The Sports Book Attendant is a relatively new feature of casinos. Since the 1970s, casinos have operated gaming areas where guests can place wagers on sporting events of all kinds, sometimes anywhere in the world, at a single location. A player can place bets on traditional sports like baseball or football and traditional betting sports like horse racing or boxing as well as more obscure events such as which movie might win the Best Picture Oscar. In England, for example, it's not uncommon for bookmakers to take bets on the naming of a new child in the royal family.
The S.B. Attendant will also employ some form of bookmaker. The job of the bookmaker is to set the odds on any given event in such a way that maximizes the casino's profit while not opening it up to too much loss.
The attendant also employs runners to take players' bets and pay them out if the bets were successful. The runners will be taking bets on every kind of odds the casino is offering on a given day. In cases of games like keno or bingo, the runners will operate the machines that generate the random numbers and announce them to the players on the floor.
They will have to understand the events they're taking the bets on and help the players when they ask questions. Everyone in the sports book area has very close contact with the players and a good conversational style is necessary. Again, there's a lot of customer service involved.
