ESPN reported something interesting today on the side of all the Roger Goodell lying...
Sports bettors lost more money in 2014 than in any year previous!
The Nevada Gaming Control board reported that $3.9 billion of legal handle was taken on sporting events in 2014.
Of this, $227,040,000 was directly taken in by the books, won by the house.
Both are records.
To give perspective, on a normal bet, the book looks to take 50-50 action on both sides.
And, for the purposes of discussion, I will take the standard 10-11 bet as a baseline. Yes, there are parlays and the like.
So the book would, on normal, take in about 9.09% of every losing bet, and, with the bets assumed 50-50, it would be about 4.545% of the entire handle.
$3.9B * 4.545% = $177,255,000
Meaning, the books won, on balance, to the tune of about another $50,000,000.
And where would that probably have happened?
FOOTBALL!
The NGC reported that the books won $113,730,000 off of about 55-60% of their total stake.
That winnings number by the books was a FORTY PERCENT INCREASE over last year -- about $45 million.
(Both baseball and basketball were actually down in winnings to the casinos. Yes, the casinos took in profits, but less than years before.)
Why?
Look at the numbers:
- Scoring down a point and a half a game this year.
- Last seven weeks were a full field goal-plus a game lower than last year's season total.
- Last seven weeks of the year, the over was an average of about 6-10, meaning the under hit on about 54% of the games.
- Favorites were slightly under .500 this year -- about 2 games worth. The reason this is significant is because of the juice. You need to win 11 games for every 10 you lose to break even. You'd need about a .524 winning percentage to break even in Vegas. This year was .493.
The NFL itself and Las Vegas!
No comments:
Post a Comment