If you can go into your sportsbook app and place a bet for any amount you want (up to whatever the general limit is for that event), chances are you aren’t winning enough.
If you were, your sportsbook would have likely placed a limit on how much you could bet — and thus, how much you could win — at a figure much lower than the general public.
Known as the European model, “sacking” winning customers is a practice that American bookmakers are increasingly adopting, Danny Funt of The Washington Post reported Thursday.
DraftKings has been very open about this strategy with CEO Jason Robins getting into a bit of a PR mess last December after declaring “People who are doing this for profit are not the players we want”.
But it’s completely anti-American, predatory and driving successful bettors back into the illegal and dangerous markets we were supposed to be getting away from.
A popular promotional tactic online sportsbooks use to drive awareness and encourage betting is to share photos of winning tickets on social media. Usually, it’s the big winners. If you follow DraftKings, FanDuel or any number of other sportsbooks on Twitter or Instagram, chances are you’ve seen a few.
Something with a caption like: “Bet $1 to win $20,000!”
What they don’t tell you is how many of these bets actually lose. That those thousands of losers offset the few big winners. They want you to believe there’s a chance to get rich. And if you get hooked and go broke in the process, that’s on you.
But if you happen to get good enough to actually get rich? Well, they can’t really have that happening. And that’s when bettors start seeing limits on how much they can bet.
“Sharps,” or bettors who understand the market and have an edge, are being limited faster and more aggressively than in the past, according to the Post. A DraftKings bettor won $50,000 on a $1,000 bet that Evan Fournier would lead the Knicks in scoring against the Celtics. A day later, he couldn’t bet more than $100. A few days after that, he couldn’t bet more than $3.63.
According to Funt, even those inside the industry are voicing concern:
Some experts on the other side of the counter agree. “Too many accounts get limited, and those that get limited are limited too harshly,” said Chris Fargis, senior director of trading risk at the sportsbook that Fanatics, the merchandise giant, plans to launch next year. Fargis, who previously ran the DraftKings sportsbook, says large digital operators are forced to make some limiting decisions using automation. Modern software often lacks the “granularity,” Fargis said, to limit a certain customer on one type of bet but not another. Even good technology doesn’t negate the need for skilled employees, he added. “Some operators just don’t choose to staff heavily against that problem.
The Post reports these type of individual limits are allowed nationwide. Sportsbooks hide behind their “entertainment company” description for the reason they’re entitled to make money but customers aren’t. And though it’s understandable from a business perspective why they’d use every tool at their disposal to ensure that’s the case — especially as they start looking to turn a profit — it’s completely unethical and states need to step in to create laws that prevent these type of individual limits.
If sportsbooks are confident enough to offer a line for betting, everyone should be able to bet on that line the same. If you aren’t limiting people’s ability to go broke, then you shouldn’t limit their ability to make money either — padding your pockets with the cash of bad bettors while being unwilling to pay the good ones.
