Caveat Emptor – Buyer Beware!

By now we have all heard of the sports bettor who thought he won $82,000 at the FanDuel sportsbook at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. Now, there are other claims coming out, amounting to $138,000 or so, as of this blog post. If you are blissfully unaware of this situation, here’s a link to a news article: https://sports.yahoo.com/fanduel-refuses-pay-138000-winnings-nfl-gambling-glitch-170639388.html

When the Supreme Court announced its decision to overturn PASPA, in May 2018, many cheered and hailed the ruling as a step in the right direction. After all, American adult should be allowed to do what she or he wants to do with their money! My reaction was, and still is, “Be careful what you ask for.”

On the surface, expanded sports wagering seems like a pretty innocuous thing. And, yeah, if we want to get a little action on a sporting contest, we absolutely should have the legal right to do it. But do not consider that making bets consists in a vacuum. You must consider there is always another side to this action. What’s the other side? The legal bookies, of course.

The Holy Grail for sports betting operators, like FanDuel and all the rest, is NOT about you being able to bet on a single sporting contest. Nope, that was never the plan. The plan is, and this is what most Americans betting sports have not considered, the development of “In-Game Wagering.” We now know of the debacle detailed in the story I have linked to, above. But it is so much more insidious than that. Here’s the deal…

The sportsbook operators don’t make much profit on the standard juice of -110 laid on the standard sports wager. There profit is about 5.4% on these kinds of wagers. Where they intend to make the majority of their profits is on in-game wagering options. We can all do the math on betting $110 to win $100 and can figure those odds. What we cannot do, realistically, is calculate the proper in-game odds being offered on the next play.

In-game wagering allows a gambler to bet on the next play, or the outcome of the next play, or even get a new line on the outcome of the event, based on what has already happened. The tricky part, and the part the gambler will get shorted on, is the proper odds being offered for that event she is betting on to happen. Heck, even the coin toss odds are always stacked against the bettor. In the coin toss, the outcome will be either heads or tails, so the proper odds would be +100, for either outcome. But, odds are always offered at -105, or worse, for either of the two outcomes. The book has a guaranteed profit.

Now, back to in-game wagering odds. The true odds of an event happening, let’s say the football team gets a first down on the next play are +150. The oddsmakers know this. Or, rather, their computer knows this. But the in-game gambler is only guessing what the proper odds are and has only seconds to react. Let’s say the odds flash on the screen at +110. The gambler hits this number and the first down happens and he gets paid. He actually just got screwed in a very subtle but meaningful way.

Here’s the math on a hypothetical $10 in-game wager:

• $10 x 1.5 = $15
• $10 x 1.1 = $11
• $15 – $11 = $4
• $4 / $10 = 0.4 = 40%

The gambler got shorted 40% on the payout.

This is perfectly legal and I doubt you will ever hear anyone complain about this.

So, what’s the point? The point is, good luck getting fair odds, or even calculating what they should be, when you are only given seconds to act on your in-game wager.

This is straight up gambling folks. And the sportsbook operators know they have a book full of sheep eager to be fleeced…thinking they are getting a fair line.

Buyer Beware…