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David Purdum, ESPN Staff WriterOct 17, 2024, 08:52 AM ET
- Joined ESPN in 2014
- Journalist covering gambling industry since 2008
New York gamblers bet more than $2 billion with the state’s sportsbooks in October 2023. They’ll have even more at stake this October, a month jammed with New York sports storylines. The Knicks are viewed as legitimate contenders entering the NBA season that tips off next week; the Rangers and Islanders are off to solid starts in the NHL, and the Jets and New York Giants are, well, trying hard.
But the Big Apple’s betting eye is focused on baseball, where the Mets and Yankees are each in the league championship series for the first time in over two decades.
The Mets transformed from long shots to legitimate contenders over the summer and received betting support along the way. They were around 150-1 to win the World Series in early June, but became a popular bet in the second half of the season. Johnny Avello, sportsbook director for DraftKings, said the Mets are now the book’s worst outcome if they were to win the World Series.
Even so, the Mets remain second fiddle to the Yankees, New York’s favorite team to bet.
More money has been bet on the Yankees this season than any other team in any sport, both in New York and nationally, according to multiple sportsbooks. Baseball’s 162-game schedule is the biggest reason — otherwise, the Giants and Jets could qualify as the most popular teams to bet for New Yorkers — but when it comes to the amount of overall money risked, the Yankees rule. Veteran bookmakers say it’s been that way for a long time.
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“It kills me to say, but New York is a Yankee town,” Tom, a pseudonym for a former New York City bookmaker and Mets fan, told ESPN.
Before the internet in the 70s and 80s, New York City bookmakers operated out of rental properties, such as a spare room in a home in the Bronx or an apartment in Queens. They avoided Suffolk, Nassau and New Jersey, the jurisdictions with the toughest gambling penalties. Manhattan was prime real estate, where getting pinched for booking bets may only result in a $500 fine.
“Judges would be dealing with a murder, a drug lord and then see a betting case next,” Tom recalled. “You’d be out within the day.”
The bookies of those days sought landlords willing to look the other way and not ask questions about why the phones were always ringing. Almost all bets were placed over the phone, although some vintage coffee shops did take action over the counter, writing wagers on three-layer carbon-copy paper and putting the betting slip on a tray alongside a cup of cappuccino.
Bookmaking in New York City has evolved dramatically over the past three years since the state’s legal online betting market launched. Now, roughly 90% of bets are placed online with licensed sportsbooks, some with offices on Park Avenue. While much has changed, one element of the NYC betting market hasn’t wavered: New Yorkers still bet the Yankees.
Tom, a native New Yorker who grew up a 40-minute walk from Shea Stadium, began booking bets in the city around 1988 and lasted a little over a decade before moving his operations to Central America.
“Yankee fans don’t give a s— about Mets fans. They don’t even think they exist,” he said. “But Mets fans hate the Yankees.”
Tom’s bookmaking career added fuel to his Yankee hatred because practically every day during the summer he’d find himself with a financial stake in their opponent. That wasn’t always the case with the Mets, he said.
“If the Vegas line was pick ’em on White Sox-Yankees, you were going to open the Yankees at minus-23 [-123],” he said. “Just because you weren’t going to write a White Sox bet.”
Today, betting support for the Yankees remains strong in New York and nationally. BetMGM said it has taken more than twice as many bets on the Yankees as the Mets this season from customers in New York. The Dodgers have attracted more bets than the Mets in New York.
But in the playoffs, the hometown support for the Mets is in full swing. The Mets attracted nearly 88% of the money wagered on Game 2 of the NLCS at ESPN BET in New York. Nationwide, the Mets had around 53% of the money wagered on the game with ESPN BET.
The final numbers on Game 3 at DraftKings also reflected hometown support for the Mets. Approximately 72% of the money bet on the game’s winner with DraftKings in New York was on the Mets, compared to more of a 50/50 divide nationwide. The Dodgers won Game 3 8-0.
Betting action often varies from one sportsbook to the next, but it’s typically heavy on the Yankees and almost always light on the Brooklyn Nets. Caesars Sportsbook broke down the betting by game and said the Giants, Jets, Buffalo Bills and Knicks were more popular with bettors than the Yankees and Mets with its New York customers.
Pikkit, an app that allows bettors to sync up their sportsbook accounts and archive their bets, tracked more than $48 million in money-line bets on the Yankees this season, the most of any team and nearly double the amount bet on the Mets. Last year, more money was bet on the Yankees with DraftKings in New York than any team in any sport. The Knicks were second, followed by the Mets and New York Rangers.
“When the Yankees are going well, we’ll most likely need their opponent every night,” Avello, a New York native and longtime Las Vegas bookmaker, said. “They say, ‘Don’t bet with your heart,’ but we all do.”
