9 minute read
Events
from SBC Leaders Issue 21
by SBC Global
ADDING SOME PITTSBURGH STEEL TO NEVADA’S SPORTSBOOKS
PERHAPS IT WAS ALWAYS CHRIS ANDREWS’ DESTINY
to become a bookmaker; after all it was in his blood. However, while his career choice may have been a racing certainty, there was nothing inevitable about the 40-year journey that has brought him to his current position as Sportsbook Director at the South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa in Las Vegas and a place in the Sports Betting Hall of Fame
BY MARTYN ELLIOTT
During that time, Andrews has been involved in some hugely successful businesses, launched his own company, worked with some of sports betting’s legendary names and seen huge changes as the industry evolved from a local Nevada enterprise into a success story across more than 30 states.
His interest in the world of sports
betting started in his teenage years, when he would travel to Las Vegas with his uncle, the celebrated handicapper ‘Pittsburgh’ Jack Franzi. It was during those trips that his industry education began, as he met people like Bob Martin, the man once described as the ‘Babe Ruth of Oddsmaking’, and casino owner Michael Gaughan.
By the time he graduated from
Robert Morris University, the route from his native Forest Hills, Pennsylvania to Vegas was a familiar one. He travelled it again to take a job as a ticket writer at the Stardust in 1979, before moving to the Barbary Coast the following year to work under the guidance of Gaughan, his Uncle Jack and fellow Hall of Famer Jimmy Vaccaro.
A combination of access to all their industry experience and being given lots of authority at such an early stage of his working life meant that Andrews’ year at the Barbary Coast was time very well spent.
“One of the things that really helped my career tremendously is the authority that Michael gave me,” he said. “And learning under Jimmy Vaccaro and learning under my Uncle Jack was really like a masters or a doctorate programme. Someone could be at an Ivy League university and not get the education I got in this particular business.
“I ran the swing shift as a supervisor. Now back in those days the industry was much much different. We didn't have computers and everything was handled by the supervisor. At the end of the night, I had to grade all the tickets, enter them on a ledger by hand, and arrive at the bottom line on a nightly basis. There was just me to do that.
“Now, that's way too much power to give to just one person. The state changed the regulations later so one person couldn't do that, but at the time, Michael certainly trusted me to do it. It was just a tremendous experience for me to learn that much about the business with hands-on experience.”
Gaughan played another key
role in Andrews’ career, when he recommended the then 25-year-old to Warren Nelson, one of the owners of Club Cal Neva in Reno. Nelson believed sports betting was about to enter a boom phase and wanted someone to build his sportsbook into a major player.
“Warren hired me on the spot and became a big supporter of mine. I spent the next 22 years at Cal Neva and eventually became one of the owners, having helped to grow the business tremendously,” explained Andrews.
“When I first started there, we had two windows in the sportsbook, three windows in the racebook and a cashier, that was the entire operation. By the time I left, we’d grown that into over 28 satellite locations throughout the state and we were one of the biggest sportsbooks in Nevada. Matter of fact, I know we were the biggest at handling parlay cards, which was really a big part of our business.”
The role involved not only offering something that players enjoyed and delivering a healthy profit for the Cal Neva, but also providing a good product for the host casinos. It was a difficult balancing act at times, but Andrews credits an old school value for managing to achieve it.
“If I had to pick one key to that success, I would say common sense,” he said. “I see a lot of places out there that, to this day, just don't use common sense. I don't think I'm anything brilliant or a genius or anything like that, but I think I do have good common sense, certainly within the constructs of this business. I always laugh that I don't know much else in life, but I do know this business fairly well.”
After leaving Cal Neva, Andrews had spells with the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, at Hall of Famer Vic Salerno’s American Wagering, with William Hill and even a brief stint in the world of high finance. Eventually he launched his own business, Against The Number, and was happily running that in 2016, when Gaughan approached him with
an offer he couldn’t refuse: he moved to the South Point for what he hopes will be his final job.
