DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A BOOKIE?
Being a successful bookie is a culmination of several different skills: you need to master content, sales, psychology, customer service, and good old-fashioned marketing if you want to grow your sports betting business.
Bottom line? If you want to build a sustainable sports wagering business, a professional customer and sportsbook management platform like Sports Data and Software Lease is a must.
With Sports Data and Software Lease as your sportsbook and bookie solution, you’ll be able to grow your business with the sharpest lines in the industry, live betting, online and live dealer casino options.
It’s no secret that the sports betting industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world.
In this guide, I’m going to show you everything you need to build the sports betting company of your dreams.
Let’s dive right in.
QUESTION:
“HOW DO I BECOME A BOOKIE?”
You know bookies make money and, if they run a good book, they can make a lot of it. We are here to teach you exactly how to become a professional bookie while avoiding common problems that newcomers face when building or expanding their sportsbook for the first time.
UNDERSTANDING THE ONLINE GAMBLING MARKET
Before we dive into the details of getting into the bookmaking business, it’s important to know the money involved. The online gaming market is one of the fastest growing industries in the world.
ONLINE GAMING INCLUDES:
Altogether, online gaming brought in an estimated 37 billion dollars, according to Statista. The biggest grossing contenders on that list? Online gambling – sportsbetting and online casinos.
If you take a brief look at the growth of the online gambling market over the past 10 years and where the market is headed, you can see it’s only going to continue to dominate.
LET’S HAVE A LOOK:
ONLINE GAMBLING IS A C.$35BN MARKET, EXPECTED TO GROW BY 20% IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS
When you become a bookie, you need to keep an eye on market growth and related technologies in order to stay competitive.
For instance, the biggest trend within the market currently is Mobile Betting. Make sure you offer an app for your players in order to capitalize on that.
See below the upcoming growth of mobile betting:
BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL BOOKIE: WHAT TO EXPECT
Now that you understand some of the basics, we’ll get into what you can expect out of your business. This varies between bookies based on their business goals and overall lifestyles, but we can give you a basic idea as to what to expect.
We’re going to go through some of the basics, including money, time spent, and how to do the essential stuff to grow your sportsbook.
SETTING UP YOUR BUSINESS
Step one in building your business is setting up the basics.
You need a player management system first and foremost. This is exactly what our sportsbook software does: it manages your players, their credit, wins, losses and every aspect of their wagers with you.
At this stage of the game, you shouldn’t expect to make a huge amount of money, so don’t worry about having just a few players in there to start. Remain focused on a small number of bettors to build relationships and ensure that your Sports Data and Software Lease accounts are working exactly the way you want them to.
You’re working on setting up the pieces that will let you make money consistently throughout the course of the year or the season.
PROSPECTING YOUR BETTING CUSTOMERS
There are typically two types of bookies in this business. The first already has a circle of friends or family who bet regularly, and they can redirect those bets through their own book.
The second either bets with a bookie now or just wants to open up their own book to make additional money.
Obviously, if you can build your book from people that you already know, and who are already betting, then this is the way that you should go. Start with pre-existing relationships. Either way you’ll be able to get some clients quickly using a few easy tactics.
If you want to learn more, you can access a wealth of bookie success information right here on the Sports Data and Software Lease website.
GETTING YOUR SPORTSBOOK STARTED; BEGIN WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Taking bets from your friends and family is the easiest way to start building your book. Not only are these people already betting on the games that you’re watching, but you earn instant credibility for knowing them beforehand.
All you have to do is offer them the same lines that you are seeing from major Vegas casinos, which are also the spreads that their bookies are likely using. They will be more than happy to use your services instead because they know friends won’t cheat them.
BUILDING YOUR BOOKIE BUSINESS THROUGH REFERRALS.
The sports and bookmaking business is no different than every other business in the world. Start with your relationships and build on them. Make one customer happy and then have them refer a new customer for you.
Wash, rinse and repeat.
The key to long-term success is turning strangers into customers and customers into friends. Let’s talk about how building trust will grow your business.
