Missouri voters recently passed a constitutional amendment that would allow sports betting. The sports betting apps (Fanduel, DraftKings, a couple of others) are bombarding me with ads. One such ad offers $300 in “bonus bets” if I bet an initial $5. That makes absolutely no sense to me. I’m to understand that I’m effectively betting the casino’s money, but here’s the thing: if I made 60 $5 bets on 1:1 propositions, statistically I can expect to win $150, minus the vig.
So either they expect me to get hooked, and the $150 I’m going to win is their loss leader to get me through the door (so to speak). That, or they think I’m going to bet the $300 on some wild proposition that’s almost certainly a loss.
Is there something I’m missing here? Surely the casino isn’t going to risk $150 to get me hooked, are they?
You are absolutely correct on this either/or. Most people will bet the $300 on a parlay that would pay big dollars, and they will lose. Some people like yourself will bet smart and make $150. Some people like me will win $150 and close half of my accounts.
Couldn’t they potentially lose tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars? Is it that much of a sure thing that folks will blow the 300 or get hooked and gamble away more than what they win with the 300?
Certainly could, but they obviously haven’t yet. Every sportsbook has done this in every state that has recently legalized gambling.
Bet365 recently did this here in Kansas. Bet 5 bucks and get $150 in free bets. I did this and got my $150 free bets. I bet 4 $37.50 2-leg parlays on the same game:
Team A to cover, and the over
Team A to cover, and the under
Team B to cover, and the over
Team B to cover, and the under
Obviously I lost 3 of those and won 1. The bet I won paid me $120. I also won my original $5 bet, which paid $9.50. I made another small bet which lost, and I cashed out $125 and closed my account.
Yes, it absolutely is. Mobile sports betting is an absolute plague on society, and the casinos will profit 100 fold as it bankrupts untold numbers of people in your state.
And a lot of people will bet on the wild proposition (aka, the parlay) that promises 1,000 to 1 if, for example, you pick the three quarterbacks who have the most passing yardage this weekend.
It’s not legal here and I’m not a big gambler myself. Although I am going to Vegas in December it’s mostly to see inlaws. I don’t find much of that place enjoyable anymore.
There’s an outfit called Kalshi that is a sports (and other) gambling site that for now is legal in the entire US. They don’t take a vig. They take a set transaction fee per bet which is a private transaction between betters. They have been able to register with the Federal Government as a brokerage. I probably have some details wrong but that’s the gist of it. Texas and California have tried to sue and Kalshi’s response is “fuck off. You don’t have jurisdiction. This is Federal”.
Litigation will take years I imagine. Fan Duels and Draft Kings are staying out of it for now to not piss off the States. Gambling is heading in the direction of fentanyl in terms of societal damage.
Since nobody else has commented on this… If this is the way it actually works, it’s not “We’ll give you $150 free to gamble with”; it’s “we’ll loan you $150 to gamble with that you still have to pay back”.
If that’s the way it worked, if I made a $150 bet and lost, I’d have to deposit $150 of my own money to pay them back. But it’s not - if I lose a bet, I lose the house credit and that’s it. If I win, I just get the winnings, not the underlying wager amount (i.e. I bet $150 on a -150 money line, I get $100 of money I can withdraw, and not $250).
Ah, in that case, a long-shot bet is the optimal way to use that “free” money. If you win at 1000 to 1 odds, you won’t care if they only pay out at a rate equivalent to 999 to 1, and if you lose, it wasn’t your money anyway.
Do you mean this one? I got $150 bonuses at 2 different sites, bet opposite 1:1 bets at both (I had to find 3 different games since one of the sites gave you 3 $50 bets you had to use separately), and wound up with $138 net profit.
As I pointed out in that thread though, you’ve got to give a lot of info to the betting sites to open an acct, much more than you would on a normal commerce site.
In addition to the catches described above (and some other ones - like people who have technical glitches with their accounts after they’ve won big), the fact is that the betting companies know that a certain percentage of people are prone to getting hooked on instant feedback bets - and some of those people just have never taken their first hit. It’s worth it to the gambling sites to be the dealer who finds such a person, under the “the first hit’s free” principle.