How the World’s Biggest Sportsbook Makes the Odds

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sports leagues, media outlets and more used to look down on betting as corrupting the supposed purity of athletics. But in 2018 the Supreme Court dealt a new hand, allowing all states to legalize betting. Now gambling is a fast-growing part of mainstream sports. Betting lines on games appear on ESPN’s own news ticker. Sports books are opening everywhere and phone-based apps keep evolving. But Las Vegas is still the nerve center of it all, and global sports correspondent Sam Borden takes us inside the Westgate sportsbook to see how the pros who make the odds find their perfect numbers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	ESPN Daily is presented by Supercuts, the smarter, easier way to get a haircut.
0:07.0	It's not just any haircut, it's super cuts.
0:10.0	So it's about 8 o'clock on an October Sunday morning in Las Vegas.
0:18.0	Most of the Westgate Casino is quiet. A few folks are sitting at slot machines.
0:25.3	A couple that looks like they're still wearing, they're going out, clothes is walking slowly
0:30.2	through this gaming floor. Sam Borden is a global sports correspondent for ESPN.
0:37.0	Maybe they were at the fight last night.
0:38.8	Maybe they saw Tyson Fury stop Deonté Wilder, and they're just getting back to their rooms.
0:43.6	They trudge past a bank of completely empty roulette tables on the way to the elevator.
0:50.9	Most of Vegas, it feels like, is still asleep, but in the back corner of the casino,
0:56.7	way past the empty blackjack felts and the craps pits
1:00.4	where there's nobody throwing any dice,
1:02.7	there's this unmistakable buzz.
1:06.8	It's the sportsbook.
1:11.3	There's a line at the counter.
1:13.7	Everyone's in jerseys, Bears jerseys, 49ers, cowboys,
1:18.0	and everybody is trying to get their money down on the games that are about to start.
1:24.8	It's places like this where the sports gambling industry began. It's places like this where the sports gambling industry began.
1:29.3	It's places like this that are the backbone of the industry right now.
1:34.3	And in this moment, it's places like this that are facing the challenge of adapting to a new age.
2:03.6	This new age of sports betting is a pretty dizzying time to be alive. For so long, the basic idea of gambling was a cardinal sin to every league and media partner, this dangerous corruption,
2:09.6	of supposed purity of athletic pursuit. But suddenly, everything has flipped. And gambling on sports isn't just legal now.
	...

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