If it is, it would conclude a career that has spawned two books - Then One Day…My 40 Years Of Bookmaking in Nevada and the pandemic-era Then One Year…History’s Craziest Year As Seen By A Las Vegas Bookmaker - and seen Andrews in demand from broadcasters and podcasters keen to mine his expertise as sports betting underwent major changes and grew into a mainstream entertainment product.
One of the biggest changes he has witnessed is the growth in the number of wagering options available and the selection of sports that players now want to bet on.
Andrews explained: “I remember walking into a sportsbook in about ‘77 and looking at the Steelers on the board. They were -7 and next to that was a 35. And I thought ‘what's that 35 mean?’ Well, that was the over and under points scored in the game, which was like a brand new thing. But now, of course, we have a total on virtually everything. That's just one little thing. We didn't have money lines back then, but now we have a money line on virtually everything. The whole myriad of betting options has grown.”
He added: “I remember back in 1984 I put up the Masters golf and had odds on every guy in the field. And this is God's honest truth, I wrote one $5 bet. And the golfer didn't even start, so I had to give the guy his $5 back.
“I put in a tonne of work trying to create an odds board for that and we got one bet. Now, of course, the Masters is just a huge betting opportunity for us, all the Majors are. Even on a weekly basis, we put up every PGA Tour event, not to mention NASCAR, tennis, soccer and lots of other sports.
“When I first started at Cal Neva, I was responsible for and put up virtually every single number that was on our board. Well, that's impossible to do today. No one person can possibly do that, the market has grown way too big
It was the year the Patriots played the Eagles in the Super Bowl and for two weeks running up to the game, Michael Gaughan and (South Point’s General Manager) Ryan Growney were calling me to ask who we were going to need in the Super Bowl.
I kept saying, ‘we’re going to need the Eagles, as they’re all betting the Patriots’, but in the last 12 hours or so before the game, the entire market changed. I guess the backing for New England was just exhausted, and money poured in on the Eagles.
We also had a bunch of proposition bets. And one thing industry compatriots like Roxy Roxborough and Vic Salerno would tell you about me is that I’m kind of a grinder, really a conservative bookmaker. So while we needed the Eagles for the game, I’d tried to balance that so we needed the Patriots for the proposition bets.
But all the money coming in on the Eagles in that last 12 hours meant we were in a position where we needed the Patriots for the game and for all the propositions. So Jimmy Vaccaro, another Hall of Famer, and I put our heads together and, in a mad scramble, moved all these propositions in the hope of getting some Eagles money and balancing the books a bit.
There’s only so much we can do though and by the time of kick-off, we were convinced we needed the Patriots. Of course, the Eagles beat them pretty soundly that day and when Ryan came in and asked how we’d done, I had to tell him ‘we’re stuck $200,000, but we haven’t put in the props yet’.
We had so many props that it took close to two hours to put them all in, and I’m sitting back here not even wanting to look as the guys put them in. Vinnie’s on pins and needles too, and eventually he says ‘I can’t take it, I've got to go get a beer’. I say, ‘I hear you, but a beer isn’t gooing to do it for me, give me a double Jameson, I’m sweating bad here’.
So we’re sitting in the office with the drinks when my crew tells me that it’s all in. Just as I’m bringing it up on the computer, Ryan walks in, looks at me and asks ‘well, did we pull out of it?’
I tell him ‘yeah’ and he asks ‘how did we do?’ I tell him four and he said, ‘oh we made 4,000’. I say, ‘no we made 400,000’.
It was incredible. Jimmy and I manoeuvring those props meant we went from being stuck $200,000 to winning $400,000 Little old South Point won about a third of the entire state’s win on that Super Bowl.
for that. You have to have a good crew, you have to have confidence in them.”
The other big difference from when he started is the introduction of mobile wagering. But despite its rapid growth, Andrews does not believe it will kill off retail sportsbooks. After all, South Point’s brick-and-mortar sportsbook has one much-loved experiential element that online will never be able to replicate.
He explained: “Guys like to get cash in their hands when they win. When you cash a ticket online, a number just changes in your account. When you come in here, you get the cash. Whether it’s a couple of thousand dollars, a couple of hundred or whatever, boy does it feel good to get that money and stick it in your pocket.” •
