Jeff Haney explains why sports betting at Las Vegas casinos is small potatoes

By Jeff Haney

Monday, Jan. 28, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Back when he was known for drawing cartoon rabbits, Matt Groening had a funny one depicting an elaborate Main Street-style parade, complete with a marching band and all the trimmings.

In the corner of the panel, our hero — it must have been little Bongo the rabbit — is shown, ignoring the parade and oblivious to all the fanfare, intently watching a line of tiny ants marching along the sidewalk.

That’s the image my mind will conjure this week or next, whenever someone tries to make a big deal of the fact that Nevada’s Super Bowl handle could exceed $100 million for the first time.

It’s a bogus milestone.

For one thing, more than $10 billion is expected to be wagered on Sunday’s game by some 200 million bettors worldwide, according to Las Vegas gaming analyst R.J. Bell — meaning Nevada casinos will command less than 1 percent of the action.

Certainly the state’s betting interests can’t help it if people elsewhere like to bet with illegal bookmakers, or with friends, or in office pools or other venues.

Still, the state should have broken the $100 million mark long ago.

Consider the Nevada Super Bowl handle in 1996 was $70.9 million, according to the state Gaming Control Board. By last year, the figure had crept up to $93 million — an increase of just 24 percent during a period of booming growth in gambling.

By comparison, the state’s gross gaming revenue — an imperfect yet telling parallel — surged from $7.45 billion in 1996 to $12.5 billion in fiscal 2007, a jump of 68 percent.

I asked former sports book boss Scott Schettler if the failure of the Super Bowl handle to keep pace was a symptom of the trend among casinos to bury, rather than promote, sports betting as a draw.

Schettler, who ran the Stardust in the heyday of Las Vegas sports gambling, did me one better.

“These days, they’re in the business of not taking (sports) bets instead of taking bets, for some reason,” Schettler said with a good-natured laugh. “So they take $100 million on the Super Bowl. That’s probably the same $100 million they refuse to take the rest of the year.”

Just this month, Schettler said, a colleague of his who had lost thousands of dollars betting NFL teasers in Las Vegas sports books this season tried to place a two-leg teaser at his regular book.

The bet was declined, with the dubious explanation that playoff betting lines are “too tight” to handle teaser wagers.

Simply craving action, the bettor asked if he could place a teaser using the opposite two teams — or the flip side of his original attempted bet. No. The lines are “too tight.”

Oh.

When I wrote in an earlier column (Sun, Aug. 13, 2007) the hassles I encounter at the betting windows as a low-rolling, independent bettor trying to place a wager in Las Vegas — a situation that persists — some bettors empathized, and suspected part of my problem was the way I look.

Sports books are less likely to accept a bet, they said, from a middle-aged white guy wearing the de facto sports bettor’s uniform of cargo pants, T-shirt, Asics and a baseball cap (bonus points are awarded if the cap bears the logo of a poker-related TV show or a casino in the Bahamas).

If that’s not absurd enough, they swore they had found a solution: Send a partner to the betting window with instructions on which bets to make, specifically a partner who’s young, female, attractive, Versace-clad and ethnic-looking. Those kind of partners, I was told, have a much greater rate of success getting their money down.

(Super Bowl prop: Will someone call or e-mail to berate me for giving away that “secret?” Yes, minus-380. No, plus-260.)

There are few “sure things” in Las Vegas, but here’s one: Some Las Vegas casino officials will soon embarrass themselves by posting “odds” on the Grammy Awards or the Oscars — without taking any money on them, as per state regulations.

(Granted, some media members will embarrass themselves by devoting print or air space to this abomination, but that’s another story for another day.)

Meanwhile, plenty of people outside (ahem) “Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the world” are actually risking and accepting money on these events.

“Some of these joints would do the same thing with sports if they could,” Schettler said. “Come in and watch the games, but don’t bet on them. Then go to the slot machines.”

So have fun celebrating the $100 million Super Bowl “milestone.” As long as Nevada remains in the business of not taking bets, as Schettler put it, we’re small-time. Ants marching.