How do you go up to someone and know that they are willing to give you action? There’s an art to getting to know strangers and getting them to become one of the players in your book.
It all starts with talking about sports, horse racing, casino gaming, eSports, or poker.
Get them talking about their interests. Learn about them and warm them up to the idea of betting to make the game more exciting.
Keep in mind: you could be talking to them on Facebook, at a party, through another customer, or in the comments section of your favorite YouTube videos.
They will be happy to direct more action towards you in general if the sports that other bookies offer are out of season. Getting your foot in the door with off-season betting is a great way to grab clients from other bookies.
When prospecting for new sports betting clients, find out where they spend most of their time.
You can head on over to pretty much any bar that has a TV broadcasting sports, then become familiar with the venues that really focus on catering to people who are interested in watching the game versus those who are just hanging out and having fun.
Start watching whatever game is on TV (whether or not you want to offer action on it) and talk to some of the people around you. From there, you have plenty of options, including:
Asking what the line is
Talking about some of the prop bets available
Talking like you have money on the game
Your goal is to get someone talking about betting on the game. You can be sure that anyone who shows more than a passing interest in talking about sports betting in this type of place will be a great potential client.
Next, you can start talking about other games on that day (or in the next couple days) and pretty much anything else, but the goal here is to really sell the experience of spending time with you and betting with you.
If the conversation keeps going, you can even offer them some small action on the game to get them focused on gambling right there with you.
Placing a few small bets on the games that you’re watching will also help build trust. From there you can easily get them to bet with you.
There are a few common objections that you may end up running into with potential customers.
First, they might be getting better odds with their current bookie. If this is the case, then you can get new clients by offering even better odds.
This isn’t something that you’ll have to do all the time, but giving someone a point or two on the first few bets will go a long way.
Second, they might not trust you. This usually has less to do with you and more to do with how comfortable they are taking bets with a stranger.
If they usually bet with a guy they’ve known for years, you can’t expect to replace that relationship with a few bets over a beer.
Over time, you can win them over, especially if you’re giving them better odds. Look at it as a relationship that will pay off in the long-run and focus more on having fun with them than with turning them into a client right away. If people keep giving you the impression that they don’t trust you, then you’ll want to reassess how you’re approaching people.
They “don’t gamble” that much.
Most of the time, people that “don’t gamble” actually do gamble, but they don’t think of it like a bookie/client relationship.
In these cases, you’ll want to approach the situation more from a friendly perspective, but give them the same odds that you would give anyone else. It’s not as much about what they’re doing with you, but how they feel about the situation when they’re actually giving you action.
All of your clients should feel like they’re betting with a friend. People come to you for more than just betting. They want to be entertained, and that means that you need to be someone they have fun around.
GROWING YOUR PLAYER CLIENT BASE
Almost all gamblers will be betting through someone else before they start working with you. There is an art to taking business from other bookies, along with both a “nice” way to do it that is safe and ethical.
You don’t want to start developing a bad reputation for taking clients from other bookies, so we are just going to focus on the better way to approach this type of situation: Becoming a Specialist for Other Bookies.
When you’re building your book, a good way to start getting more clients is by working with other bookies who specialize in one sport. Many of them have issues keeping clients because most sports gamblers want to bet year-round, not just when their bookie feels like taking action.
Offer your services as a specialist for a sport that they don’t currently offer, and ask to take their clients off their hands for the season. When your sportsbook software offers so many different events to wager on, that’s easy to do.
You will get a client roster that you can work with immediately, and some of them will stay with you after the season.
Now, how do you get another bookie to agree to this?
WATCHING THE BOOKMAKER BUDGET.
Even if you’ve bet on sports frequently, there is a chance you know very little about how a bookie manages his business.
An established bookie knows what to keep in reserve, but the question is: what should you reserve for a new business?
When starting your business, there are a few different problems that you need to contend with. First, with new clients, you want to make sure you have enough money to float the bet. Make sure you aren’t relying on the loser to pay the winners right away. Additionally, you must be able to go for multiple weeks without the worry of going under.
Regardless of the client relationship, expect that some people will stiff you when you are owed money.
