Are You An Entertainment Expense Guy?

I was sent an outstanding article today from Sunday’s LA Times (here) that profiled how the sportsbooks in Las Vegas casinos have been coping with the economic crisis. In addition to being a great insight into the business of being a professional sportsbook in Las Vegas, the article has plenty of relevance to the products we’re developing at Bet Smart Media.

Jay Rood, sportsbook director for MGM/Mirage (largest sportsbook in Vegas, and where I do most of my sports betting when there!) said: “Sports is sort of like an escape. It’s like a movie but better. You get to watch for three hours and you can bet $50 and get free cocktails. You might even win $50, more if you parlay it.”

Interesting. So, he is basically selling Las Vegas’ largest casino-operated sportsbook to the “entertainment expense” crowd. These folks are sports bettors that like to rationalize sports betting as nothing more than an entertainment expense. These types of bettors are common, and if that’s you, we mean no offense at all! You guys are hugely important to sportsbooks, and to be honest, you guys are the ones they depend on to make their money.

Because you are so quick to justify your betting as an “entertainment expense”, you are doomed to lose. Period. By definition, treating betting as an entertainment expense means that you are approaching your bet with the expectation that you will lose your money. Of course, you’ll win your bet some of the time, but over the long-term, it’s going to be a losing proposition to you. To continue with Jay Rood’s movie analogy, when you enter a theater and prepare to sit down to a 2 hour film, you do so with the expectation that you will leave 2 hours later without the money you used to get in. That’s a pretty standard transaction in our culture- an exchange of money for a good or a service.

So then, is it any wonder that the sportsbook director – the guy who is assigned the sole task of squeezing every last dime out of his customers – is trying to appeal to YOU, the “entertainment expense” guys? Here’s how he thinks: “Let’s target the guy that has already mentally conceded his money to me before even setting foot on casino property. He is dead money, and he’s already had the conversation with himself that he’s okay with that. And if for some reason the guy has some lingering hurt feelings about losing his money over the course of the day and night on Sunday, gently remind him that he was pumped him full of as many Keystone Lights as he could drink for free for the entire 9 hours of football on Sunday. Tell him it’s an entertainment expense. He can’t argue with that logic.”

And you buy that.

Look, some people will lose, that’s a fact. After all, it’s called gambling for a reason. But they don’t need to lose so much, and the guys that win can win a lot more. You don’t have  to be a professional handicapper or some sort of math whiz, but a couple very simple strategies can make you a much more disciplined and intelligent bettor, somebody who is less likely to fall for the obvious traps that sportsbooks set. And when you get to that point, you shed the label of “entertainment expense” guy. You now become somebody that the house has to account for when they set their public odds, and guys like Jay Rood and the other folks at the MGM need to show a little more respect to.

You have a lot of options these days. You don’t need to spend your day watching your football inside a dirty, smokey casino sportsbook anymore. People have huge HD televisions at home now, and they can place their wagers safely, securely, and legally over the Internet. You can be a guy that sportsbooks fear, and you don’t even need to visit them in-person to do it, which makes it a lot harder for them to cloud your better judgment with glitz and gimmicks.

The tools that we’re working on in the lab at Bet Smart Media is going to give EVERYBODY the opportunity to shed the “entertainment expense” label, with an extremely easy-to-use program that will automate the simple betting strategies for you. We’ve got your back- stay tuned.