This question was asked of the last winter Olympics and the answer was the same: The Las Vegas sports books do not set lines on any Olympic events. The reasons haven’t changed, so we’ve reprinted the February 2006 answer below. But we also placed a call to Jay Kornegay of the Las Vegas Hilton Superbook, who had more to add.
Kornegay recalls making lines on various winter Olympic events back in the '90s when it was still legal, and he remembers how difficult and time-consuming it was. While it was possible to get rankings for the various athletes involved in a downhill skiing event, for example, it wasn't possible for sports books in Vegas to get the kind of critical information they do for a domestic football game — things like details about who might be injured or who had been scratched.
Plus, aside from hockey in the winter games and basketball in the summer, the U.S. market just wasn't interested in wagering on track & field or showjumping. Kornegay dubbed the Olympics a "watchable, but not a bettable, event." As explained below, one of the principal reasons that wagering on the Olympics remains illegal is the ongoing lack of demand for legalizing it.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t bet the Olympics. Several of the offshore books make lines, just as they do for reality shows, political races, and other subjects that are taboo in Nevada’s regulated sports books.
Following is the QoD from 2/27/06.
Q: Are any of the Las Vegas sports books taking any action on the winter Olympics?
A: The short answer is no. For the long answer, which required a fair amount of research into why it’s not allowed, read on.
First off, we called a couple of major sports books in town, both of which confirmed that they do not and cannot accept any wagers on the Olympics, due to state regulations.
One claimed that the reason behind this is that the outcome of many of the events is decided by the voting of judges (with the implication that bribery and corruption could occur, as it has in past Olympics), while the other explained that it was because the Olympic Games consist of amateur events, and wagering on those is prohibited by law.
We then called the Gaming Control Board (GCB). Our contact there pointed out that boxing is also judged by panels of judges, and yet professional fights are legally bet on in Nevada. So the amateur aspect applies in this instance: Betting on the Olympics is prohibited by Nevada Gaming Control Board Regulation 22.120, which states, "No wagers may be accepted or paid by any book on any amateur non-collegiate sport or athletic event" (among other things).
Following pressure from the industry and the public, Regulation 22.120 was revisited in 2000. It legalized betting on Nevada collegiate teams and on college sporting and athletic events* in the state of Nevada. These were previously disallowed, which led to uncertain circumstances in which would-be wagerers couldn’t place futures bets on the outcome of sporting events that included local teams, for fear that Nevada would remain in the running and the bet would be void. When the UNLV Rebels basketball team was at the height of its success, there was a lot of interest in their games. The books were keen to cash in on the public's desire to bet on the local team, so the legal anomaly was amended.
At the same time, however, a powerful political faction** opposed sports betting and lobbied forcefully for a ban on wagering on all college teams. Hence, although Regulation 22.120 was relaxed in one respect, the opportunity was taken to emphasize that wagering on other amateur sports – specifically high-school and Olympic events – was illegal. The International Olympic Committee was openly opposed to betting on the Games and the specific mention of Olympic and high-school events may have been a salve to the anti-gaming lobby by reinforcing that anything involving minors or other amateur events was a definite gambling no-no.
However,
