Photographs by Dreamstime
"Your team. Our Turf.”
That’s what the marquee outside Gold Strike Casino in Tunica said on opening day of legalized sports betting in Mississippi in August. That sports betting will be a big hit in the football-crazed Mid-South is a gimme. That it will be confined to anyone’s particular turf is doubtful.
The odds are that sports betting will spread to all eight Tunica casinos plus the dog track in West Memphis, which is half an hour closer to Memphis and where dog-track customers are familiar with the intricacies of sports betting. Once that happens, probably by late fall, there will be pressure to expand to smartphone betting, eliminating the need to go to anyone’s turf.
The history of gambling in the South can be summarized in three words: more, expansion, and faster. In 1990, Mississippi legislators thought there would be one or two casinos on the river at Tunica. Within five years there were nine of them, all but one of them on barges at the end of canals away from the river. Farm roads became four-lane highways. Cotton fields became 1,000-room hotels, golf courses, and parking lots. The slot machine crank and the bucket of coins became an anachronism, replaced by a plastic card and a button. An airport that served crop-dusters was transformed by federal funds into one capable of serving jets.
Trying to understand sports betting without doing it is like trying to understand food without tasting it.
Long before Facebook and Russian hackers, casinos refined “player tracking” into a very profitable art form. Easy come, easy go. Harrah’s Tunica, the biggest and most expensive casino, closed and was demolished in 2014, leaving three hotels empty and its golf course overgrown and literally gone to seed. The roads between casinos are deserted, the airport terminal empty, with most of the eight remaining players consolidated. The big new thing is sports betting. Legal only in Nevada and New Jersey until 2018, it can now be legalized in any state, with Mississippi at the front of the line.
Trying to understand sports betting without doing it is like trying to understand food without tasting it. A loyal follower of the Tunica story since its inception, I drove to Gold Strike on August 2nd to place my bets. “You need an edge,” a savvy gambler friend told me, but I was clueless about most of the teams, players, and terminology. The place wasn’t busy, and a friendly cashier gave me a crash course in the basics.
I bet $10 on the Chicago Bears to win that night’s NFL preseason opener against the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens were favored by 2.5 points but I took the Bears straight up in what was going to be a meaningless game involving rookies who would soon be cut, giving the underdogs an edge. I could have also bet on the first team to score eight points, the first player to score a touchdown, the longest field goal, and various other exotica, but I had no edge.
I stood to win $21.50, including my ten bucks. Getting the hang of it, I put another $10 on the University of Memphis football team to win the conference championship, a tall order since the conference includes Central Florida, unbeaten last season. But the Tigers, remember, scored 55 points against them and shoulda won. My edge! At 9-5 odds, I could win $28 (including my original $10).
“Take a picture of your ticket in case you lose it,” the cashier told me as I crammed the ticket into my wallet where it is certain to be lost in the next four months.
A sports future bet such as this is a good way to develop serious fandom as well as a gambling habit. The odds are always changing and the possibilities are virtually infinite. The Grizzlies are 400-1 to take the NBA title, Tennessee is 250-1 to win the national championship in football, and the Titans are 40-1 to win the Super Bowl.
Make a bet and you are likely to remain at least mildly interested as the season progresses and will perhaps tune into a game or two on television, which is the whole point, of course. The Bears, by the way, lost by a point, beating the spread but losing my $10.
