LAS VEGAS - In an age where the “Cathedral Sportsbook” is becoming an ancient relic, Circa has quadrupled down and built its own Great Wall Of Sports Betting. 

Its three-story book in Northern Las Vegas offers 78 million pixels of viewing pleasure, in addition to the lines and limits that have landed Circa on everyone’s Top 10 must-bet places in Las Vegas, or anywhere else.

Derek Stevens runs Circa Sports, in addition to the hotel that houses the book and several other properties in Las Vegas and elsewhere.  Stevens is a delicious throwback. If they needed to cast a sports book operator in a remake of “Casino,” he is your guy. 

Before Stevens spoke as a keynoter at the annual G2E meeting here on Wednesday, he sat down with bookies.com and Steve Bittenbender of Gambling.Com to talk about Circa’s future here, and elsewhere. Here’s part of our conversation. Some answers have been edited for space and clarity. 

Sports Betting Loopholes And Industry Challenges

Bookies/GDC: There's been a huge push to advocate from the better's side of the equation. There’s been talk about the lack of “adult supervision” in the sports betting space. Do you think the broader industry needs adult supervision, and if so, what would you provide in that end? 

Stevens: We’ve got to have a solid foundation for the industry, and what I mean by that is right now I think there are a number of elements that create, create the uneven playing field, which creates very, I would say creates outcomes that may be less than desirable. As an example, I don't see why these sweepstakes guys are in business anymore. This is a loophole that should not exist. Let's be honest, they're just running illegal sportsbooks. There's nothing else to it, and they're running sportsbooks that you got every 9^th-grader who's playing high school football has his own Fliff account. I mean, it's absolutely promoting underage gambling. This is the loophole that sweepstakes guys are using. It’s ridiculous. Sweepstakes are 100 times the size of some of the items people are talking about in legislation. It’s not getting the publicity. 

Then you consider the guys that are theoretically running these fantasy pools. There is currently no legal sports betting in the state of California. There is currently no legal sports betting in the state of Texas. Well, by God, if anybody thinks PricePicks isn't running a sportsbook, I don't know what to tell them. If if it looks like a duck . . . I mean, they're running sportsbooks and they're not paying federal excise tax. That's the problem. 

The regulated legal sportsbooks are the ones paying all the taxes. We're the ones paying all the fees. Flutter and Fandel are going to pay over a $100 million into responsible gaming initiatives. That's not really fair to them. Not when you have PrizePicks and all these others out there. That makes no sense to me. And to think that we're worried about whether or not we should  post something on “Will a guy throw more than 1.5 interceptions?”  We are so far down the path of being irrelevant on that topic. 

Bookies/GDC: The issue of betting limits surfaced recently with the Mass Gaming Commission. Circa is very vocal and open about its limits. How did we get there in terms of players being limited online if they win a small bet versus you guys, who stand firm in terms of your limits or lack thereof?

Stevens: It’s important for all of us to realize that every sports book has its own business model to the good and to the bad. I'm not going to bad mouth anyone else's business model, and I'm not saying anyone's business model is right or wrong or better or worse. We run a low-hold business model that we think allows us to take high-limit action. We feel that we have a good amount of liquidity within the states where we're located. 

We can get buyback pretty quickly, albeit we might only be earning a penny to two pennies or something like that. FanDuel said 70% of their wagers are “same game parlays,” or 3-team parlays or more. Good for them, it's a different story. It costs a lot of money from an advertising and this compliance perspective, an IT perspective for them to do that, but it's a model that works that seems to be working for them. 

I don't know that anybody's being limited on their 3 to  5 to 18-team parlays. They're being limited on being able to get down $5,000, $10,000 on a side, or $5,000, $10,000 on a total. And I get it, if you're a professional gambler and you're getting limited everywhere, well, you're kind of out of business. I can understand there being a pretty significant complaint about it, but everyone's got different business models. 

Bookies/GDC: Do lines still originate out here or are they much more a product now of what online books are doing with their AI and their own Trading desks? 

Stevens: No one originates an NFL line anymore. NFL lines get posted effectively right after the scheduled release in May, and because there's a limited number of games, you have an early line on every single game. There's just not that many football games out there. So I think it's fair to say there's no originator in a very robust and solid market like NFL. When it comes to college football, (Circa Sports) originates those lines. Circus sports does. When it comes to college basketball, those numbers come from a little bit from all over the place, some offshore, some elsewhere. It's kind of sports-specific

Bookies/GDC: Massachusetts has several open licenses right now. Is that a consideration of expanding into the Commonwealth? 

Stevens: “We’re always evaluating different markets of jurisdictions, and we have to see how markets, jurisdictions, regulatory environments, they all evolve. They all change over time. So we're always evolving and watching and wanting to grow. So we will see how this plays.”

Bookies/GDC: The Circa Survivor pool is down to less than 250 people after starting with more than 14,000. What happened? 

Stevens: It is historically bad. There are a couple of historical things league-wise, too. Through Week 5, there has only been one double-digit favorite. (San Francisco’s win and cover over New England). There have been no other double-digit favorites in five weeks. That never happens in the NFL. You're going to see some teams now that are kind of proving that they're not good. They have some pretty severe injury problems, like the Dolphins for an example. You've got teams like the Raiders for an example, where their best players all want to get traded and leave. So you very well could have, let's just say two teams like the Dolphins and the Raiders that might be double-digit underdogs every game the rest of the season, which makes Circa Survivor far easier and far more palatable - once you got through.”