Question of the Day - 06 June 2019

Now there’s a name we haven’t heard for a while. And yes, his standalone sports book did have to close suddenly, and under somewhat mysterious circumstances, officially anyway. 

Gary Austin was a self-proclaimed wiseguy who started making sports bets in his mid-20s while working as a sales rep, then manager, for Continental Can in southern California. He was, reportedly, so adept at statistics and sports that within two years, he was making his living as a sports bettor. After he was arrested in California for the crime of “placing a bet” with an illegal bookie, he moved to Las Vegas in 1977.

A year later, he won the first Castaways Pro Football Handicappers Championship, beating 55 other players who put up $1,000, by winning 62% of his picks. According to an online biography, the next season, “Dozens of gamblers walked into the Castaways each hour for two reasons: to get their NFL props and to see who Gary Austin had picked.”

With a salesman’s instinct for self-promotion, Austin took out full-page ads publicizing his win, then launched a tout service, the Austin Edge. He became so well-known that in 1980, Sports Illustrated wrote a long feature on him and he appeared on “The Today Show with Tom Brokaw.” He also had his own weekly show on ESPN in its first year of existence on which he handicapped NFL games.

A year later, he opened Gary Austin’s Sportsbook across the Strip from Caesars Palace.

No doubt the book had its ups and downs over the next few years, but the main action happened during the 1985 World Series. Apparently, Austin took a big position that the St. Louis Cardinals would win Game 6. They lost 2-1 in the ninth inning to the Kansas City Royals due to a bad call at first base and an error and Austin took a major beating.

A couple mornings later, sports bettors showed up at Austin’s book as usual, only to find a handwritten notice on the door, stating that due to an armed robbery the day before, the place was now permanently closed. All the winning tickets, plus more than $1 million in telephone-wagering accounts, were gone.

According to another online source, “No police report was ever filed about the [so-called robbery], no suspects were ever questioned, no one was ever arrested, and none of the 'stolen' money was ever recovered.”

Scotty Schettler, director of the Stardust sports book at the time, wrote in a 2015 story in Gaming Today, “It was impossible to find one living human who believed [the armed-robber story]. Everyone got stiffed except a few bettors with muscle behind them."

Last we heard, Austin was living in Costa Rica, where he’d surfaced to start up a number of offshore sports books.

So yes, we’d have to qualify our statement in the earlier QoD. Gary Austin’s Sportsbook is the exception that proves the rule.