The Bookie: How I Bet It All on Sports Gambling and Watched an Industry Explode

A Legend in Bookmaking Tells the Story of an Industry and His Career

More than fifty-million people in the U.S. now bet on sports, and the many apps now available have put the excitement of this world at fans' fingertips. But before FanDuel and Draft King, Las Vegas was where fortunes were won and lost. For more than forty years, Art Manteris was at the center of the action.

Sports betting is in Art Manteris's blood. From his childhood in Pittsburgh, spent taking bets and collecting debts, first for his uncle Jack and then for his older brother, to his quick rise through the ranks at the biggest and most famous casinos in Las Vegas. Manteris spent his illustrious forty-year career running the largest Las Vegas sportsbooks in the Stardust, Caesars, and the Hilton. He took bets from crazed gangsters, icons of industry, Hollywood celebrities, and sports legends, as well as some of the most duplicitous and criminal figures in sports gaming history. If Billy Walters was the gambler, Art Manteris was the regulator.

The Bookie is a lively tale from inside the sportsbook from someone who has seen the highs and lows of this fast-paced world. Full of marquee names like Donald Trump, Phil Mickelson, Don King, Floyd Mayweather, Mike Tyson, Manny Pacquiao, The Bookie takes readers from the 1970s when Art's job included handling wads of money stuffed in paper bags for his bosses at the mafia-run sportsbook to his role setting the legal odds for every major professional sports event in the U.S.--Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Championships, Triple Crowns, Prizefights, and Stanley Cups, to the times his sharp instincts knew the fix was in, his many run-ins with the infamous Billy Walters, and the moment when his integrity was brought under scrutiny by the Vegas Gaming Control Board.

Manteris's job was to make his book big money while also keeping patrons entertained enough to keep coming back. Rife with never-before-told stories, The Bookie will be a primer on the art and science of sports gambling, and entertaining enough to compel any reader who loves a great story.

Art Manteris is considered among the preeminent experts on sports betting throughout the world. He began his four-decade career at the Fremont Hotel & Casino and infamous Stardust, and later rose to head the sportsbooks at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas Hilton, and Stations Casinos, where he oversaw the company's 18 sportsbooks. A policy contributor to several national and state gaming associations, he was inducted into the Sports Gaming Hall of Fame. Art retired in 2021.

Matt Birkbeck is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of Deconstructing Sammy, The Quiet Don, and A Deadly Secret. He is also the executive producer of the hit Netflix film Girl in the Picture, which is based on his books A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon. A former newspaper reporter and correspondent for People magazine, he's also written features for Reader's Digest, Playboy, The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Boston Magazine, among others. He lives in Pennsylvania.