William Hill is buying all sportsbook assets of Cantor Gaming

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11-21-2019, 12:40 AM
Dan Druff

William Hill is buying all sportsbook assets of Cantor Gaming

Just as the title says, English gaming giant William Hill is buying all of the sportsbook assets of CG Technology, also known as Cantor Gaming.

This means that the books at Cosmopolitan, Venetian/Palazzo, Tropicana LV, Palms, and Silverton will all become William Hill locations.

William Hill already ran over 100 sportsbooks within Nevada. Additionally, they own at least one sportsbook in every state where sportsbetting is legal.

When Eldorado Gaming's purchase of Caesars is finalized in 2020, those books will also become William Hill locations.

There are only five independent sportsbooks left in Las Vegas: Wynn/Encore, Westgate, Treasure Island, South Point, and Golden Nugget. All other books are owned or managed by a group which manages several books around Nevada. This makes it more difficult to find alternate lines and prices on games.

CG Technologies has had a rough time of things in Vegas, having been disciplined by the Nevada Gaming Control Board three times. They were threatened with license revocation as recently as last year. They have paid $10M in total fines across those three instances.

Article: https://www.legalsportsreport.com/36...y-acquisition/

Press release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...gy-Sports-Book
11-21-2019, 12:53 AM
kewlJ

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan Druff

There are only five independent sportsbooks left in Las Vegas: Wynn/Encore, Westgate, Treasure Island, South Point, and Golden Nugget. All other books are owned or managed by a group which manages several books around Nevada. This makes it more difficult to find alternate lines and prices on games.

Didn't the sportsbooks at The D and Golden Gate cease being WH earlier this year and are in-house, Pre-Circa operation which would make them independent as well?
11-21-2019, 02:04 AM
redietz

Quote:

Originally Posted by kewlJ

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan Druff

There are only five independent sportsbooks left in Las Vegas: Wynn/Encore, Westgate, Treasure Island, South Point, and Golden Nugget. All other books are owned or managed by a group which manages several books around Nevada. This makes it more difficult to find alternate lines and prices on games.

Didn't the sportsbooks at The D and Golden Gate cease being WH earlier this year and are in-house, Pre-Circa operation which would make them independent as well?

Fewer books are never better, so that's an issue. At one point in time, Cantor had quite liberal numbers regarding futures and such, but after they were flagged for their parlay cheating and other abuses, they seemed to tighten those up considerably. I have only a limited subjective sense of this, but they also seemed to pull their regular numbers into more of a vanilla range with fewer outliers.

Another interesting element, from my perspective, is that William Hill initially (in LV) offered quite liberal futures, then pulled them way back into a limited vanilla range, but then seemed to re-liberalize about two/three years ago, perhaps (who knows?) in response to Cantor's problems.

To kewlJ's comment/question, I think Dan was lumping the Circa umbrella as a non-independent because it is one book providing numbers for multiple locations. I assume The D and Golden Gate numbers are currently identical, so they would be considered Circa umbrella. I'm almost (99%) certain they would not generate their own property numbers in the interim before "being Circa" that would differ from each other. Properties no longer have staff who know what they're doing in that regard.

FYI: We check this annually, and the Treasure Island numbers are really not helpful in general. They are the soul of middle-of-the-bell-curve. And Wynn, since their sports book manager left, has also become numbers-conservative. In fact, we have not had Treasure Island on our check list for awhile, and Wynn we go to out of a sense of duty and history these days, not because we expect to find anything helpful. Besides, Wynn occasionally mistakes us for police and gives us free passes to their clubs and lounges. We park Car 54 and say, "Thank you."
11-21-2019, 02:29 AM
AxelWolf

From the standpoint of a customer that should be considered a monopoly and the illegal.
11-21-2019, 06:55 AM
redietz

Quote:

Originally Posted by AxelWolf

From the standpoint of a customer that should be considered a monopoly and the illegal.

It's a simple franchise-in-the-casino arrangement with the franchise sharing profits or paying for floor space and splitting profits. Yes, the consolidation of numbers is never a good thing.

The fact is, and Axelwolf, you probably know this, the sports books -- 40 years ago or more (I was there) -- had much wider varieties of numbers. You could walk up and down Fremont Street on a Monday or Tuesday and fire middles and move numbers even if you were a 1K to 2K player. The sports books back then:

1) Were not as connected in real time with what everyone else's numbers were. No internet checking of everyone else
2) Were at one time, I believe, legally constrained to not move numbers for no reason. They had to actually get money on a side to move a number. And the books themselves preferred it that way, rather than simply moving numbers because everyone else was moving them or a few places were getting whacked on one side.
11-21-2019, 08:45 AM
regnis

Redietz--I'm getting a little "woodie" just from typing this:

1. Churchill Downs
2. Little Caesars
3. The Rose Bowl
4. Santa Anita Race and Sports
5. The old downtown places who's names I don't even remember.
5. Stardust

And of course, the Barbary Coast was great for horses.
11-21-2019, 10:25 AM
JSTAT

Quote:

Originally Posted by regnis

Redietz--I'm getting a little "woodie" just from typing this:

1. Churchill Downs
2. Little Caesars
3. The Rose Bowl
4. Santa Anita Race and Sports
5. The old downtown places who's names I don't even remember.
5. Stardust

And of course, the Barbary Coast was great for horses.

