Oddsmakers don't miss business of booking NFL Draft: 'I’ll sleep like a baby'

When the prehistoric Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was finally struck down in May 2018, it paved the way for legalized sports betting across America as we know it today.  

Sure, you could bet on games and events like the NFL Draft in Nevada before the Supreme Court’s ruling, but you couldn’t log into your mobile betting app and wager from your couch in Illinois or New York or Pennsylvania.

Sportsbooks started launching left and right and all those books fought for customers. Man, I miss the days when a sportsbook would offer you a $1,000 "risk-free" bet just for signing up. Some offers were bigger.

Those were the days.

Sportsbooks also found themselves competing in the realm of creativity. Shops like BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings and FanDuel decided it was better to have more markets to entice customers to wet their beaks. 

The more options, the more action.

This made the 2019 NFL Draft a damn free-for-all.

It was the first time you could bet on the draft outside Nevada, and I vividly remember stories of bettors driving or flying to different states to whack mispriced markets. Draft position totals were posted in early March, some places posted head-to-head matchups, and long shots were plentiful along the way.  

Problem is, bettors were getting sound information before the sportsbooks and blasting sharp wagers at decent limits. In those days, you could see a player go from Under 13.5 -115 to Under 13.5 -600 on a random Tuesday.  

The books took a bath in 2019 on things like T.J. Hockenson going exactly eighth overall and Dexter Lawrence falling outside the top 10.

You just knew it couldn’t last forever.

Longtime Las Vegas bookmaker Chris Andrews shut down NFL Draft betting a couple of years ago as