AMERICA’S LINE AT 20:
ODDS ARE IT’S A GOOD BET
By DAVID SCOTT
It was nothing more than the age-old desire to “build a better mousetrap” that led Benjamin Lee Eckstein to conceive of a way to sprint to the front of the
rat race of competing oddsmaking lists that dominated the still developing sports betting landscaping nearly a quarter century ago.
“I was working at the New York Daily News, writing four or five days a week, handicapping and making selections on games,” recalled Eckstein, who now lives,
appropriately enough, in Las Vegas. “I looked at what was around and knew there could be a better product, one that not only listed the line but also
included an injury report and an explanation why some games were circled (indicating limited action) and others were off the board (no action).”
But for his dream to come alive, Eckstein needed an oddsmaker.
“It was then that I made the second best decision of my life, next to marrying my wife, Denise,” said Eckstein. “I contacted Roxy Roxborough.”
Roxborough, the founder of Las Vegas Sports Consultants, the oddsmaking company that would grow to represent 90 percent of Nevada’s licensed sports books,
didn’t know Eckstein from an X-ray.
“I had just checked into a hotel in Reno and called the office to get my messages,” remembered Roxborough. “One was to call a guy named Benjamin Eckstein.
When I called him back, we set the stage for a national column on odds, America’s Line.
“I was in Reno that week to get married in Virginia City. Not only was America’s Line the better decision, an odds-on shot actually, but it’s outlasted the
marriage by more than 15 years.”
Eckstein and Roxborough arranged a meeting at Los Angeles Airport in 1986. Interestingly, Eckstein was not only there with Denise, who he lost track of for a
while in the cavernous LAX terminal, but with his friend, Richard Brooks, who had won an Academy Award in 1960 for writing the screenplay for Elmer Gantry
and was nominated for an Oscar on six other occasions. It may have been the only time in his career that Brooks, who died in 1992, didn’t get the final word.
That belonged to Eckstein and Roxborough who agreed on a partnership that would develop into a friendship and a concept that would revolutionize the
oddsmaking industry by not just providing lines on the major sports of baseball, basketball, football and hockey, but tennis, golf, boxing and auto racing,
too.
Now, 20 years after America’s Line was syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, Eckstein’s idea for a better mousetrap appears in 130 newspapers across the
United States and Canada with a readership approaching 10,000,000 every day.
“The reason that America’s Line has flourished is that it’s an odds column created by guys who actually make the line, not somebody who tried to guess what
the line would be,” explained Roxborough.
Now living abroad, Roxborough has receded into semi-retirement, occasionally dipping his beak into the wagering and oddsmaking waters but, for the most part,
leaving the daily running of the company to Eckstein, who, in recent years, has expanded the operation well beyond sports.
“I noticed that there was a growing betting interest in non-traditional areas such as politics and reality TV and concluded that no one was better suited to
fill that niche than America’s Line,” explained the affable Eckstein.
To that end, Eckstein now can be spotted on the Colbert Report, TV business shows on MSNBC, CNN, et al, providing odds on who will win the presidential
election, or whether the austere Federal Reserve Board will raise, lower or leave unchanged the prime interest rate. His odds on which candidate will be
elected President of the United States in 2008 are widely quoted and, in addition to posting prices on which celebrity will would “Dancing With the Stars” or
who would be the lone “Survivor,” Eckstein was the only oddsmaker to correctly predict that Jordin Sparks would be the winner of last year’s “American Idol.”
No one can say with certainty where the next 20 years will take the sports betting industry but if the past is any indication, America’s Line will be at the
forefront of any changes and innovations.
You can bet on it.
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