Seahawks sink sports books
By Micah Roberts
VegasInsider.com
The 13th week of the NFL season was laid out perfectly for the Las Vegas sports books to end their losing ways, but for the sixth time in seven weeks they found themselves break even or in the red to continue one of the worst NFL stretches the books have ever seen as favorites ended up going 9-4 against the spread. Yes, it's been a very joyful holiday season for bettors.
The NFL has been one of the most reliable sources of income for sports books over the years because the spreads are so sound, usually. It rests with each and every football player being professional with the worst teams never being as bad as their record and the rising spreads on good teams catching up with them.
Baseball is the most volatile of any sport and when July comes around with it being the only major sport in action, the books hold their breath with hopes of going unscathed until NFL preseason begins in August which lessens the interest in MLB betting. The NBA is up and down as is college basketball until March Madness starts which generally produces the most consistent win of all the months.
But as a whole, the four months of the NFL regular season is very consistent and it's a major part of the casinos making budget or not in the final quarter and year. The sports book is only a few percentage points of overall casino win, but as the bean-counters tally up all the expected win from table games and slots, the unpredictable books can come to the rescue with strong NFL win to save the day with a few extra million in win. That little bit of extra win offered by the books is sometimes the difference between the entire executive committee making annual bonuses or not.
So everyone from the within the bonus structure of a hotel and casino has a rooting interest for the books to do well and eagerly look for those big six-figure wins from the wild card of the sports books on Monday morning's flash report reviewing revenues gained Sunday. There's a ton of pressure for the books to do well from all levels of the casino.
Week 14 had all the ingredients for the books to do well. They started Thursday off with a win when the Cowboys (-3) didn't cover in a 17-15 win at Minnesota. The lowly Browns were in a bye week and the two other ugly teams -- Chicago and San Francisco -- were playing each other. The popular Patriots (-13) were also large enough favorites to make its regular bettors shy away. And unlike last week, there weren't a whole slew of game hovering around 7 to make teasers heavily bet.
But the bettors managed to find other teams to support and over the long haul of the day, they managed to come out ahead again.
"We basically traded wins and losses all day," said MGM Resorts VP of race and sports Jay Rood. " The Packers and Denver were our biggest losses and we didn't have a win close to those losses.
"And Denver was the worst. We had a lot of big money-line parlays tied into them."
It didn't matter to bettors that the Broncos were playing without starting QB Trevor Siemian, they were betting against the 2-9 Jaguars and they were correct with Denver's 20-10 win. The Broncos became even more attractive on the odds board for bettors when the number dropped from -5 to -3.5 with Paxton Lynch starting.
The Packers (-6.5) had come up with a big Monday night win in Week 12 after a four game losing streak and when bettors saw Brock Osweiler and the Texans playing on the road in snowy conditions, they opened their arms up again to the popular Packers in their wagering equation and got paid in Green Bay's 21-13 win.
Most books had beat out enough parlays from the eight morning games on the day to go into the afternoon's four games with a profit. There was mixed play in three of the late games, but one giant game of risk that almost everyone seemed to be riding.
"We had a nice cushion early," said Westgate SuperBook VP Jay Kornegay," then going into the afternoon we we're big Bills fans and that didn't work out so well. We gave back some of the morning win back. We went 3-1 in the afternoon but the Raiders loss was our biggest of the day,"
The Raiders (-3) once again showed how resilient they are coming back from a 24-9 third-quarter deficit to win 38-24 over the Bills, which at 10-2 now technically gives them the No. 1 seed in the AFC. The last time Oakland won at least 10 games was in 2002, the last time they made the playoffs. They also went to the Super Bowl.
After grinding out the first 12 games on the day, the sports book losing streak rested on the shoulders on the Panthers at Seattle in the Sunday night game.
"We need Carolina to cover (+8.5) to be a tiny winner on the day," said Station Casinos sports book director Jason McCormick before kickoff.
The confidence level of the books took a quick turn south when seeing back-up QB Derek Anderson start the game for Carolina because Cam Newton defied the team dress code by not wearing a tie to the stadium. Coach Ron Rivera benched him for the first series for the infraction which lasted one play ending in an Anderson interception and leading to a 3-0 Seahawks lead. Seattle went on to roll in a 40-7 wipe out and put salt in the books wound by kicking a field goal with 3:38 remaining to go Over the total of 44.5. It was the worst possible scenario of the four combinations for the books.
It's back to the drawing board for the weary books in Week 14 and the Browns are back in play with a visit from the Bengals (-4.5) who finally came out of their in Week 13 shell with and impressive offensive showing against the Eagles.