of them."
The effects could be far more chilling than just a few less parlay cards turned in around town. The trickle-down effect of a work stoppage lingering into the season isn't lost on oddsmakers.
"We can't afford to have too many weeks pass by, otherwise it's going to flow through and start showing on the bottom line," Rood said of the potential of missed games.
In the worst-case scenario — no NFL season at all — Kornegay said cost-cutting would be a likely outcome. If there were no NFL games, "We're not going to need as many people," Kornegay said.
The good news for the oddsmakers of Las Vegas?
The calendar hasn't even hit summer yet. And gambling, of course, is the city's business. Even if labor uncertainty continues to rule the day, Rood holds out hope that visitors will still follow through with their trips and spend money in other areas of the casinos.
At the Hilton, lines for select regular-season games are on the board, including five slated for Jan. 1, 2012 — Week 17. Perhaps this will all be in the rear view mirror by then.
Time is still on the sportsbooks' side, but the clock is ticking.
"I'm a little more comfortable now than I would be in late August," Kornegay said.
Source: http://www.profootballweekly.com/2011/06/03/nevada-oddsmakers-hoping-lockout-is-over-soon
Otto Graham Paul Brown Marion Motley Jim Brown Lou Groza Dante Lavelli
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