Let's not forget "Leroy's Sports Palace" in Downtown Las Vegas back in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fPJUg5nbzg
11-21-2019, 12:49 PM
redietz

Gentlemen, there you go. Great places. The old McCusker Reports, which tallied handicapper records and published annual results, were written by former Seattle Times reporter, Mike McCusker. If you released your plays Friday, he used a Friday 3 PM line out of Leroy's against which to grade handicappers, because he believed most of the public didn't really shop and didn't bet until Friday/Saturday. I remember Leroy's well.

And regnis, Little Caesar's with the rocket car parked out front was great. It was one of the few places in town that took Ivy League football bets. I saw guys lugging paper bags full of money in there. Little Caesar's took massive wagers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when the Strat owner wanted to bet the 49ers for a million one Super Bowl, didn't he place at least half the bet at Little Caesar's?

Those places were real. People knew what they talking about, both the places and the clients were willing to gamble, and there was a vibe to them.
11-21-2019, 01:29 PM
regnis

I used to drag my girlfriend at that time with me to all of those places. She was never real comfortable--they creeped her out. I always claimed (and tried to convince her) that those places were safer than walking the halls of the fancy hotels. She wound up wanting to go to Little Caesars every time we were there.

Was a sad day when they all closed up.

I remember the wager (Stupak??).
11-21-2019, 01:44 PM
AxelWolf

Quote:

Originally Posted by redietz

Quote:

Originally Posted by AxelWolf

From the standpoint of a customer that should be considered a monopoly and the illegal.

It's a simple franchise-in-the-casino arrangement with the franchise sharing profits or paying for floor space and splitting profits. Yes, the consolidation of numbers is never a good thing.

The fact is, and Axelwolf, you probably know this, the sports books -- 40 years ago or more (I was there) -- had much wider varieties of numbers. You could walk up and down Fremont Street on a Monday or Tuesday and fire middles and move numbers even if you were a 1K to 2K player. The sports books back then:

1) Were not as connected in real time with what everyone else's numbers were. No internet checking of everyone else
2) Were at one time, I believe, legally constrained to not move numbers for no reason. They had to actually get money on a side to move a number. And the books themselves preferred it that way, rather than simply moving numbers because everyone else was moving them or a few places were getting whacked on one side.

But when one door closes another one opens. Guys got filthy rich via sports betting online, especially with all the big bonuses. And now there seems to be more people than ever making money from sports betting online.
11-21-2019, 03:47 PM
redietz

Quote:

Originally Posted by AxelWolf

Quote:

Originally Posted by redietz

Quote:

Originally Posted by AxelWolf

From the standpoint of a customer that should be considered a monopoly and the illegal.

It's a simple franchise-in-the-casino arrangement with the franchise sharing profits or paying for floor space and splitting profits. Yes, the consolidation of numbers is never a good thing.

The fact is, and Axelwolf, you probably know this, the sports books -- 40 years ago or more (I was there) -- had much wider varieties of numbers. You could walk up and down Fremont Street on a Monday or Tuesday and fire middles and move numbers even if you were a 1K to 2K player. The sports books back then:

1) Were not as connected in real time with what everyone else's numbers were. No internet checking of everyone else
2) Were at one time, I believe, legally constrained to not move numbers for no reason. They had to actually get money on a side to move a number. And the books themselves preferred it that way, rather than simply moving numbers because everyone else was moving them or a few places were getting whacked on one side.

But when one door closes another one opens. Guys got filthy rich via sports betting online, especially with all the big bonuses. And now there seems to be more people than ever making money from sports betting online.

Yeah, it's a shame almost all of them own the books.

Axel, you were begging for that. I don't know from whence you have acquired that perspective, but God bless you. Really, long term, in this country, my best guesstimate is a couple hundred at most and likely around a hundred individuals or teams. Now occasionally you run into something like the Chinese programmers who strafed college hoop totals a couple of years ago and whose plays leaked, but that kind of effectiveness usually lasts a season or two. In general, it is not a skill one can learn or acquire like blackjack. Now that there are more algorithm-based sub-bets like quarters and halves, there can be holes...but those holes close rather quickly. More importantly, the limits for those kinds of vulnerable bets are usually small, no more than $500 a pop. Nobody getting rich that way.