Football point spreads get jump on season

By Ashley Fox

Inquirer Staff Writer

For years, Joe Lupo set the opening betting line on NFL games at the famed Stardust in Las Vegas. In the mid- to late 1990s, everyone in Vegas looked for Lupo's line. It was first, coming out every Sunday around 5:30 p.m. Pacific, and it was tough to know which way to bet.

But even Lupo admits that setting that line for the first week of the NFL season, with so many uncertainties and no statistical evidence of trends, is, at best, "a crapshoot."

"I'd tell the public not to bet the first week," said Lupo, the race and sports director at the Stardust from 1996 to 2003 and now the senior vice president of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.

Of course, the public will, and already has, bet on this first week of the season. The NFL is a monster business for Las Vegas and Nevada, the only state where sports betting is legal. Bettors wagered about $600 million on the NFL in Nevada in the last fiscal year, said Kenny White, chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sports Consultants Inc., which provides odds and point spreads to all of the major legal Las Vegas and international sports books.

The NFL accounted for about 15 percent of the roughly $350 billion bet legally on sports last year, White said.

While the New York Giants and Washington Redskins officially kicked off the 2008 season last night, bettors and oddsmakers have been focused on the season since the spring. On April 20, Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) put out the first suggested opening number for the opening week of the season based on an intricate power-ratings system. Compiled by six staff oddsmakers, the power rankings reflected key statistics from the 2007 season - scoring, average margin of victory, and points per game, among others - as well as free-agent acquisitions, trades, coaching changes, injuries, and player development.

From there, the sports book directors at the casinos - and there are only "half a dozen" of them left in Las Vegas because of casino consolidation, Lupo said - will then produce their own lines, which take into account their clientele's betting tendencies. The sports book directors might move the LVSC line a half-point in either direction, and in some cases one or two points, but their lines won't vary substantially.

"It's 50-60 percent statistics, 40 percent the oddsmaker's intuition and experience of how the customers will bet a game based on key point spreads," Lupo said.

The point spreads LVSC recommended in April had not moved significantly as of this week, White said. In April, LVSC had the Giants as 41/2-point favorites over the Redskins with an over-under of 401/2; earlier this week, the service had adjusted those numbers to have the Giants as four-point favorites with an over-under of 41. The over-under is an estimate of the total points scored in a game.

Similarly, in April, it suggested making the Eagles a seven-point favorite over St. Louis in their season-opening contest Sunday, with an over-under of 44. As of Wednesday, LVSC recommended a line of 71/2 and 441/2.

As of yesterday, Caesar's Palace had the Eagles as 71/2-point favorites with an over-under of 441/2. The Mirage had the Eagles as 71/2-point favorites with an over-under of 44.

For the casinos, the goal is to make the line attractive enough to entice gamblers to wager on games, but not so attractive that the bettors will win. In the casino business, the worst-case scenario is when all of the favorites, or all of the underdogs, cover in a given weekend.

"When we're building the line, we're trying to make the favorites as high as we can, but not too high where the pros will go crazy betting the underdog," White said.

While the casinos are out to make money, so, too, of course, are the gamblers. Adam Meyer is a professional sports analyst and handicapper who advises about 1,300 clients across the country, including, he said, some of the biggest bettors in the world. Meyer said he thinks it's "harder for the common gambler to win in the early going" because that person typically isn't well-versed enough in off-season transactions such as coordinator changes or injuries.

But, Meyer said, there is money to be made in the opening week of the season. One man's crapshoot can be another man's windfall.

"These lines are set on what people remember from last year," said Meyer, who runs adamwins.com. "If you really do your homework, you can make the most money before the oddsmakers catch up."

Contact staff writer Ashley Fox at 215-854-5064 or afox@phillynews.com.

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