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.