The math is fairly simple when starting out and will vary based on the amount of business you are doing.
First, estimate the amount of total weekly action. You will need to cover this every week you’re in business. From there, it’s important to have at least four average weeks of cash available to you to cover all payments to clients.
The important thing to remember is to have cash available to cover any scenario. You can’t afford to drive away clients through a failure to pay them.
Paying out winnings immediately is easy with a great Agent Payment Solution and could make you a favorite bookie in no time.
ISSUING CREDIT
For the health of your business, it’s important to be assertive when you need to be paid.
Do not let your clients get away with not paying you back. It does make sense to be a little more patient with new clients, but steer clear of an “IOU” scenario or else you’ll have no money in the bank.
Follow these rules to a successful credit strategy:
Keep your players in check. Never let them wager too often, too frequently or for very large amounts.
Stick to a consistent “settlement day.” Tuesdays are a good day for this. When collecting regularly and on a weekly basis you will always have a handle on your client’s balance sheet.
If you are going to use credit, then make your players earn it. Take the proper amount of time to ensure that credit is a reward reserved only for the most reliable customers in your book.
USING THE RIGHT SPORTSBOOK AND PLAYER MANAGEMENT PLATFORM
Technology is essential to keep track of everything, but don’t spend too much time refining it. You just need to know the basics.
For right now, we’ll go over some essential software features you should be looking for to build a lean and effective sportsbook. Now, without further adieu, here’s what you need:
GET A DEDICATED SMART PHONE
Assuming that you already have a smart phone, you may want to consider to getting a business line that is dedicated specifically to your book. You can manage certain aspects of your business on-the-go while keeping your personal life separate. As your business grows, you may want to get other phones for your business, especially if you have a considerable amount of staff.
THE IMPORTANCE OF
CUSTOMER TRACKING
As your business grows, you will need to track your customers.
People think that since you are small you have to work with small or “old school” tools. Bookies don’t need to use paper anymore, or even spreadsheets for that matter. It’s best to use bookie management software even for beginners, since it saves so much time to pursue new clients.
If you decide to track your business manually, you will need:
Player Tracking Sheet: A simple worksheet with the names, phone numbers, total amount owed, and notes on each of your clients.
Individual Bet Sheet: This sheet contains every bet that you take on every game. Ideally it should contain the sport, team, direction, size of the action, odds, and type of bet.
We offer a secure, modern solution for managing your bookmaking business. It’s all included with your Sports Data and Software Lease subscription.
Below you can see the benefits of the Sports Data and Software Lease Player Management Dashboard.
From this section of our Bookie Management platform, you have the ability to set credit limits, line types, and all aspects of player information. Our Sportsbook Management platform will free you from paper records, allow you to accurately track your players, and grow your bookmaking business.
At the end of the day you need a platform that does the heavy lifting for you.
HIRING STAFF
It’s important to hire only when the saved time outweighs the cost of paying someone. Our advice is to start slowly and grow organically to avoid snap decisions. Develop a consistent revenue stream before you bring people on to help you out. It may be tempting to hire everyone that you think you need, but you might not be ready to hire any employees yet.
Having a staff of 1-4 people for these tasks is not uncommon for a bookie that doing sufficient business. At some point, it will make sense to start pushing off some of the tasks that you really dislike onto a trusted employee or two. That will be a great way to keep your book growing while minimizing the amount of time that you spend running it each week.
The first person you want to hire is someone who can work with clients. It consumes a lot of time. Having someone to manage some of your hassle-free clients and get in touch with them will free up a lot of time that you can use to build your business.
SETTING SPORTSBOOK ODDS INTELLIGENTLY
You may think that bookies spend a lot of time setting their own odds, but in reality this isn’t a big concern. The best thing to do is to stay in line with Vegas odds for everything that you do: it’s simple and will keep clients happy. No client wants to feel like they’re getting ripped off with worse odds. A good place to check the odds is Sports Insights.
Another concern you’ll face will be around taking weird prop bets or anything other than straight bets on the winning team or the over/under. While it’s tempting, the best option is to keep things consistent and only offer that action if you really have to. Not only are they hard to hedge, but they could seriously hurt your cash flow.
