On the eve of the most contentious U.S. presidential election in memory, Hillary Clinton has emerged as the bookies’ favorite. But as one veteran Las Vegas odds maker is quick to remind us, it ain’t over till it’s over.
Jimmy Vaccaro, who runs the sports book at the South Point Casino on the Strip, has Clinton at 6-to-1 to win. Not that puts much stock in polls.
“That doesn’t mean Trump can’t win,” the 71-year-old dean of Vegas layers told Bloomberg. “I’ve seen a million six-to-one shots. In betting, nothing is absolute.”
The other thing about Vaccaro’s odds, the big thing?they’re for “entertainment purposes only”?Nevada law prohibits its sports books from accepting real money wagers on elections.
Which to Vaccaro, among others, is blatantly unfair since the action would likely outstrip even the Super Bowl.
“Nobody cares who’s going to be the next king of Spain or the next king of Peru,” he complained. “We’re the only country in the world where everybody’s watching the election very closely. In England, it’s probably the second biggest book after their Premier League games.”
Veteran odds maker Jay Kornegay, a vice president at the Westgate Las Vegas Superbook, said, “It would be the most popular wager we’d accept.”
Paddy Power, the Dublin-based betting giant, has an agent in the U.S. whose job is to follow every twist and turn of the election and report back home so they can adjust the odds.
Paddy Power’s odds are 5-to-1 on Clinton and 1-to-4 on Trump.
London-based Betfair, the world’s leading betting exchange, said its market on the contest is trading at more than £1 million a day. Betfair expects to rake in more than £100 million in wagers when all is said and done.
“Political markets tend to see a huge spike in activity in the week building up to the event so this market will easily break the £100 million market,” said Barry Orr, head of media relations for Betfair. “The peripheral markets such as the individual state voting markets are also picking up in popularity, with Iowa, Florida and Ohio of particular interest to punters.”
Betfair’s customers had Clinton trading at 1.21 last week, which translates to an 82 percent chance of winning, but that was shifting rapidly. The lion’s share of the late money was moving decidedly toward Trump, and Democrats were faltering in the key swing states of Florida, Iowa and Ohio.
Michael Green, a historian at the University of Nevada, told Bloomberg he has been unable to discover the origins of Nevada’s ban on political betting. “Few people think of Nevada as hypocritical, but it can be,” he said. “We are the only state that allows prostitution, but we don’t allow political betting.”
