South Carolina Coastal Plain Bookies, Pay Per Heads: Florence, Orangeburg

For many who reside in the Northeast and travel to and from South Florida by automobile, Florence in the South Carolina Coastal Plain is known as the midway point along Highway I-95 with its barrage of chain hotels scattered across a handful of exits.

For the bookies who cover this region of the Palmetto State (and the Pay Per Head businesses that serve them), Florence is known for having over 9 foreign affiliated companies and fourteen Fortune 500 companies, including General Electric and Honda with some of the most expensive real estate in South Carolina.  Florence is a decidedly white-collar city, with fully 86.38% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average.

This translates into a population of some 37,000 plus people who should have enough disposable income in which to place bets on their favorite teams: the Clemson Tigers, SC Gamecocks and the Carolina Panthers in the NFL.

Orangeburg, by comparison, is primarily a college town with a mix of white-collar and blue-collar jobs.

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Bookies and sports bettors will often be seen co-mingling in such establishments as Applebees, Buffalo Wild Wings and The Swamp.

Orangeburg, a good hour south of Florence, is actually slightly closer to the state’s largest city of Columbia.  True sports fans and local bookmakers can be found patronizing the likes of Molly’s Sports Bar & Grill along with Endzone Sports Bar & Grill.

Utilizing contracting services is common in many successful industries.  In the case of a local bookie, the Pay Per Head provides a prudent means of adding that necessary layer of security, not just to protect from savvy sports bettors, but also by minimizing the potential of becoming victimized by criminal elements. A known area bookie residence will typically mean “cash on hand”, sometimes lots of it.

With a crime rate of 64 per one thousand residents, Orangeburg has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities.

In Florence, one's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 12. Within South Carolina, more than 95% of the communities have a lower crime rate than Florence.  The city’s proximity to a major highway makes it an easy target for would be thieves.

A Pay Per Head runs all aspect of the bookie business with the exception of handling financial transactions.  They charge a small weekly fee per customer (per head), often starting around $10.  In the long run, bookies and agents alike save money while minimizing the headaches involved in running such a business entirely on their own.

True use of such services essentially converts a bookie and/or agent into a law-abiding revenue sharing affiliate but with a role reversal whereby it is you who receives the larger cut of the revenue share.

Pay Per Head companies also offer live in-play betting, thousands of proposition bets and a live online casino platform that locals simply cannot offer.  Many of these businesses also offer online poker platforms.

South Carolina has some of the most archaic gambling laws on the books.  Even home poker games are illegal in the state.  There are no casinos and no horse tracks.  With that said, the Penalty for Simple Gambling and Penalty for Aggravated Gambling are both misdemeanors.

Bookies in the Orangeburg area were especially left “running scared” following the arrests of those tied to Columbia’s biggest bookmaking operation run by wife-killer Brett Parker.

- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com