MAKING MONEY AS AN ONLINE BOOKIE
While a bettor is waiting for a major payoff, you are winning money every single time they place a wager in your sportsbook.
The life of a bookie isn’t about saying “this bet will put me in the green for the year.” it’s about looking at your book every week and knowing that, on average, your clients could be paying you thousands of dollars just for the opportunity to place a bet with you.
Becoming a professional bookmaker means looking at the “long game.”
THE VIG OR THE VIGORISH
The Vig (or “Vigorish”) is your main source of income.
When you take bets from your clients, you’re getting a guaranteed percentage of every wager placed in your book.
Bookies often take up to 10% of total action for a reasonable margin of safety to take bets, allowing you to provide the best service possible.
This can amount to a few thousand dollars a week, which isn’t a bad salary for handling a few bets and managing the administrative side of things.
On the other hand, be prepared to contact your clients regularly, offer them good lines, and practice good customer service. When you compare all of these small hassles with relatively consistent weekly earnings just from the Vig, you’ll see why the sports betting business is so profitable.
LOPSIDED BETTING OPTIONS
It’s easy to see the effects of lopsided betting action.
Ask anyone who knows sports and they will have some bias for or against a particular team.
As a bookie, you get to take advantage of that action, shifting your lines so that players who bet on a particular home team will be more likely to fall on the losing side of things.
You can’t do this too much or players will go somewhere else, but giving yourself a slightly favorable line can result in consistently bigger payouts on top of your Vig.
LONG SHOTS AND UNDER DOGS – HOW TO MANAGE YOUR PLAYERS
Your most aggressive clients will always want to make big gambles on longshot or underdog bets.
These are the minor lines like whether or not the home team’s first points will be on a kickoff return (for example).
Not only do they pay off big, but they will regularly pay off big for you. If you can handle the action, accepting these bets will add some consistency to your weekly earnings since they don’t hit too often.
If you take a few $50 long shot bets a week, then you can easily handle the big, inconsistent wins that you will earn while streamlining your earnings over time.
Be very careful on long shots anyway. Just imagine taking big action on Leicester City in England’s Premier League at 5,000-to-1 odds to win the 2016 title. Not fun.
These are the three big ways that bookies can make money. Not only are they relatively easy, but they are consistent in their payoffs as well.
The same cannot be said for traditional sports betting from the other side. As a bookie, you don’t want to be trumpeting these advantages to your clients, so many of these topics won’t be discussed out there. Your losses, on the other hand, will be.
COMMON BOOKIE MISTAKES AND HOW TO AVOID THEM
FINANCIAL RISKS
EVERY BOOKIE FACES
As in any other business, bookies face some financial risks. Let us point out some that we already explained but are worth reminding:
Giving too much edge is a key marketing tactic to attract new players. As we mentioned before in “Skewing the odds too much for new clients,” this has to be managed very carefully. It can swing against you quickly and mercilessly.
Bringing in (Proposition) Prop Bets can bring in additional income, as they consistently miss and only require a payout every few weeks. Do be careful of a poorly-timed major prop bet that could spell the end of your career in taking wagers.
Taking too much action on a bad line. When it comes to taking action, the rule of the road is to take it on both sides of the board. What often happens is that most books end up being heavily weighted to one side on games where clients have a particular interest. The best way to deal with it is to balance your book and then hedge the rest of it. Hedging itself has a bad name, but it brings some positive benefits for your book. First off, having your position fully hedged can keep a novice bookie in the black (or close to it) during even the worst weeks, and it can spell major profits during the best times.
In due time you will find alternative options to grow your bookmaking business, including improving your website, making full use of your bookmaking software, and advertising.
Congratulations on your plan become a bookie and start your own business. Becoming an entrepreneur is as exciting as it is nerve-racking, so ease into it slowly.
Remember: you have the resources, you have the sportsbook management software, and you have the determination to become an online bookie.
Bookmark this page, as we will constantly be updating the information and resources. Good luck!
To your success,