Jeff Edelstein, USBETS
Famed sports bettor Billy Walters sat down with Brent Musburger on VSiN Sunday to give his second-ever interview — his only previous one, according to Walters, appeared more than a decade ago on 60 Minutes.
And while the half-hour interview didn’t exactly yield any earth-shattering news, there was still plenty to chew on, as Walters and Musburger — along with longtime bookmaker Jimmy Vaccaro — touched on a variety of subjects. So with that in mind, here’s a half-dozen things we learned from Walters.
He almost became the house
Musburger asked Walters if he foresaw how huge sports betting was going to get, and Walters told a story that, if it had come to pass, would have certainly changed the trajectory of sports betting in America.
“In 1995, I reached an agreement to lease all the sportsbooks on the Las Vegas strip from MGM Mirage and the Mandalay Bay group,” Walters said. “There was a chain of events that took place that prevented that from happening. I was majorly disappointed, frankly, because I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of what the opportunity is there.”
Billy Walters, bookmaker. It almost happened, apparently.
Book forthcoming
Walters didn’t expand on the details of the deal outlined above that never came to fruition, but it will undoubtedly be a topic in the book he’s writing about his life (co-authored by Armen Keteyian). Titled Chicken or Feathers, Walters promised Musburger it will contain “everything I’ve learned about gambling and sports betting.”
Considering Walters has been gambling nearly 65 years, the book should give War and Peace a run in terms of page count.
Rest is here…
