Sportsbooks “safe gaming”: lure back losers and stop winners
Sportsbooks love losers
Sportsbooks love losers. It’s as simple as that.
And they will do whatever it takes to get someone who has deposited money on their site and lost it, back on to continue making wagers (to lose even more).
The main bait to lure back the bettor are endless emails that include deceiving promos with very specific fine print. These promos promise "free bets", "deposit bonuses" or other deals to encourage new or existing players to place additional wagers.
But in order to receive the bonus, players must meet a range of conditions, which can be quite difficult to fulfil (or understand). This includes depositing a specific amount of money and place a certain amount of bets before they can withdraw their winnings.
These tricky conditions can sometimes make it challenging for players to actually benefit from the bonus — rendering them pointless in many cases and ultimately just makes you lose more.
As the New York Times reported, look no further than a guy like David Hummel, who initially won $662.50 from being drawn back by a FanDuel offer, to later losing more than $30,000 — claiming his initial win “was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me”.
So while it may seem like they are offering enticing bonuses and promotions to help you out, in reality, these offers are often too good to be true.
And they hate winners
On the other hand, winners are treated much differently.
Winners are bad customers for the sportsbooks.
When books identify a bad customer, aka a sharp who is successful sports bettor, they often limit what they can purchase at their shop (or kick them from the store completely).
Danny Funt of the Washington Post wrote about Beau Wagner's story, a DraftKings user who identified and hit a massive 50-1 odds wager ($1000 payed 50K) — where DraftKings retweeted Wagners winning ticket & promoted the big win to their hundreds of thousands of followers...
...but then limited Wagner on their platform the next day.
A very quick goodbye to the winner, and a new marketing campaign for them in exchange.
Danny's article also highlights other bettors who were on "losing streaks" and being treated like VIPs on the red carpet to come back — only to then get limited as soon as they become more intelligent with their betting decisions and start turning their fortunes around.
The books sure are setting a great example for the "safe & responsible gaming" message they preach, eh?
So for those who are too sharp winning money on games, sportsbooks have come up with all sorts of ways to limit the impact that winning has on their bottom line.
This includes taking the sharps successful sports and reducing their max wagers to pennies —meanwhile leaving other parts of their book open in hope they lose money in other areas.
But don't get your hopes up because as soon as you figure something else out and start winning on other sports / markets, the door will get slammed quick.
This is why sportsbooks prioritize limiting sharp action: it's imperative to ensure their business model remains sustainable and of course profits continue to grow.
Or is it?
As we will discuss later on, there are some books out there that are tacking the problem head on and have been thriving for years by facilitating winners.
Textbook discrimination
Sportsbooks are well known for discriminating against and limiting the power of winners.
Restrictions get put in place, wager amounts get reduced, bet clock countdowns are enforced and access to certain sports and markets get wiped out from beneath your feet.
Look no further than the endless limiting stories inside the inplayLIVE community — where there is no shortage of bettor discrimination amongst hundreds of 6-figure success stories.
And as Jeff Edelstein mentioned in NJ Online Gambling, "just go to Elon Musk’s toy and type in ‘sportsbook limited’ and see what you get."
Aka Twitter will provide all the endless proof you could ever need that these unfair practices are happening.
I mean could you imagine being too good at trading stocks and being limited from trading or even kicked from the stock exchange floor?
People day trade for a living. Why can't sports trading be a profession either?
Both involve risking a dollar amount in hopes of turning that into a larger amount. Both sound like a form of investing.
In Danny Funt's article, he also reported that the director of Colorado’s Division of Gaming, Dan Hartman, said gambling is “a form of entertainment,” and there is no right to be a professional sports bettor.
DraftKings CEO was also recently quoted by saying "This is an entertainment activity. People who are doing this for profit are not the players we want.”
Here's one example of a sportsbook [Bet365] taking back a wager after it settled saying their odds were a mistake and incorrect, voiding the fair payout.
Odds on this particular punt play were 8-1 and other books payed up to 12-1. But afterwards, Bet365 claimed it should have only payed 1.4 to 1.
To show just how ridiculous this is, the video exposes how the exact same punt situation in another game displayed 13-1 odds later in the day on Bet365s same betting platform.
Even a punt situation in a much worse spot on the other end of the field (where the bet was more likely to happen) payed higher, than the 1.4 odds they reversed it to.
Excuses, excuses.
And it’s important to note, most books are unlikely to reverse it in your favour if your bet lost with their mistake.
So in this case — if you win, you lose. If you lose, you lose.
Adam Derges, one of the hosts of the Ray & Adam Show had an interesting analogy in Episode 18 of their sports betting podcast:
"Name me a game anywhere else in the world...that one side gets to decide all the rules, and there's no referee. How is that game possibly going to be fair...imagine if you're playing a game of football and one side gets to decide how every play is going to be ruled and the other side has no say in that," Derges said.
