Boomer’s Sportsbook is now the only independently owned sportsbook in Nevada after it was approved by state regulators to launch its retail and online operations on August 1st of this year.
Hey Boomers
Nevada’s newest sportsbook will be run by industry veterans like Joe Asher, formerly an executive with William Hill US and IGT; Nick Bogdanovich, an SBC Sports Betting Hall of Fame inductee, who will be the head of trading; Dave Grolman, serving as senior vice president of sportsbook and customer support operations; and A.G. Burnett, former chair of the GCB and current gaming attorney with the McDonald Carano law firm, who is now Boomer’s chief of compliance.
It is a who’s who of gaming industry veterans, and despite their advanced ages in what has become a young, technocratic game, the name of the sportsbook is not a wink and a nod to the “boomer generation,” when bookmaking was as much art as science, but rather named after a dog who was named after a racehorse.
“We are putting the band back together with some new pieces, like the Eagles at the Sphere,” Asher said, referring to the legendary rock band. “The old guys are teaming up with younger folks.”
The launch is scheduled to occur on August 1st, but it is the three retail facilities that appear to be the focal point of the company, and not the online app. Those brick-and-mortar sportsbooks will be located at the Commercial Casino in Elko, Ellis Island in Las Vegas, and Casino Valle Verde in Henderson.
Asher Says Bookmaking Should Be State-Regulated
Joe Asher is a man with many friends in the gaming world, and he knew exactly what to say to the Nevada Gaming Commission before they approved his license. And it is not as though he was being disingenuous, because he understood gambling from a young age and wasn’t shy about telling his story to the Commission.
“As a rule, I am of the view that any form of gambling should be regulated,” Asher told the Commission. “I come to that position because of a lifetime being around gambling. My father introduced me to gambling at a very early age, and he had a gambling problem. He was a compulsive gambler, and it caused great damage in his life.”
Kalshi and other derivative future trading platforms have slowly crept into the gambling game without licenses from state agencies, as they are governed federally by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and are therefore allowed to operate in all 50 states.
This has sparked the ire of sportsbooks and regulators, but early court victories have been won by Kalshi, which allows them to sell sports contracts that operate similarly to sportsbooks’ lines and odds.
“My old friend (attorney) Ted Olson, when he was trying to come up with arguments as to why PASPA was an unconstitutional statute, it seems like everybody was asleep and sports betting was legal all along under the auspices of the CFTC,” Asher said. “That doesn’t make much sense to me. I’m always in favor of gambling being something that’s regulated and at the state level, which is historically the practice, unless Congress makes a clear and explicit decision otherwise.”
