Gambling frenzy pumps up
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Sports Illustrated
Sports media outlets are already gearing up to reap a big boon in advertising and readers following the US Supreme Court decision to drop the ban on sports gambling. The largely illegal $170 billion-a-year industry will likely draw additional government scrutiny as states decide how to open the door.
Houlihan Lokey, the company that has been shopping the Sports Illustrated title for Meredith, had been telling prospective suitors for weeks that it could bring huge upside once the gambling ban was lifted.
Sources close to the situation tell Media Ink there were more than 50 parties that submitted a bid for Sports Illustrated by the May 11 deadline — a mere three days before the landmark Supreme Court case Christie vs. NCAA.
The SI suitors range from billionaires to media companies and a handful of private equity players — with bids said to be in the $200 million range, according to a source close to the situation.
SI insiders said the publication anticipated the lifting of the ban several months ago, when it launched a weekly betting show called “The Line” on SI TV hosted by Todd Fuhrman.
ESPN, which despite cord-cutting still bills itself as the Worldwide Leader in sports, was taking a cautious approach. “It is a bit early, but we are actively monitoring it,” said a spokeswoman.
Most realize that the lifting of the ban is also likely to draw government regulators similar to the Advertising Standards Authority in Britain, which has allowed sports gambling advertising across all media since 2007 but closely monitors them.
Back in 2006, The Sporting News, at the time owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, was fined $7.2 million by the Justice Department for running ads for offshore gambling, which ran afoul of federal laws. Esquire magazine also had to drop offshore gambling ads from Bodog in 2005.
The fantasy sports websites DraftKings and FanDuel drew the ire of New York regulatorsbefore getting an all clear from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, which agreed they were a game of skill — not gambling.
Peter Chernin’s group has also been gearing up for months. In September, it lured former ESPN executive Chad Millman — editorial director of ESPN.com and ESPN: The Magazine — to head up its Action Network, which is a combination of three acquired companies all prepared to reap gains from sports betting. They include Mark Cuban-backed FantasyLabs, Sports Insights and SportsAction.
The Action Network sells access to sports data and analytics on video, podcasts and articles — aimed at people who play fantasy sports or gamble on sports.
The granddaddy of publications, Sporting News, was sold by the Newhouse family’s Advance Publications to Britain’s Premier Group 10 years ago. Premier CEO Ross MacEacharn expects to reap gains in the US — but with lots of government oversight.
“For betting operators and rights holders, it presents a unique opportunity to build an efficient, properly regulated betting market from the ground up and design a model for what 21st-century betting should be,” he said.
But there are still plenty of critics who think widespread sports betting will open the door to great problems for society.
“For college students and teens, sports gambling in real time on smartphones and computers is as addictive as crack cocaine,” according to John W. Kindt, a professor emeritus of business administration at the University of Illinois and a frequent critic of sports gambling.
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