Sam Panayotovich
FOX Sports Betting Analyst
When the prehistoric Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was finally struck down in May 2018, it paved the way for legalized sports betting across America as we know it today.
Sure, you could bet on games and events like the NFL Draft in Nevada before the Supreme Court’s ruling, but you couldn’t log into your mobile betting app and wager from your couch in Illinois or New York or Pennsylvania.
Sportsbooks started launching left and right and all those books fought for customers. Man, I miss the days when a sportsbook would offer you a $1,000 “risk-free” bet just for signing up. Some offers were bigger.
Those were the days.
Sportsbooks also found themselves competing in the realm of creativity. Shops like BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings and FanDuel decided it was better to have more markets to entice customers to wet their beaks.
The more options, the more action.
This made the 2019 NFL Draft a damn free-for-all.
It was the first time you could bet on the draft outside Nevada, and I vividly remember stories of bettors driving or flying to different states to whack mispriced markets. Draft position totals were posted in early March, some places posted head-to-head matchups, and long shots were plentiful along the way.
Problem is, bettors were getting sound information before the sportsbooks and blasting sharp wagers at decent limits. In those days, you could see a player go from Under 13.5 -115 to Under 13.5 -600 on a random Tuesday.
The books took a bath in 2019 on things like T.J. Hockenson going exactly eighth overall and Dexter Lawrence falling outside the top 10.
You just knew it couldn’t last forever.
Longtime Las Vegas bookmaker Chris Andrews shut down NFL Draft betting a couple of years ago as head honcho at the South Point. He offered draft markets for years but got sick and tired of seeing red on the spreadsheet.
I’m sure deep down he misses booking it.
“Oh my God, no,” Andrews told FOX Sports over the phone. “It was never what we should’ve been doing as bookmakers. There’s always somebody that knows what a team is going to do in the draft. There’s always a leak somewhere. And if the leak gets to the right wise guys, you’re dead.”
Fascinating, isn’t it?
“It’s also not a contest,” Andrews continued. “It’s not a game between the Phillies and the Mets, and you’re handicapping which team you think is better that day. The draft has nothing to do with that. It’s all about who gets the information first and people that got it before we did won every year.
“There was nothing I could do about it.”
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Draft markets are few and far between in Vegas. South Point and Golden Nugget didn’t offer any menus, the Westgate offered one-day, $500 limits for six hours this past Tuesday and Circa booked $300 limits for a week.
It’s clear the headaches just weren’t worth it.
“Several years ago, we went up with a prop on how many linebackers would go in the first round,” Andrews recalled. “We put up [O/U] 3.5. Three linebackers ended up going, but one of the big offshore outfits paid out four by mistake.
“A couple guys came to me and said they had Over 3.5 and this book paid Over so we should do the right thing, too. We went off NFL.com, which said it was only three linebackers. It’s not our job to pay a player out because somebody else made a mistake. That’s not how this racket works.
“We paid all the Under 3.5 winners and that was that.”
The old adage says all good things come to an end. That certainly feels accurate considering we can no longer pick apart draft markets for six to eight weeks and take money from bookmakers who have no means of defense.
Draft betting as we once knew it is dead.
“It wasn’t worth the time and energy,” Andrews said. “We’re not gonna win, and I’m gonna wind up pissing off my players no matter what happens.”
“I’ll watch the draft on TV, but I’ll sleep like a baby.”
Sam Panayotovich is a sports betting analyst for FOX Sports and the BetMGM Network. He previously worked for WGN Radio, NBC Sports and VSiN. Follow him on Twitter @spshoot.
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