Odds Man Out: The Untold Story of How Professional Sports Crushed Betting's Online Pioneer

(Hardback)

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Three San Francisco traders became internet gambling pioneers after launching the first truly online sports books, but the fix is in as the professional sports leagues flex their muscle to game the system and turn its founders into fugitives, proving that no bets a sure thing.

Jay Cohen had never placed or taken a bet in his life when he came up with the idea for a futures sport betting site. He was working on the Pacific Stock Exchange Options Floor and found inspiration watching Steve Schillinger turn the fever of the biggest event of a generationthe OJ Simpson trialinto a wildly popular futures market. Jay, Steve, and Jays twenty-one-year-old clerk, Haden Ware, headed to the pristine beaches of Antigua where sports betting operations were legal, licensed, and regulated.

There they would build a revolutionary site that would become the envy of the sports betting industry, but just over a year after launching, Cohen, Ware, and Schillinger were charged in the first federal prosecution of internet sports betting. Cohen returned to the US to face the charges, convinced he had done nothing wrong. It was a bad bet. He was found guilty and was sent to a prison in North Las Vegas. His partners stayed behind to run the business, which would flourish and grow while simultaneously fighting the DOJ, the professional sports leagues, its powerful law firm Debevoise, and an army of lobbyists.

Were Cohen and his partners criminals or just early to the game Goliath may have prevailed, but the story of World Sports Exchange lays bare the NFLs (and other professional sports leagues) brute strength and how it weaponized its power to pursue him, the site, change legislation and then pivoted, following the money and ultimately embracing the industry it vilified.

This is the true and tragic story of World Sports Exchange.

Author Bio

Jay Cohen is the co-Founder and former President of World Sports Exchange, the first fully online betting site. World Sports Exchange opened in January 1997 and closed in April 2013.

On February 28, 2000, Cohen was the first person to be convicted in federal court for violation of the 1961 Federal Wire Act for operating an online gambling company despite being in Antigua, where the business was licensed and regulated. Cohen served eighteen months in Nellis Federal Prison in North Las Vegas, Nevada. He was released in March 2004.

Cohen was instrumental in Antiguas decision in March 2003 to initiate the dispute resolution process of the World Trade Organization to challenge the US prohibition on the cross-border supply of online gambling services.

Prior to World Sports Exchange, Cohen worked as an options market-maker for Group One Trading on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange.

Cohen moved to Europe and renounced his citizenship in 2012. He currently lives in Eastern Europe with his wife and son. He grew up in Long Island and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley where he majored in nuclear engineering.

Cohen and World Sports Exchange have been featured in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and on CNBC, HBO Real Sports, 60 Minutes, and ESPN.