Sports betting in NJ: So far, the mob offers better odds

ability to “cash out” of a bet mid-game. Fantastic stuff.

Too bad the odds are so terrible. The mob gives you better odds, and I’m not joking. For real: Your friendly neighborhood bookie — or your not-so-friendly neighborhood bookie, who for all you know might be part of some vast, illegal syndicate — is almost certainly offering better odds than the legal games here in New Jersey. Why is this? Well, there’s two reasons, if I had to guess. Reason #2 I’ll save for the end, but reason #1? Because of all the fish, all of us gamblers who have been itching to play legally and above-board, and not go to the local bookie, not go offshore.

In my (ahem) experience, the Vegas odds are the gold standard. As Vegas goes, so goes everyone else. Local bookies simply pluck what the Vegas odds are and roll with them. So in essence, you can expect the same odds, more or less, from the big Vegas sportsbooks as you can from Jimmy the Snake who operates out of Butchie’s Barber Shop, just ask for Karen and she’ll give you Louie’s phone number and he’ll connect you with Jimmy, he’s good people.

But the DraftKings odds? Um … not good. Here’s an example from Tuesday’s baseball action.

The Tampa Bay Rays play the Baltimore Orioles, and the Rays — in Vegas, at the time of this writing, about 7:30 a.m. — are -165 favorites, the Orioles are +155 underdogs. What does this mean? It means you’d have to bet $165 on the Rays to win $100, and you’d bet $100 on the Orioles to win $155. Understand? Good.

Welp, to bet that legally in New Jersey via the Draftkings app, you would have to wager $175 on the Rays to win that same $100, and your $100 bet on the Orioles would only net you $148.

“But we’re only talking about $10 or so,” you might say, which is exactly what the sportsbook is hoping you’d say, because that’s how they will make their money, $10 (or so) at a time.

Let’s break it down … in the Vegas model, if one person bets the Rays and the other the Orioles, the house makes no money. They took in $265 in action ($165 on the Rays, $100 on the Orioles), and are paying out $265 to the bettor who bet the Rays. If the Orioles win, the house took in the same $265, but is only paying out $255. So they make $10.

But in New Jersey ... if the Rays win, the house again breaks even. They took in $275 in bets, and pay out the same $275 (and you had to risk an additional $10). But if the Orioles win? They took in $275, but are only paying out $248, net profit of $27.

Long story short: The odds currently suck in New Jersey. FanDuel, the other major daily fantasy sports player, is behind the sportsbook at the Meadowlands, and they’ve been plagued with the same issues. The odds there went from “should be a crime” to “just pretty lousy” in the few weeks they’ve been open for business. (I should note that the week 1 NFL lines seem to be in line with tradition, at both the Meadowlands and the DraftKings app. The spreads are the same as Vegas, and the vig — what a gambler pays to play — is also the same. So that’s good. Maybe they realize the average fish is well-versed enough in traditional NFL action to not futz around with it.) So that’s reason #1. So what’s the second reason it’s possible the odds are so cruddy?

Because New Jersey wants their taste, much like Butchie the Barber gets a little sumpin-sumpin from Jimmy the Snake. Except New Jersey doesn’t just want to dip its beak into the profits; it wants to stick its whole head in there and tear it up.

Here’s a didja know: Nevada taxes sportsbooks 6.75 percent. New Jersey taxes brick and mortar sports books 8.5 percent, and taxes online sportsbooks 13 percent(!), once again proving the biggest racket going is the New Jersey state legislature.

In that sense, we’re all fish. Pucker up, suckers.