99% of books outside of the NE dont pay any protection at all. Few guys have the juice to shake down as big a guy as Ron Sacco. Some big books use connected guys to collect... Or even as agents. In the northeast^^ i would agree with u. But not out west. Not saying it doesnt happen, but it would be rare.
I agree that Sacco probably wasn't being shaken down. It was a case of the mob and him working together in their gambling networks. Layoffs and what not. That's the one thing about the mob that is national in scope. Even international. Their gambling networks.
But I would argue that it's
distance that kept him from being taken over by the mob and not so much the
size of his operation. You look at just recent cases of the sports books either being run by the mob in NY, or paying protection to the mob, and they rival, if not surpass, anything Sacco has - or had - back in the 1990's.
