New York Bookies Ponder Their Future on Eve of Legalized Sports Gambling

A recent Supreme Court ruling that legalized sports gambling in the United States is about to unleash a stampede of established and upstart enterprises angling for your wager — from racetracks to casinos to apps on your mobile phone.

So how will that affect your local bookie? We asked several around town and the consensus reply was, "Not much." This story is about why those bookies believe that their profession, today practiced in places ranging from your local bodega to offices off-shore, will weather the coming disruption.

State after state, starting with New Jersey, is likely to pass legislation allowing the kind of sports betting that had previously been limited to Nevada. But bookies say they will continue to offer crucial services to serious gamblers that the legal operations won't be able to match, such as up-front loans and transactions that leave no official record.

"You can't walk into a betting office and say, 'I want to bet a thousand dollars,' and have no money," a former bookie told us. "But you can pick a phone and call the bookmaker and bet a thousand dollars, no problem."

There's also the issue of the taxes that states are expecting to collect on the soon-to-be-expanding industry, and how bookies expect that more than a few of their customers would rather not pay them.

UPDATE: This fundamental shift to the economy of sports gambling is raising further questions. Will the incentive to fix games increase? Will bookies soon face a harsh crackdown by the police? Will the proposal by sports leagues to collect an "integrity fee" crash the bottom line of legal betting houses? Hear reporter Jim O'Grady and host Jami Floyd discuss those issues here: