| Once you have lots of action setting the odds is easy and doesn't require any knowledge of the activity. In fact it should be done independently of any knowledge of the activity, unless the bookmaker is (equivalently anyway) also betting. If I believe that team A has a 80% chance of winning against team B, but the pool of bettors believes that team A only has a 60% chance, my line, as a bookmaker (which I'm not), ought to reflect that 60% chance, despite my personal belief that it's the wrong place to set the odds. If I shift the odds closer to the 80% that I believe should exist I will end up with more people betting on B than I can cover with bets for A. If I'm right I'll make more money, but now I'm gambling, something which the bookie doesn't need to do.
This is why sports wagering is actually somewhere that both bookmakers and knowledgeable bettors can routinely make money. Be enough better than the average bettor to offset the vic and you'll be fine. Be below that point and you're helping fund college bills for the more knowledgeable bettors and the bookmakers. College basketball is an obvious case where there are tons of poorly informed (and frequently sentimental) bettors that can overwhelm, numbers-wise, the informed decision making choices of the professionals, resulting in lines that poorly reflect reality. The bookmaker doesn't care, as long as the bets on both sides balance s/he is guaranteed a set amount of profit at zero risk. The professional bettors pick the games where the lines are well off from where they ought to be and only bet those games. The vast majority don't care, they'll bet for their alma mater regardless of where the line ends up.
To get to that point, however, the book needs to know where to start the odds off before the action dictates which way to shift the odds to keep the betting balanced. Why touch something that is highly unlikely to get enough action to be worth the risk of mistakes early on in the process?
Probably the best way to push this isn't with USFA nationals, but with the DitD. Lots of interested people, already in Vegas, with a nice atmosphere. Convince the sports book on the host casino to take bets on the gala matches. See if enough people don't decide "heck, why not?" and throw down a small bet. Once there's some comfort with that, which already has (from what I've heard) a fun, partying atmosphere, perhaps the next step is to add the Las Vegas world cup to the offerings. Once the bookies have some comfort with covering the sport and people have experience betting on it, there might be something there. At least that's one possibility of how to get over the chicken and egg problem of it not being worth offering until the action is high enough and no action without the bookies being willing to take bets.
-B :)
*Who, incidently, is prohibited by his job requirements from gambling on sports or passing information to people involved in gambling activities. None of the above is intended to be anything other the a theoretical discussion of what steps might be required for fencing to gain acceptance with sports wagering organizations, something the author believes unlikely to happen any time soon.* :)
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