Sports books took huge hit on 2012 NFL season?

Story here.

You guys who do this for a living, comments please.

I would think that there is nothing a bookie would like more than for people to think he lost money. Ain't no one need to know how it works; the less they know, the better. That's how I feel about what I do, and it just makes sense in this situation as well.

I read that earlier today. Thanks for posting.

I would tell my players they are killing me, and I may be forced to quit. I hope every bettor reads the LA Times story. One of these days, I will return, and it's best if everyone thinks I'm the sucker. Here's another story (more truthful, IMO)

http://www.wagerminds.com/blog/sports-books/no-sports-books-did-not-get-killed-during-the-nfl-season-7340/

deleted

My understanding is that the sports book pays for itself by balancing the betting action between the teams using point spreads so that roughly an equal amount of money (less their profit that they build in) is on each side of the game. If they set the point spread anywhere close from the beginning the sports book will make money regardless of which team wins. If they miss it by a little bit, they will still make money, but either not as much or a little bit more than expected. Worst case scenario, (if too many bettors are on one side vs. the other) they will change the lines to balance things out. The only way they would get "killed" is if they really didn't know what they were doing, which is not going to happen.
The way they can spot fixes on games is that if too may people know about the fix, and bet accordingly, the betting doesn't match the anticipated result and the lines keep changing drastically which is how they caught the guy at Arizona State? I think it was.

deleted

Quote: sodawater

This may have been true of the corner bookie at the bar, trying to balance action to make the vig, but it's not the way modern sportsbooks are run. The biggest books in Vegas are plenty fine with unbalanced action -- their philosophy is they are betting with an edge and the vig will take care of them in the long run. See several of Michael Konik's books for more on this.

Good call. That's the way it worked for me. I would rarely have balanced action. Some days I would have huge losses, but over time I would earn approx 6%-8% of the action booked.