Jackie Gaughan and the Birth of Sports Betting in Las Vegas

James Murphy
4 min readJul 22, 2022

Now that sports betting is in the process of going seriously mainstream in the United States, it’s a good time to look back where it started. This photo is from an excellent but now dormant Instagram account called InsideTheVegasVault. You’re looking at the Union Plaza Racebook circa mid 1970’s:

At this point, the Union Plaza was one of the most important sportsbooks in Las Vegas–if not the entire world. Jackie Gaughan is a Las Vegas legend who is held in high regard by the locals for his generosity of spirit as much as his business acumen. You don’t hear casino owners referred to as ‘beloved’ much these days but Gaughan was definitely that in the Las Vegas Valley. He was the son of an Omaha bookmaker and had the good fortune to learn the business from the ground up. He moved to Las Vegas in 1950 and among other interests operated the Saratoga and Derby sports books from 1953 to 1959. He wasn’t a ‘corporate suit’ that only understood balance sheets. He remained heavily involved in the operation of his properties’ sportsbooks throughout his life and was instrumental along with Sonny Reizner at The Castaways in popularizing non-sport proposition wagers in the late 1970’s:

During this time, Reizner wasn’t the only bookmaker in town posting exotic proposition bets. Downtown at the El Cortez, Jackie Gaughan also discovered that unusual wagering topics would not only attract betting action but tons of publicity for the casino. Gaughan created a number of bets that received national attention but none created the massive interest that a 1979 prop where bettors could predict where the Skylab space station would fall to earth. The El Cortez took an insane amount of action on the final resting place of space junk and became well known internationally in the process. Ultimately, the space station fell in Western Australia at odds of 30/1.

Here’s Gaughan in front of an odds board with the Skylab crash numbers at the El Cortez:

As mentioned above, Gaughan wasn’t just respected as a gaming industry pioneer he was downright beloved. This quote from his obituary gives you some idea why:

“Gaughan was a caring and generous man who, while he was still driving his old Ford Bronco, carried spare containers of gasoline to stop and help motorists in need. When he learned about people who died penniless, Gaughan would pay for their funerals.”

You have to wonder how many of the ‘stranded motorists’ knew that the kindly old man who helped them owned 8 casinos and 25% of the real estate in downtown Las Vegas?

The Union Plaza is significant for being the first hotel/casino to incorporate a sportsbook. It was so named because the Union Pacific Railway Station also operated on the site. The train station served travelers from 1940 to 1971, and even after the original Union Pacific facility was demolished the Union Plaza continued to host a smaller facility for Amtrak trains. It served rail travelers until Amtrak discontinued the Desert Wind route in 1997. The Las Vegas Greyhound Bus Station would continue to run right next door to the remodeled Plaza until it was relocated last year.

Gaughan also owned the El Cortez which was considered ‘the crown jewel’ of his properties and where he lived and worked:

“Almost up to the day he died, Jackie Gaughan went to his office every day and was a regular player in El Cortez poker room. The walls of his El Cortez office were lined with photos of the numerous celebrities he had met and hosted over the years. Every day, Gaughan ate his meals either in El Cortez’s café or gourmet restaurant.”

Jackie Gaughan died in 2014 at the age of 93. The Gaughan name is still involved in the casino business–his son, Michael, owns the South Point Hotel and Casino.

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James Murphy

The revolution will be decentralized. Writer and other assorted sobriquets.