Friday, September 10, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

LVSC's reputation on the line

Company's role setting odds under scrutiny

By MATT YOUMANS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Ken White of Las Vegas Sports Consultants has spent 20 years in the sports gaming industry. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

A few days before the football season kicks off in earnest, with a full schedule of college and NFL games, Ken White crunches numbers in his corner office at Las Vegas Sports Consultants. He will put in more than 100 hours this week.

White, 41, has spent 20 years in the business. He's been a bettor, sports book manager and oddsmaker, and admits it's a tough trade from every angle.

Last November, he went in with four partners to purchase LVSC, which supplies betting information and odds to more than 90 percent of the sports books in Nevada.

While most people work to get to the weekend, Saturday and Sunday are White's most hectic days.

"The thing about making odds is there's not a lot of time," he said.

But in the sports gaming industry, this is a crucial time. Several sports book directors are concerned about state licensing laws that they say have restricted their resources and given LVSC a near-monopoly on oddsmaking.

Nobody is under the gun more than Stardust sports book director Bob Scucci, who posts Nevada's opening football betting numbers at 7 p.m. every Sunday.

If Scucci doesn't post the best line possible, professional bettors become circling sharks ready for a feeding frenzy. Most books in the state react to how the Stardust lines move.

"The Stardust does a service to everybody. That's really the critical number," said Mirage sports book director Robert Walker, who worked at the Stardust from 1990 to 1996. "We're all concerned about the opening number. We don't want to see numbers move. Whoever puts out the opening line needs the best information."

Scucci and Walker said it's too much to ask one entity, that being LVSC, to always provide the most accurate lines.

"They give an opinion. They're not going to be right on every game and we know that. Ultimately, it's up to us to get the line right," Scucci said.

"That's the crux of the issue. We're restricted to getting our information and our odds from one source. From our perspective, the more oddsmakers we have, the better chance of getting the line right."

• • •

Only in Las Vegas could a high school baseball coach be an oddsmaker at the same time and have nobody raise an eyebrow. White coached at Bishop Gorman for nine years. He was the head coach from 2000 to 2003, his teams winning 102 games and making three state tournament appearances.

"It was never brought up one time I was there. If kids asked, it was pushed aside or ignored or never talked about," said White, a married father of four.

He was making odds for the Stardust all the while through his company, Nevada Sports Executives. He has been an odds consultant to several books for 15 years.

A former minor league baseball player, White was making NBA odds for the Santa Anita sports book on the Strip at age 21. His father, Pete, a professional bettor in Las Vegas since 1969, started teaching him how to work numbers at age 12.

He was the Fremont sports book manager in downtown Las Vegas in the late 1980s when he decided to go into business on his own.

"My first raise was going to be $1,000 after the book made $1 million, so I knew there was more money to be made outside of the book. I was putting in 60 to 80 hours a week to make that book profitable," he said.

White and Walker have known each other since that time, and Walker has employed White in the past as an outside odds consultant.

"I really do have a lot of respect for Ken," Walker said. "But I do have my reservations about the current environment. Ideally, we would have several consultants. One number cannot be all things to all people. One line cannot win."

• • •

The current environment in oddsmaking, which Walker said is "kind of a controversial issue," was implemented in 1999 when the state Legislature passed a law prohibiting sports books from paying outside oddsmakers who are not licensed.

There are currently two licensed oddsmakers in Nevada, LVSC and Eugene Bounantony, also a paid consultant to LVSC.

Keith Cofer, the Gaming Control Board's chief of enforcement, said anyone applying for a license is subject to an investigation. Beyond that, the fee to get licensed might be $100,000. It could be more or less, depending on the applicant, Cofer said.

"Where's the incentive for someone to get licensed? It's not that lucrative of a field for them becoming an oddsmaker," Scucci said. "If someone doesn't want to get licensed, they can be the best oddsmaker in the world, but we can't pay for their lines."

Scucci said he and his assistant manager, Doug Castaneda, make the majority of the Stardust's lines. They reference some Internet sites that offer free power ratings. But the only odds service they pay for is LVSC.

"We're not necessarily getting the best information. We're getting it from the only licensed place," Scucci said.

That alone makes a necessity out of LVSC, which is used by every sports book in Las Vegas with the exception of Coast Casinos.

"I do a lot of work on the Internet and do a lot of research to open up what I feel like is the best number for our properties and run with it," Gold Coast sports book director Bert Osborne said. "I would rather have control if I'm the one who has to answer for it."

White, who has a team of seven oddsmakers, said he recognizes the need for improvement in LVSC's service and is in the process of updating the technology.

White bought LVSC from CBS Sportsline, which through a deal with the NCAA agreed to cut its ties to sports gambling. In the years prior to White taking over, LVSC lost several quality oddsmakers and fell behind the technological advancements that many professional bettors use to beat the odds.

LVSC was established by respected oddsmaker Michael Roxborough, who has since left Las Vegas.

"I've been here for nine months now and I feel like I've accomplished about one-twentieth of what I want to accomplish," White said. "We've got five years to make up for."

• • •

The challenge in football oddsmaking lies mostly in the colleges, where there are more games and a wider range of opinions. That's where sports book directors feel most vulnerable, and they can't rely on offshore books to post reliable lines.

"The pros are fairly generic and very tough to beat. College is difficult to handicap and you rely more on handicappers and consultants," Walker said. "It can be problematic."

Four LVSC oddsmakers who make college lines had a disparity of 5 1/2 points when they made an opening line on Saturday's Michigan-Notre Dame game. One oddsmaker made the line 6 1/2 in favor of Michigan, and White had the highest line at 11 1/2. LVSC sent out 10, and it has been bet up to 13 1/2 points.

"I feel like we put up a good number. I feel like the public is on the wrong side of the game, and to get them on the wrong side of a college game is tough to do," White said.

"That's a game that could move around, too. The professionals see the line going up and they're thinking, I'll wait and let it go and it might get to 14. If it gets to 14, I'm hitting it. Now, all of a sudden, it's at 11. Notre Dame-Michigan should be great two-way action. My 11 1/2 is good because I think it will come back to that.

"We're the first number out and that's always going to be our goal. We're putting out a good starting point."

Walker said he thinks White will eventually turn LVSC into a more successful oddsmaking source.

"They want us to respect their line. It's going to take a long time, and we want to see what they can do and we're rooting for them," Walker said. "There is no way LVSC failing would be a good thing for this industry."