Review of Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

Title:

Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Offshore Sports Gambling Empire

Author:

Steve Budin with Bob Schaller

Publisher:

Skyhorse Publishing

Date:

2007

ISBN:

1-60239-099-1

Pages:

254

Price:

$24.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

October 9, 2007

Steve Budin was the innovator who ran the best bookmaking shop in the United States, shocked the world by inventing the offshore betting industry when he set up shop in Panama, and led sports betting into the Internet age after moving his operation to Costa Rica. If you don't believe this, just ask Budin. I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you all about it. Of course, if hearing about it just once isn't enough, and you'd like to hear his accolades about himself repeated over and over and over again, then you might want to read the book that describes his escapades, Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.

Steve Budin got his start working for his father as a bookmaker in Brooklyn and later in Miami. In a roundabout way, he ends up in Panama running a morebund sports betting operation there. Once in Panama, he realizes that he wouldn't be restricted to taking bets only from Panamanians, he could just as easily take bets by phone from customers in the U.S. and charge their credit cards. Thus was born the his offshore sports betting empire.

Budin and his team found it difficult at best to do business in Panama, so they moved their operation to Costa Rica, a more stable, less corrupt country with an educated work force. This proves to be an ideal platform for setting up a global bookmaking empire.

Just as Budin is about to start taking bets over the Internet, the FBI indicts him and his colleagues and jails his father, shutting down his company on the eve of it's biggest hour. After some down time, Budin lifts himself up and goes back into business, trying to transform the sports betting tout services in much the same way that offshore betting changed the bookmaking industry.

We learn some details about the ascendance of the offshore sports betting market. We also learn a bit about what it's like to do business in Central America. However, what Steve Budin covers most in Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll is Steve Budin. We hear about his family, his drug habit (for which he is mostly unapologetic), his sexual escapades (likewise), and basically how he's the smartest, hardest working, most talented, and most virile person on the planet. Never in my life have I seen more shameless self-promotion in any medium. It's slathered on so thick here that the book would almost work as a self-parody, if only I thought Budin was capable of it. The only person Budin admires nearly as much as himself is his father, who is positively deified by Budin's account. If someone wonders what would posess the emperors of ancient Rome to proclaim themselves gods, hand that person a copy of this book.

Throughout his narrative, Budin backhandedly complements his employees, rats out some of his celebrity customers, displays an abject objectification of women, and downplays the influence, and often competence, of everyone else in the industry. Despite this, the book is awash in his insistance that he's the most ethical person in the industry, is the model family man, and that is practically a chosen instrument of God almighty. The last chapter reads as an advertisement for his sports information service web sites, but frankly, based on the man and his rose-colored description of what he's providing, I have absolutely no interest in even checking those sites out.

It's not like I didn't learn anything from reading this book, but I didn't learn very much, except about what Steve Budin thought of himself and the life he has led. On the plus side, the page count for the book is low as is the word count per page, so at least the reader is mercifully finished with the book in short order and can move on to better things.

This is a story I hadn't heard before, and I am a bit of a junkie for even bits and pieces of information on the operation of the business end of today's sports betting enterprises. Consequently, I can't say I'm sorry I read the book, nor would I say it was a waste of my time. However, unless one is really excited by the prospect of reading this book, I have to recommend passing on it. Admittedly, the competition for Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll doesn't exactly represent the apex of gambling literature, but this book doesn't even measure up well to such weak competition. I can't recommend this book to most readers.

Capsule:

Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll is the account of the rise and fall of the offshore sports betting company SDB Global as well as it's founder and CEO, Steve Budin. Mostly, though, the book is about Steve Budin. The self satisfaction is lathered on in these pages as thick as I've ever seen it. For those who are more interested in the industry than the man, there's something here, but not much. This book is for serious junkies who carefully follow the offshore sports betting industry only.

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