Everyone is crazy about the Knights ... except the Vegas sports books
Like nearly everyone in his adopted hometown, Jay Kornegay has been swept up in the stunning success of the National Hockey League’s Vegas Golden Knights. The phenomenon is unprecedented in the four major sports, an expansion team winning its division, and topping that with last week’s first-round sweep of the Los Angeles Kings.
“I grew up in Denver during the Broncos’ Orange Crush wave, when everyone wore orange in the 1970s ... this is beyond that. Everywhere you look, you see Knights stickers, T-shirts, jerseys, hats . ... I’ve never seen that before in this city,” said Kornegay, who was among the first to submit a deposit for season tickets before the team was formed.
There’s a hitch, however, for Kornegay. He’s the race and sports director for the Westgate Superbook, which is confronting serious liability thanks to the Golden Knights’ amazing run that continues this week with the start of the team’s Western Conference semifinal series against the San Jose Sharks.
Not only is the Superbook on the hook for bets it accepted after opening the Golden Knights as the NHL’s greatest pre-season long-shot at 300 to 1 when it first posted future odds to win the Stanley Cup, but also Kornegay and staff increased the odds to 500 to 1 as a means to encourage action that was lacking.
MGM Resorts, which also lines the Strip with sports books from Mandalay Bay to the Mirage, also took bets on the Golden Knights at 500 to 1, said Jay Rood, its race and sports book director.
“I just looked at this today — and it’s the first time I did — and we have 13 bets on the Knights at 500 to 1. Small dollars, we call them ‘grocery dollars’; the biggest was $20,” Kornegay said.
That “grocery” money has the potential to transform to $10,000 — enough for a down payment on a local home — should the Knights produce a Cup-hoisting accomplishment for the ages.
Early in the season, Kornegay watched his team win its first two road games, then improve to 3-0, so he sliced the odds to 300 to 1. Two small bets came in.
Then, as the Golden Knights began to capture the city’s attention and provide a distraction from the horrific mass shooting at a country music festival, the Superbook moved the odds to 200 to 1. That’s when the fans started biting, and the book accepted 57 bets, igniting a new wave of daily betting on a sport that has long stood as the least popular wager among the major sports, behind college football and basketball and less, on a game-versus-fight basis, than boxing and the UFC.
Betting during Golden Knights “home games has jumped up quite a bit, and the overall awareness of the tourist on hockey is way up,” Rood said.
The Golden Knights’ odds to win the Cup are now listed at 9 to 2. The team stands as the third favourite, behind the Eastern Conference favourite Tampa Bay Lightning and Western Conference favourite Nashville Predators, who are at 4 to 1.
Last week, Station Casinos offered its loyalty reward “Boarding Pass” club members a randomly selected free bet ranging from $5 to $250 (at 4 to 1 odds) on the Golden Knights to win the Stanley Cup, as an incentive to swipe their loyalty card at a Station location by Monday.
The greatest future-book longshot to win a championship was soccer’s Leicester City of the English Premier League at 5,000 to 1, “but no one bet them with me,” Kornegay said, recalling big financial hits suffered when replacement quarterback Kurt Warner led the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl win in 2000 and a 500-to-1 NASCAR driver won a race a few years ago. He also sweated out NCAA basketball losses by massive underdogs Virginia Commonwealth and George Mason.
The business of hockey betting has boomed like never before at the sports books along the Strip, with estimates that the books have seen a 35 per cent increase in hockey wagers this season thanks to the excitement over the Golden Knights increasing local knowledge of the game.
Many of Kornegay’s colleagues have taken to rooting against the Knights.
“If you talk to some of the guys ... they maintain their ties to their teams from Pittsburgh or New York, and they’re saying, ‘We’ve got to knock the Golden Knights out,’ ” Kornegay said.
“My boss, who’s from Pittsburgh, says, ‘No worries, they’ve got to get through the Penguins, anyway . ... ’ ” Kornegay added.
“For me, it’s like, well, if my team wins, they win. But if they don’t, at least we saved ourselves at the book.”