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By TIM BONTEMPS, NY POST
It's not Yankees-Red Sox, but the Yankees playing the Angels in the American League Championship Series is the next best thing for the Las Vegas sportsbooks.
"With the close proximity of Los Angeles, we have a lot of Angels fans here in Vegas, and any time you get the Yankees, that helps," said Jay Kornegay, director of the Las Vegas Hilton's sportsbook.
Because Los Angeles is a couple of hours away, and given the enormous popularity of the Yankees throughout the country, a Yankees-Angels matchup is likely to be far more lucrative for the books than if it had been a Twins-Angels series.
"Any time you can knock out the Midwest teams in baseball, that's probably a better matchup for us," Kornegay said. "I would never say that if we were talking about football, because the midwestern teams in football get supported so well out here.
"But in this case, we have the national team, the Yankees, and a close team in proximity in the Angels. We just don't see a ton of Twins and Tigers fans. . . . It's best for us to have a coast-to-coast matchup."
As for the series itself, Sean Van Patten from Las Vegas Sports Consultants felt that while the Red Sox and Yankees may have been the more attractive matchup from a betting and fan-interest perspective, the Angels and Yankees likely present the chance for having the best series.
"Red Sox-Yankees would have been better for the Vegas books, but on the flip side, I think you may get more games in this series than if it was Yankees-Red Sox," Van Patten said. "I think it's the closest matchup that we could have gotten.
"Right now, we have the Yankees at even money to win the World Series and the Angels at 7-2. The Dodgers are second-favorite, but only because the Angels play the Yankees. . . . If they were in the National League, they would likely be the second-favorite instead."
So far, the Angels have had more of the money headed to them at the Hilton, according to Kornegay. Because of that, it has caused them to drop the odds on the series from -180 on the Yankees when they were first posted to -165.
"It's kind of been trickling in on the Angels so far," Kornegay said. "Not that it's been coming in heavy doses, but it's been coming in and made us drop our line.
"There is nothing significant out there that is making people think that other than people's opinions," he said. "Maybe it's because the recent history of the two clubs."
While he is expecting to do decent business with the Yankees-Angels series, if Kornegay had to pick a World Series matchup out of the four remaining teams, the possibility of Joe Torre making his first visit to the new Yankee Stadium on the sport's biggest stage made for an obvious choice.
"That would be the best-case scenario as far as popularity, and then you get the whole Torre-Yankees thing, that's going to stir up some interest as well," he said. "The Yankees obviously have a huge following, and Las Vegas is pretty much a suburb of Los Angeles, so you have a Dodgers fan base as well."
