ODDS MAN OUT: The Untold Story of How Professional Sports Crushed the Pioneers of Online Betting

"The harrowing tale of what happened when the American judicial system decided to make an example of the options-trader turned entrepreneur. It should make your blood boil and will." — William D. Cohan, bestselling author, Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon

NEW YORK, July 2, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Before DraftKings. Before FanDuel. Before the NFL became a billion-dollar partner to the very industry it once tried to criminalize, three traders from the Pacific Stock Exchange built the future of sports betting — and were prosecuted for it.

In Odds Man Out (Post Hill Press, July 7, 2026), Jay Cohen tells the remarkable true story of World Sports Exchange, the first fully online sportsbook, and what happened when the most powerful institutions in American sports decided to destroy it.

The Origin Story of a Culture

It was the O.J. Simpson trial that sparked the idea. While America was transfixed by the case of the century, Pacific Stock Exchange trader Steve Schillinger saw something else: a market. His colleague Jay Cohen saw the internet as the platform to bring it to the world.

In October 1996, Cohen, Schillinger, and 21-year-old clerk Haden Ware launched World Sports Exchange from Antigua — legally licensed, regulated, and years ahead of its time. By January 1997, WSEX.com had taken its first online wager. It would go on to pioneer live in-game betting and offer markets on everything from box office openings and the Oscars to presidential elections — innovations that define today's multi-billion-dollar prediction economy.

Today, Americans bet on everything. Odds Man Out is the story of the men who made that possible, and what it cost them.

The Takedown

The site's success made it a target. The NFL and its fellow professional sports leagues — fiercely protective of their product and deeply opposed to legalized betting — retained the powerful law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, which leveraged its connections at the Department of Justice to come after Cohen and. Cohen became the first offshore operator convicted in federal court under the 1961 Federal Wire Act — a statute written decades before the internet existed — and was sent to federal prison.

His partners stayed in Antigua and kept World Sports Exchange running for 16 years. battling the DOJ, the leagues, and an army of lobbyists the entire time.

The same leagues that lobbied to put Cohen behind bars? They now collect billions annually from the legalized sports betting industry he helped invent. The same politicians who crusaded against online gambling? Some went on to work for the very lobbying firms guiding the NFL through its sports betting integration.

What Odds Man Out Reveals

Cohen's memoir is more than a sports business story — it is a clear-eyed account of how powerful institutions weaponize the justice system to protect entrenched interests and eliminate competition, only to adopt the very innovations they once criminalized. Specifically, the book exposes:

• The Revolving Door in Action: How Senator Jon Kyl led the legislative charge against legal sports betting before joining a lobbying firm that helped guide the NFL's embrace of the industry he once fought to ban.

• The Limits of the Law: How a federal judge ignored a key exception to the 1961 wire act statute – and kept it from the jury – in a landmark case involving an offshore internet business operating legally outside U.S. borders.

• A Trade War Hidden in Plain Sight: How Haden Ware persuaded Antigua to challenge the United States before the World Trade Organization — and won — exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of American trade and regulatory policy.

• The Blueprint for Today: How World Sports Exchange's innovations — live in-game wagering, prediction markets, event-based betting — became the standard features of an industry now generating tens of billions of dollars annually in the U.S. alone.

The book features a foreword by Benjamin Brafman, the legendary Manhattan criminal defense attorney, offering his unvarnished assessment of a trial he believes should never have happened.

A Story for Our Moment

At a time when prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are reshaping how Americans engage with news and current events, and when the lines between sports, media, and gambling have all but disappeared, Odds Man Out provides essential context. It is a story about innovation, institutional hypocrisy, and the question at the center of American capitalism: Who gets to win — and who decides?

"Odds Man Out" is a gripping, essential read for anyone who has ever placed a bet, followed the money in professional sports, or wondered how the rules of the game get written — and by whom.

"Odds Man Out: The Untold Story of How Professional Sports Crushed the Pioneers of Online Betting"

Post Hill Press/Hardcover

Release date: July 7, 2026

ISBN: 9798895658345

Price: $32.00 USD/$43.00 CAN

Media Contact

World Sports Exchange, World Sports Exchange, 1 855-655-9739, [email protected], wsex.com

SOURCE World Sports Exchange