Stream It or Skip It: ‘Action’ on Showtime, a Docuseries About the Growing Industry of Legal Sports Gambling

Let’s face facts: Sports gambling is a massive industry, whether it’s legal or not. Hundreds of billions of dollars are bet every year, so it seemed inevitable that legal sports gambling would expand beyond Nevada. And last year, the Supreme Court made it possible for any state to legalize sports gambling. The new Showtime docuseries Action takes a look at who gambles, and how this industry is set to explode. Read on for more…

ACTION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of Super Bowl LIII, where the Patriots faced off vs. the Rams, intercut with scenes of people making bets at various casino sports books.

The Gist: 2018 was a huge year in the sports gambling industry. Last year, the Supreme Court struck down a law that said that sports gambling could only be done legally in Nevada. This let every state consider whether they’d allow legal sports gambling, and New Jersey, which brought up the case to strike down the law a decade ago, quickly passed a law legalizing sports betting. Within two weeks, sports books were open in Atlantic City, Monmouth Racetrack and the Meadowlands racetrack.

Action examines the world of sports gambling, which is massive business; $400-500 billion (yes, with a “b”) is bet on sports of all kinds every year, most of which is done illegally through bookies. But with the Supreme Court ruling, the percentage that’s legal should rise exponentially, supporting both the states that make it legal and allowing casinos, racetracks and betting houses to offer their sports books to a much wider audience. Director Luke Korem starts with Week 1 of the 2018 NFL season.

In the first episode, we follow along three professionals in this field: Bill “Krack” Krackomberger, a low-key guy who is a professional gambler and approaches it like a business; Dave “Vegas Dave” Oancea, who claims he wins 75% of his bets and offers his betting tips to online followers; and Kelly Stewart, one of the few female handicappers in Vegas, who is starting to be taken seriously by the old-school touts in town, and has ambitions to do her handicapping on big TV networks like ESPN. Also interviewed are gambling experts like Jimmy Vaccaro, Cousin Sal from Jimmy Kimmel Live and broadcaster Brent Mussburger, who left ESPN a few years ago to talk handicapping on the fast-growing VSiN Network.

Our Take: We’re not huge gamblers, but the idea of point spreads, money lines, over/unders and parlays has fascinated us for decades, so watching the action in Action is fascinating to us.

It’s one thing when professional gamblers like Krackomberger approach things in as professional a manner as possible, taking stacks of Benjamins to various casinos and examining spreadsheets to find under-wagered games. But it’s another thing when you see amateur gamblers dropping what might be money to pay their rent or put food on the table on these games, not nearly as systematic about things as the professionals are, living and dying with each snap of the football. It really points out how gambling hits a person’s pleasure centers so hard, making them cheer for teams they never cared about just because they have a few hundred dollars on the game.

Oancea intrigues us because he’s making claims about his winnings that no professional gambler believes — even the best win maybe 56% of their bets on a good year, and he seems as arrogant as hell about it. But then you see him go from his TV-laden bachelor pad to his parents’ house on Sundays, because, as his mother says, “he’s lonesome.” He also drives in his Bentley down the Strip saying how much he hates Vegas, despite his nickname.

But what intrigues us more is how the four-part docuseries is going to examine two factors that might affect how in-person sports books will do business: apps and bookies. Apps aren’t addressed at all in the first episode, but illegal bookies are, and its interesting that legalization may not hurt them all that much.

Sex and Skin: Not much, except early scenes of Stewart in cut-off jerseys and short-shorts when she was starting her career picking football games.

Parting Shot: A bookie, whose identity is obscured, ominously says that he’s not scared at all about legalization, due to the convenience factor. However, that may have been before the various betting apps got up and running.

Sleeper Star: We hope Stewart gets the national exposure as a tout; it might show other women in the field that they don’t all have to be sideline reporters or hosts, and can be the experts people turn to for advice. She knows her stuff.

Most Pilot-y Line: Amateur gambler Todd Wishnev cursing out the Jets. Isn’t saying “Fuckin’ Jets” kinda low-hanging fruit?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Action is definitely on the side of legalization, and the picture of the sports betting industry at this crossroads is fascinating.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Where to stream Action