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PrintKelly in Vegas, a Bellagio cocktail waitress who doubles as a sports bettor, has received plenty of media attention over the last month or so and was most recently featured in the Kansas City Star.
“[She] has elbowed her way into the male-dominated sports handicapping world using winning picks and sex appeal to command attention,” The Star wrote.
But Kelly isn’t the only female bettor. Other women have taken an interest in sports betting in recent years, and according to a Herald Sun report, the number has grown so significantly that some shops might begin targeting female clients.
From the Sun:
Betstar’s Alan Eskander said female punters used to be irrelevant to his business, but numbers have increased five or six fold in five years as women embrace sport and betting.
The female market skews towards so-called novelty bets, but women also punt on AFL and racing, mostly during Spring Carnival, he said. The company is looking at starting a specific women’s betting site.
“From a Betstar point of view, females in betting are more important and prominent and more commonplace, and as a consequence the whole topic has come into our vocabulary,” he said. “It’s something that we’re taking seriously.”
While women are far more likely to place novelty bets (for example, “Who will win American Idol?”), it’s not inconceivable to think that more of them will take the route Kelly has gone and bet on sports.
Still, there’s a long ways to go.
We can’t remember the last time we’ve seen a woman in a sportsbook.
