As the bookmakers blame affordability checks for falling profits one thing has always stood out. Just how much money the bigger bookmakers have left on the table through their increasingly ridiculous policy of restricting so many accounts. These companies have spent fortunes getting these customers through the door only to show them the door at even the slightest hint that they are not a complete mug. Swathing restrictions are commonplace now. Have been for years. Just the ‘European’ bookmaking model.
The biggest bookmakers would be as well served to literally rip up the account profiling that they have on their customer base and start again. It was a bit different ten+ years ago as the technology wasn’t always there to implement these things properly. It is there now. What would happen is that a customer would potentially be able to beat a sport and the bookmaker would ban that individual from placing bets on all sports, not just the ones they were potentially successful at. Absolute insanity. They can restrict by sport now.
I remember when the Betfair Sportsbook was launched. They had all this incredible data with which to profile customers and they ended up absolutely butchering the situation. They literally restricted anyone who showed a profit on the exchange from day one. When you think it through it is so absurd. Let’s imagine I am an exchange customer who was up £100k on my account overall. I might be up £600k on Horse Racing. Down £300k on Soccer. Down £100k on Tennis. Down £100k on Golf. That customer was blanket banned from betting on all sports on the sportsbook. I understand restricting them on horse racing although again there are caveats to this. Maybe the customer is down £400k on pre off Horse Racing but up £1m in running. Who knows. You would want to take their bets every day of the week on pre off horse racing. The same applies to their Soccer, Tennis and Golf action. You are also losing the ability to cross sell products like casinos to these customers. They may not be restricted but I struggle to believe many stay loyal to a casino where their sports betting is restricted.
I think of my own situation. There are sports where I wouldn’t want to lay my bets. There are many more where I would happily do so. I might take all pre off bets and no in running bets. I wouldn’t want to take my pre off golf action 8 years ago. Now I would. Blanket banning. No way. The situation constantly evolves. I always think of those who had accounts restricted many years ago. They may have been winning punters when the markets were a bit softer. Many of those restricted as winning punters would no longer be winning punters these days.
I think the number of people who are successful long term winning punters is massively overstated. One of the problems with the industry is that you simply have no idea how many accounts are genuine and how many belong to people who have multi accounted etc. It is in the industries interest to give the impression that there are large numbers of winners. It’s why they manipulate the data like they do. How many winning punters would there be if you stripped back on some of the ridiculous offerings that are clearly loss leaders like overnight Horse Racing. Or those who just take advantage of bonus offers/concessions. Arbers. I have talked before about how misleading the data is relating to 3% of customers accounts being winning ones. The real number of long term winning accounts is tiny. The numbers who can beat multiple sports obviously even smaller.
As the markets continue to get more efficient the bookmakers should be happier than ever to take more action from customers. If anything they are going the other way. They are quicker than ever to restrict customers. Maybe invest in your trading teams rather than strip them bare. Bookmakers these days aren’t even giving themselves a chance to see whether a customer would potentially provide them with great information. They are often restricted long before they get a chance. I know certain bookmakers will still happily lay a few bets to certain customers to get ‘their card marked’ as such. It tends to be the smaller ones. However, those days for the big corporates seem long gone. It really is a case of only mugs are welcome.
I can completely understand why a bookmaker would want to restrict customers who just arb, or try and beat time delays, or only bet on filthy each way races, try to circumvent limits, multi account etc etc. Those customers deserve what they get quite frankly. It just feels that the bigger corporate bookmakers will eventually have to review their current policies. There isn’t an endless stream of punters. Particularly when it is so much harder now to take those ones who are complete mugs to the cleaners like they used to. Yes, they can focus on other jurisdictions like America but they will eventually run into the same problems. I guess those in charge are always happy to keep looking at short term profitability and simply don’t care about the longer term future of the business. That’s not to say these companies havent been wildly successful. They have. That’s not to say though they couldn’t have been even more successful.
It may not happen anytime soon under the Andrew Rhodes leadership but there will come a time when bookmakers wont be able to behave with such impunity with regard to restricting customers. Maybe the growth of the Black Market and actually acknowledging it exists will be the start of that. Once you accept that it is a problem and is only going to get worse, you have to realise the impact that bookmaker restrictions have had on sending people to such markets.
Winning at sports betting long term is tough. You wouldn’t think so judging by the current bookmaker policies. You wouldn’t think so judging by Gambling Twitter. I am absolutely convinced the bookies are leaving fortunes out there with their current strategies. If someone is great at a sport restrict them. Let them prove they are worthy of being restricted on the other sports. And you know what. If they are that good maybe use that information to your advantage. Don’t be afraid of it. Start again and do the job properly.
I will leave you with this. I heard recently that one of the most famous punters in the world. Widely regarded as one of the most successful. Is a losing punter at one of the biggest sportsbooks on his chosen sport. Doesn’t bet with them any more. If they aren’t beating those markets then you can be sure few others are.
ProPunting 