In case you haven’t heard, sports betting is all the rage these days.
You’ll learn more about the reasons behind this resurgence down below, but for now, just know that sportsbooks are buzzing like never before. Between the top-rated online sportsbooks serving millions of customers worldwide, to the brick and mortar bet shops that helped to build Sin City expanding into other states, backing your belief in a favorite team or player has never been easier.
With so many gamblers turning their attention from the table games and machines to sports betting, rookies who haven’t been around the block before are only now discovering the industry’s secrets.
They say the learning curve is accelerated through tough luck and losing, circumstances which ostensibly toughen bettors up and make them better at the craft.
Fortunately for you, I’m not a believer in tough love, so the list below has been cobbled together to teach you all about six amazing sports betting secrets no one tells you about. You’ll learn about the long history of bookmaking and betting, the bridge between that history and modern online sportsbooks, and how the boldest bettors on the planet routinely risk six- and even seven-figures on their own strategies and skills.
In the end, my hope is to leave readers prepared and ready to take the sportsbooks on from a level playing field. On that note, strap in for a whirlwind tour of the sports betting industry’s greatest secrets.
Most sports fans know that the modern Olympic Games as we know them today were originally created by the ancient Greeks millennia ago.
And while you wouldn’t find any formal bookmaking back then, spectators on hand to watch their athletic heroes race and wrestle undoubtedly wagered on the outcome. The ancient Greeks gave way to the Romans, who turned athletic competition into the grand spectacle fans appreciate today by pitting gladiators against one another in the famous Coliseum.
In both ancient cultures, rudimentary gambling devices like dice and playing cards have been documented, so there’s little doubt that the first punters put coins, goods, and services down on their favorite athletes and gladiators.
Regulated sports betting arrived a little late to the party in Nevada, launching in 1951 thanks to a 10 percent federal tax applied on the Silver State’s sportsbook.
That’s 20 years after casino gambling was legalized, but at least residents and visitors in Nevada could place their wagers through safe, secure, and trustworthy bookmakers. Throughout the rest of America, sports betting remained the domain of underground “bookies” who conducted business in barrooms and back-alleys.
In 1992, the Congress adopted a measure known as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), a law designed to ban sportsbooks in every state except Nevada.
The PASPA remained the law of the land until May 14 of 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck the sports betting down as unconstitutional. Seemingly overnight, 49 other states were granted the right to regulate and tax their own sports betting markets.
And wouldn’t you know it? State governments seem to prefer it that way, as Delaware, New Jersey, Mississippi, West Virginia, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island have already launched brick and mortar and/or online / mobile sportsbooks. You’ll see sportsbooks go live in Arkansas, Montana, Indiana, Tennessee, and Iowa over the next year too, thanks to regional competition sparking a veritable sports betting gold rush across the country.
These are definitely exciting times for avid sports bettors who want a local legal book to call their own. To find out how your state is progressing on the legalization front, head here to track the sports betting bills being introduced and debated all across the country.
You’ll learn more about the legendary Westgate SuperBook later in the page, but for now, get a load of the venue’s most well-known product – the NFL SuperContest.
For an entry fee of only $1,500, players compete against one another by picking five NFL games against the spread per week. Whomever collects the most correct picks by season’s end claims the lion’s share of the combined prize pool, a payout which came to a whopping $1.4 million last year.
The SuperContest isn’t a winner take all affair by any means though, so if you can navigate the minefield of a few thousand entrants to make the top-100 finishers, you’ll earn a payout ranging from $2,267 to somewhere in the mid-six figures for runner-up.
On the stock market, a select group of sharp traders uses a completely legal method known as “arbitrage” to effectively game the system and guarantee themselves a small profit.
Translated to sports betting, the arbitrage strategy can be used to squeeze out a sliver of profit by betting on both sides of any given game – provided the price is exactly right.
Consider the following example to see how arbitrage plays work:
In this interleague MLB matchup, the Dodgers are heavily favored by one sportsbook that offers (-276) moneyline odds. Over at another bet shop, however, the odds are tilted more heavily towards the underdog Royals, who are priced at (+450).
Spotting this discrepancy and pouncing on it quickly, an arbitrage bettor can calculate the exact wagers on both sides that will produce a guaranteed profit. When they fire $80 on the Dodgers and win, the resulting payout of $110 comes to $30 profit. Meanwhile, a $20 bet on the Royals would be good for a $110 payout and $90 in profit.
By making both bets simultaneously, this bettor can’t lose. A win for L.A. means $30 profit, minus the $20 loss on Kansas City, for a $10 score. Conversely, a win for K.C. means a $90 profit, minus the $80 loss on L.A., for a $10 score.
Obviously, sportsbooks work hard to prevent arbitrage scenarios from being offered, but with so many bookmakers operating on land and online, discrepancies are bound to happen. And when they do, sharp arbitrage bettors are usually there to take advantage – at least before their account is cut off.
Well, maybe not all the time, but bettors cashing in tickets worth $1 million or more is hardly a rarity like many gamblers might suspect.
In fact, the major corporate bookmakers lining Las Vegas Boulevard pride themselves on accepting the biggest and boldest bets possible.
During the 2018 World Series, an anonymous 30-something dubbed “Bettor X” brought enormous sums to bet against sportsbook operators CG Technology, MGM Resorts, South Point, Station Casinos, the Westgate SuperBook, William Hill, and the Wynn.
After spreading his action around ahead of Games 1 through 6 – each of which he picked correctly before letting it ride on the next contest – Bettor X took only a week to collect more than $10 million in profits.
Of course, he returned to drop nearly $4 million on last year’s Super Bowl, but as they say… you win some, and you lose some.
It takes an ambitious soul to declare their sportsbook a “SuperBook,” but over at the Westgate Las Vegas, bold plays are the name of the game.
The SuperBook is appropriately named, spanning more than 30,000 square feet and 350 comfortable leather chairs straight out of a modern “man cave.” The centerpiece of the SuperBook experience is the venue’s one-of-a-kind video screen wall, which stretches out over 220 feet long and 18 feet high. This video screen is actually comprised of several smaller interlocking and interchangeable screens, so the head honchos on scene can toggle to size up important games.
Of all the sportsbooks operating on planet Earth, the Westgate SuperBook is by far the largest and most spectacular – not to mention the most well-organized and customer friendly. With that in mind, every bettor should make this monument to the industry a must-see attraction when visiting Vegas.
Secrets matter more in sports betting than any other gambling pursuit. Knowing when a player is nursing an unreported injury, how the weather will shift after halftime, or any number of “insider info” secrets can separate a savvy sports bettor from the public masses. Similarly, the six secrets listed above can give any punter a leg up when you actualize the knowledge in gambling’s ultimate arena.
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