Managing the action: sports bookmakers as entrepreneurs

Abstract

More and more states have moved to legalize various forms of gambling as a viable way to raise substantial revenues. And while some have considered adding sports betting to their menu of games, Nevada continues to be the only state where placing a bet on sports events is legal. This is both puzzling and ironic considering the popularity of gambling and the prominence of sports. Despite the lack of concrete knowledge about illegal sports betting, two justifications for keeping it illegal have dominated the public debate. The first has to do with whether legal sports betting could successfully compete with illegal operations were it to be legalized and the second has to do with a purported link between gambling on sports and organized crime. This paper focuses on the second line of argument and examines the social, organizational, and occupational features of bookmaking. If bookmakers are conduits for organized crime, as is claimed, there should be evidence of this in the day-to-day activities of bookmaking and in the career trajectories of bookmakers. The analysis is based upon interviews with 47 sports bookmakers working in the Rust Belt region. Drawing upon what sports bookies themselves have to say about their experiences in the business and their career trajectories, there appears to be little merit to the organized crime link argument. The analysis suggests that unlike other types of deviance, the social organization of bookmaking insulates bookies from the more typical consequences associated with frequent and prolonged deviant activity, for example, getting arrested, being prosecuted, serving time in prison, and forced association with other criminals. In fact, the findings suggest that bookies are more like entrepreneurs than criminals. While a single study cannot resolve the normative question about whether sports bookmaking should be criminalized, the findings do show that the social construction of bookmaking and bookmakers found in the public debate and popular culture does not reflect the reality of sports bookmaking.