Online sports betting has trickled down to high school football

Only days before the Austin Westlake football team plays for its fifth Texas state championship, athletic director Callan Nokes made a startling discovery.

The game has a betting line.

Offshore gaming site BetOnline initially anointed undefeated North Crowley a four-point favorite over once-beaten Westlake and has since increased the spread to 5.5. The Panama-based online sportsbook is accepting bets of up to $500 on Saturday’s Texas state title matchup.

While Nokes concedes that betting on pro and college sports is becoming “more and more accepted in America,” he argues that mixing gambling and high school football is fraught with unusual risk. Nokes feared that it could incentivize underrage gambling, increase the threat of corruption and game-fixing and potentially threaten the integrity of the high school game.

“I don’t think gambling should be associated with high school football,” Nokes said. “It’s one thing if dads are making friendly little wagers that no one knows about. That’s between them. But when it gets to be corporate and it’s offshore gambling, to me that’s a more serious thing with a lot more money exchanging hands.”

The Austin Westlake-North Crowley game is far from the only one that high school football fans have been able to bet this season. BetOnline has offered odds on several dozen high-profile matchups involving nationally ranked teams from California, Texas, Florida, Georgia and beyond.

At first, BetOnline accepted bets on a handful of high school football games per year, the online gaming site’s brand manager, Dave Mason, told Yahoo Sports. That number skyrocketed this season, Mason said, thanks to increased customer demand and an unusual number of marquee matchups between national powers.

Mason scoffs at those who find betting on high school sports distasteful, firing back that “people have ethical issues with just about everything these days.” He points out that minors compete in professional soccer, women’s golf and tennis and numerous Olympic sports, and “no one has any issue betting on them.”

Top-tier high school football, Mason argues, is as much a big business as any of those other sports. There are TV contracts and shoe-apparel sponsorships, multi-million-dollar facilities and lucrative stadium naming rights deals.

“Offering odds at small limits,” Mason said, “is small time in comparison.”

Believe it or not, BetOnline is not the first offshore sportsbook to offer odds on high school football games. More than a decade ago, the now-defunct Costa Rica-based 5Dimes began allowing customers to place high school football bets.

5Dimes founder Tony Williams told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2011 that he provided high school football lines because his customers demanded them.

“If the customers are happy, I am happy,” Williams said to the newspaper.

High school football enthusiasts who want to place a bet on a big game have no choice but to turn to an offshore site. Accepting a wager on high school sports is outlawed in Nevada and other U.S. states where sports betting is otherwise legal.

The bookmaker at a Las Vegas sportsbook told Yahoo Sports that he doesn’t recall seeking special approval from the Nevada Gaming Control Board to offer wagers on a particular high school game. Granted anonymity in exchange for his candor, the Las Vegas bookmaker said he gets requests from time to time but “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.”

It isn’t just the threat of negative publicity that concerns the bookmaker, nor is it the challenge of setting an accurate line. His biggest fear, he said, is that “these games could be compromised.”

There have been sporadic examples over the years of gamblers offering college or pro athletes money to entice them not even to lose a game but rather to avoid covering the point spread. Or the payment from the gambler might be in return for inside information about the eligibility or health of key players on the team.

High school football, the Las Vegas bookmaker said, is even more vulnerable to those illegal tactics than the pro or college game. He cited a lack of paychecks or scholarship money given to players, the increased likelihood of blowout scores and the dearth of money needed to implement strategies to root out bribery and corruption.

“The players aren’t making money,” the bookmaker said. “The referees aren’t making much money. The coaches make nowhere near what college coaches make. So I would be very concerned about the risk that could happen.”

Point shaving is also a concern among high school coaches whose games have had offshore point spreads.

When he coached at Southern California powerhouse Long Beach Poly just over a decade ago, Raul Lara recalls offshore point spreads were “talked about a lot.” He’d have parents or other members of the Poly community approach him and tell him that night’s spread.

“I’d be like, ‘What the hell? I don’t care about that. Why are you telling me?” recalled Lara, now the coach of California Open Division State champion Santa Ana Mater Dei.

Lara has never felt the need to address gambling with his players in 30-plus years of coaching, but he fears that time is coming if sports betting continues to trickle down to high school football. As Lara put it this week, “Eventually somebody is going to persuade a kid to do something that he’s probably going to regret later.”

Limiting high school football bets to less than $250-$500 is BetOnline’s way of deterring any possible shady activity. Point shaving, Mason argues, “is not going down for something with such small limits.”

The low limits for betting high school football also help reduce the risk for BetOnline when the staff isn’t fully confident in the opening line it posts. Mason admits that BetOnline lacks the data, manpower or time to book high school games anywhere near as accurately as the NFL or major college football. Just last week, BetOnline pegged Westlake as a 17.5-point underdog in its semifinal against North Shore, a game Westlake would win 35-10.

“More often than not, we lose money,” Mason said. “We don’t mind losing a bit, but we don’t want to get slaughtered with higher limits.”

When 5Dimes offered high school football bets, Calpreps.com founder Ned Freeman noticed that the opening lines often mirrored his site’s computer ratings and projections. Freeman told Yahoo Sports that he considers it “a pretty ugly thing for people to be taking bets on kids,” but he’s not going to stop offering score projections no matter how they’re used.

“I can’t control what everyone does with the projections, but largely they’re used for good purposes,” Freeman said. “Fans and coaches use them as a curiosity. They’re just interested in seeing what’s ‘supposed’ to happen.”

Freeman learned that BetOnline was offering high school football bets when a friend texted him the line from last Saturday’s California Open Division state title game and noted that the spread was way lower than his Calpreps projection. As he looked into it further, Freeman came to the conclusion that BetOnline simply “came up with lines off the top of their heads.”

High school football wagers may not be a moneymaker for BetOnline, but the gaming site has no plans to stop offering them. Mason had a handful of customers pleading with him earlier this week to put up a line on this Saturday’s Westlake-North Crowley game.

Offering something that can’t be found at American sportsbooks helps BetOnline attract new bettors and retain existing ones. BetOnline has adopted a similar strategy with the Little League World Series and the Pop Warner National Championships.

“Customers like it,” Mason said. “We offer all sorts of ‘exotic’ markets that really don’t make us money, but you need to check that box.”

If offshore sportsbooks opt to keep accepting wagers on games involving minors, there isn’t much that U.S. high school administrators can do about it. Their only recourse is to be more proactive educating their athletes and to be extra vigilant about the threat of corruption.

“If it was starting to affect our team, I would definitely sit down with the coaches, decide how we were going to handle it and talk to our players about it,” Nokes said. “I’d basically tell them to ignore outside noise, play the game the right way and basically do what we always do, which is try to win the game.”