Very similar to how Morgan Campbell at CBC wrote, sports gambling is more like a rigged carnival game.
Scratching tooth and nail to receive winnings
And to go one step further, even if you do win, you aren't necessarily guaranteed to receive your winnings.
Just look at Kenneth Perry, a sports bettor from Toronto who's been waiting for months to get paid out from Bet365 and is worried the funds will never come.
Perry, who was interviewed by reporter Shane Mercer, has now been going back and forth between his bank and Bet365 for a while now.
Bet365 says the money is on the way, but the bank says no wire transfer has even been initiated.
Stories like these are only the tip of the iceberg across the industry and we will continue to report on them as they happen.
Profits are 2-way street
In addition to the fact that sportsbooks are a business like any other, and businesses usually need to profit to exist (unless you are a non-profit) — there may be another explanation for the book's ruthlessness towards winners.
Also on The Ray & Adam Show Episode 18, Andrew Pace (CEO of inplayLIVE), brought to light that governments "require them [the books] to become profitable for their region, state or province, in order to receive the benefits they had hoped to receive from regulation."
Pace explained "when it comes to becoming legalized in a state, the taxation on those books profits is a huge reason for the legalization."
And as we all know, governments run huge deficits constantly, so the new sports betting landscape has been another tool on their belt to reduce their debts & get their piece of the pie.
As Pace put it, "400 billion illegal dollars were wagered in the United States in 2017. So it's to capitalize and get the taxation on something that's already happening."
The New York Times confirmed this as well, stating “The states are not disinterested parties. They collect taxes on gambling, and the more people bet, the more governments get.”
So with the new legalization, books need to hold up their end of the bargain (with profits to tax) or the regulators will question why they even legalized them in the first place.
Creating a fair playing field
All this said, is there space for everyone to coexist?
Sportsbooks need to profit to stay alive but should there be a world where all customers of that business are happy and valued?
We already know the losers are treated like royalty.
But the winners — who are not treated so fairly and discriminated on for their talents and skill — definitely think so.
Prince J. Grimes of USA Today, who also referenced Danny Funt's article, summed it up pretty accurately: Sportsbooks limit your ability to make a living off betting, but they’re happy to let you go broke.
So what are winners doing?
One way they are pivoting is by taking their business elsewhere to the few books that don't limit their action.
Pace also explained on the podcast that smart books that don't limit will actually use sharps data to improve their odds and balance their books action.
As Pace describes it, "You can coexist in the space if you know how to run your book properly...rather than treat us [bettors] fairly, they are not running their books to the degree they need to get to for this fairness to occur. Rather than fixing things, they are running from the problem. Clawing back wagers, reversing bets, limiting players for very small amounts of profitability."
Our betting world today is engineered to drown you in losses over time, so a level playing field at a minimum should be a fair ask.
And the crazy thing is the books would still turn a profit...
As the space gets more understood, things need to change
On top of this missed opportunity for the books to improve, regulators will now start to become pressured by the public for things to change.
Instead of this being the books against the winners, proper rules need to be put into place to ensure a long term, sustainable solution for everyone.
Covers' Adam Chernoff is doing his part by asking betting regulators to step in and act now to protect the player.
And things are already starting to change in Europe.
A court judge in Spain recently ruled in favor of two users who had their accounts suspended by Betfair and Bet365 during their winning streak.
"As of the ruling, the companies will lose the right to limit accounts, bet amounts, or prevent continued gambling," reports Yogonet.
Since then, both users’ previously closed accounts are back up and running, and their no limit bettor statuses have been restored.
In France, it's now against the law to limit players.
So, change is possible and hopefully more prevalent in the near future.
What you can do if you've been limited
We have a full article here that outlines the steps you can take. But here are the highlights:
#1. Support books who are doing it right and don't limit sharp bettors
Pinnacle, Cloudbet.io, Bookmaker are where winners go to play.
#2. Contact your local regulatory bodies, explain what happened to you and advocate for a more fair betting landscape
Each geographical location has its own regulatory body that has a complaint filing process.
We’ve compiled a list of all the regulators in Canada and the US here for your use.
It’s imperative as a player that the discrimination you’ve experienced be reported. To do this, file a complaint with your local regulator illustrating the malpractice you’ve been exposed to.
#3. Contact news channels, post to socials, exposed any unfair practices in any way you can
You can also get in touch with local news reporters via social media, and even post and tag reporters on socials with your story to expose the books practices. More and more reporters are starting to cover this.
Share your stories and change will happen.
Mark Rodgman
Mark is a Top 30 Under 30, award-winning entrepreneur & the co-founder of inplayLIVE. He’s consulted some of the most famous companies in the world like Samsung, Cisco, Kickstarter, as well as many of the fastest growing Google-backed startups from Silicon Valley.
