Odds Man Out - by Jay Cohen (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Three San Francisco traders became internet gambling pioneers after launching the first truly online sportsbook, 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 bet's 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 generation--the OJ Simpson trial--into a wildly popular futures market. Jay, Steve, and Jay's 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 NFL's (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.

Review Quotes

"A unique, often riveting account of Jay Cohen's battle against a government bent on destroying his brainchild, the pioneering online sports book WSEX. With a supporting cast including future Chief Justice John Roberts and the most famous whale since Moby Dick, Odds Man Out is a cautionary tale for anyone who doubts that behind-the-scenes forces can decide who wins and who loses in our courts."--Kevin Cook, author of Titanic Thompson, Waco Rising and The Tiger Slam

"Blazing the trail in internet sports betting, Jay Cohen's World Sports Exchange offered sports betting exchange-traded futures twenty-five years before they became the rage. Jay chronicles the bullet he took for the offshore industry in his six-year legal odyssey fighting the federal government at his own personal loss."--Roxy Roxborough, iconic Las Vegas oddsmaker

"Entrepreneurs who are twenty years before their time merely lose. They don't go to jail. In a horrible stroke of irony, the men of World Sports Exchange, invented live betting as we know it and are the forefathers of a now legal American betting industry that brings in billions of dollars every month, but were tortured by a government who chose to fix the game of regulation, which was, at best, ambiguous in its interpretation. In Odds Man Out, Jay Cohen gives a first-hand account of the rise and fall of WSEX and assures us that we will never forget how lives were ruined over merely being first."--Darren Rovell, sports business reporter for ESPN, CNBC, and The Action Network

"It's not often that we get to hear about an inflection point in history, straight from the mouth of the man at its center. In Odds Man Out, Jay Cohen tells the story of how he and others pioneered online sports betting--today an industry seamlessly enmeshed with professional sports--and paid the price.

Taking the reader behind the scenes for the genesis and rise of the World Sports Exchange, his indictment as part of the "March Madness" prosecutions, and his gamble to return to the United States for his day in court, this book offers an invaluable glimpse into how tech, sports, gambling, and the legal system collided. Reading this book drives home just how far the sports betting world has shifted since Murphy vs NCAA, and reminds us that pioneers may not always be celebrated."--David G. Schwartz, historian and author of Something for Your Money: A History of Las Vegas Casinos

"Jay Cohen was a visionary who understood that the Internet would revolutionize gambling--and he was punished for it. His inside look at the creation of an online 'stock market for sports' becomes a harrowing tale of the American criminal justice system gone awry."--Bruce Schoenfeld, author of Game of Edges

"Jay Cohen's fast-paced, well-written memoir, Odds Man Out, tells the harrowing tale of the options-trader turned entrepreneur who helped start the huge business of online sports betting legally in Antigua, and what happened when the American judicial system decided to make an example of him. It should make your blood boil--and will."--William D. Cohan, bestselling author of Power Failure

"The vast army of fans who enjoy sports gambling, owe a debt--of gratitude, yes, but a financial one too--to the author. They were pioneers, wrongly targeted by the same sports institutions that now mint money using their innovation, technology, and frameworks. This riveting read is both tragic and triumphant, the story of enterprise, international intrigue, power, and situational ethics. And it helps explain the biggest story in sports so far this century."--Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated senior writer and 60 Minutes correspondent

"Viewed through the prism of gambling's overtly symbiotic present day relationship to American professional sports, the story of Jay Cohen's confrontation with the Justice System seems almost comically quaint. He was taken to task, and ultimately sentenced to a prison from which he could see the lights of Las Vegas, for brilliantly innovating a popular and profitable system for betting on professional sports, something millions of Americans now do every day without fear of recourse or restraint. But because of the time at which he did this, and the vortex of personalities and ambitions his activities then touched, he lost everything. His story is tragic and poignant. I won an Emmy Award for covering it on HBO's RealSports with Bryant Gumbel. It was an award I would gladly have returned if Jay Cohen had been treated fairly, but he was not."--Jim Lampley, Hall of Fame broadcaster

About the Author

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 Antigua's 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.