![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A quaint country
Dec. 29th, 2005 10:30 amIf you want to irritate a Frenchman, just say how poor their restaurants are compared to those in the UK. Similarly, if you want to put an American on the backfoot, discuss how you like the extent to which the country is quaint and old-fashioned. So entrenched is it in the American psyche that they are a pioneering frontier nation, that any reference to their "quaint" customs generates reactions ranging from bemusement to hostility.
One area where the US is downright old-fashioned is in gambling. Never mind the varying state laws, some of which seem to date back to before 1776, being drafted at about the same time as it was considered worthwhile making sodomy a capital offence and outlawing marriage to a sheep. Of greater interest are its sportsbook and fixed odds systems. Way back in the dark ages, the UK had only one way in which you could bet on football — the pools. If my memory serves me correctly, you could get "fixed odds" on predicting things like nine homes. The odds offered were fairly miserly, not least because the tax on pools betting was little short of criminal.
Anyway, times move on, and football betting in the UK is now about as sophisticated as it gets. Spread betting, over/unders, betting in running, and more.
Compare this with what is available in your standard sportsbook in the US for the NFL/AFC punter. Here they still have a system of fixed odds. Pick a certain number of games, get them all correct, and you get paid a fixed sum. You may be ahead of me here, but it doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out that the odds offered (which, because of the intense conservatism of the US gambler and the competition in the sector) only favour the bookmaker if there is a sufficient degree of uncertainty relating to the football results. This in turn dictates a need for the NFL/AFC leagues to remain competitive.
Unfortunately, for the bookies, the leagues haven't been quite so competitive this year. There was talk of this at the poker tables in Las Vegas, where a number of the more sophisticated punters were saying that, with five or six "gimmees" each week, the bookies wer taking a hammering on these fixed odds accumulators.
And now BetOnSports PLC has said the same, warning that its profits will be impacted. The favourites keep rolling home.
The solution, for the bookies, is to offer a more sophisticated product (such as that used by UK bookies, where you have to pick one result from each section to get the "guaranteed" odds — themselves subject to change). But America is not that sophisticated a nation. It likes its old-fashioned ways. And, in that sense, it's quite quaint and attractive.
One area where the US is downright old-fashioned is in gambling. Never mind the varying state laws, some of which seem to date back to before 1776, being drafted at about the same time as it was considered worthwhile making sodomy a capital offence and outlawing marriage to a sheep. Of greater interest are its sportsbook and fixed odds systems. Way back in the dark ages, the UK had only one way in which you could bet on football — the pools. If my memory serves me correctly, you could get "fixed odds" on predicting things like nine homes. The odds offered were fairly miserly, not least because the tax on pools betting was little short of criminal.
Anyway, times move on, and football betting in the UK is now about as sophisticated as it gets. Spread betting, over/unders, betting in running, and more.
Compare this with what is available in your standard sportsbook in the US for the NFL/AFC punter. Here they still have a system of fixed odds. Pick a certain number of games, get them all correct, and you get paid a fixed sum. You may be ahead of me here, but it doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out that the odds offered (which, because of the intense conservatism of the US gambler and the competition in the sector) only favour the bookmaker if there is a sufficient degree of uncertainty relating to the football results. This in turn dictates a need for the NFL/AFC leagues to remain competitive.
Unfortunately, for the bookies, the leagues haven't been quite so competitive this year. There was talk of this at the poker tables in Las Vegas, where a number of the more sophisticated punters were saying that, with five or six "gimmees" each week, the bookies wer taking a hammering on these fixed odds accumulators.
And now BetOnSports PLC has said the same, warning that its profits will be impacted. The favourites keep rolling home.
The solution, for the bookies, is to offer a more sophisticated product (such as that used by UK bookies, where you have to pick one result from each section to get the "guaranteed" odds — themselves subject to change). But America is not that sophisticated a nation. It likes its old-fashioned ways. And, in that sense, it's quite quaint and attractive.
