Sports Betting History – The Sports Betting Pager

Back in the 1980’s & 1990’s, pagers (or beepers) were all the rage. Before everyone had a cell phone in their hands, people would have a pager attached to their hip. Usually, they had it clipped onto their belt or pants pocket. If someone wanted to get in contact with you, they would dial your pager number and enter the number where you could call them back. There was even a little room in the pager data send to include a code so they could identify you or you could tell them it was an emergency (*911).

It wasn’t long before pagers were utilized by the world of sports betting. Savy bettors and bookies alike would pay a monthly service to get live lines, injuries, play-by-play scores and even expert picks broadcast straight to their pagers.

Several companies offered this service. If memory serves me correctly, the fee was around $50 or $60 per month. But you could find clones for sale on the black market for a one-time fee of between $200-$300. You basically got service indefinitely once you bought one of these pagers. The only problem was that if your service ever stopped, you couldn’t exactly call in to customer service. You had to track down the guy who dols it to you. Paying $300 up front for one of these was in itself a serious gamble.

There were two services available. The basic service included live lines, scores and injuries. The more expensive premium service would alert you to breaking line-movements (steam) and give you premium picks from about a dozen handicappers. The premium service was an extra 20 bucks per month.

The handicappers were decent, but you really never knew what you were getting. The strength of the picks would be listed next to the pick itself represented by a number from 1-4 stars, with 4 being the strongest. If it was their strongest play of the week, it would have a dollar sign next to it. A list of picks may look like this:

NFL
Falcons -3.5 (2*)
Cowboys +3 (4*)
Chargers -1.5 ($)

The advent of more modern cell phones (even before “smart” phones) made these pagers obsolete. You could get detailed text messages “non smart” cell phones of the early 2000’s. You could even jump online using their crude browsers at the time. I believe one of the pager companies kept services going until the mid-2000’s but the smart phone was the proverbial nail-in-the-coffin.

The tech was rudimentary by today’s standards but those of us who were really into sports betting in the 1990’s loved these things. You had an edge that most people betting on sports simply did not.