Steve* has laid bets totalling over $30 million in his sports gambling career. Averaged out, he’s made $128 a day, every day, for the past eight years. And he thinks there’s barely any point in you even getting started.
“I get five emails a day saying ‘I’ve been betting with my system for three months and I’m ready to go full time,’” he says. “Every single person that has ever emailed me, I say ‘do not bet full time.’”
It’s not the kind of perspective you imagine hearing from someone whose improbable existence seems to prove serious gamblers can ‘make it’ in Australia, and his personal account attests to the insane figures he’s racked up. But what he sees as unfair treatment by bookmakers has been compounded by a recent overhaul of Australian gambling legislation, which could permanently alter an industry already defined by razor-thin margins and, yes, luck.
“I say ‘look, in a year, if you’re still making a profit, let me know how you’re going.’ And I’ve never received a reply,” the gambler and blog-runner says. “All of these guys that have stars in their eyes, thinking that they’re going to become pro gamblers, end up losing it.”
The thing is, restricting the offers that have helped boost people like Steve into the world of sports gambling might just stop a new punter from blowing it all.
On September 8, the nation’s federal, state and territory gambling ministers convened to discuss a whole raft of measures aimed at curtailing disordered gambling in Australia. It’s a crushing public health issue: Problem Gambling Australia reports we bet more, and lose more, than any population on Earth. As many as 160,000 Aussies face problems because of their gambling. The personal impact of gambling addiction is heart-breaking; its proliferation is harrowing.
Borne of a desire to curtail disordered gambling in the online space, the new National Consumer Protection Framework advocates measures like a nationwide self-exclusion register, and the streamlining of online account closures. It was also agreed that bookmakers should be barred from offering seemingly lucrative sign-up bonuses – known as inducement bets – to new customers.
Right now, bookmakers can ‘induce’ new accountholders by offering artificially inflated odds on events, or bonus credit to lay on a bet. Every time you’ve ever seen an ad boasting a first deposit bonus, or a wild cash-back offer, you’ve been exposed to an inducement bet. You might have even signed up to an online bookie because of one. While these offers obviously can’t influence the result of a punt, they can massively bolster a gambler’s potential winnings, and that’s the point: the promise of easy cash, fast.
But the real genius of these promotions goes beyond a punter’s first loss, as bonuses can subtly train gamblers to become comfortable betting far more than they would otherwise. Bookmakers aren’t concerned with a few big initial payouts if they believe the gambler will come back for more, on their terms, and lose.
Things are complicated by punters like Steve, who claim enough knowledge of the industry to flit between bookies, capitalise on those otherworldly bonus odds, and seem to avoid the money-burning murk of ‘traditional’ gambling practises. It’s this class of gambler which believes a push to help those at risk of disordered betting could constrict their bankroll-building schemes.
Richard is one of them. He only went full-time last October; at least, ‘full-time’ is closest definition I can find for a mate of mine whose gambling winnings now constitute his entire income, a 24-year-old whose working life took an unexpected detour from engineering to wagering on sports. It’s worth noting Richard isn’t his real name, and those around him know largely on a need-to-know basis – his existence sounds improbable to even his closest friends, let alone his immediate family – and to be honest, I’m pretty lucky he’s agreed to be so open with me.
But the preference for anonymity is pragmatic. Forget the awkward conversations with acquaintances desperate to learn how he makes a living – he’s more worried about bookmakers outright banning him. Not for his own good, he says, but because he’s too efficient at exploiting those bonus bets, and parlaying that experience into regular ol’ wagering.
“If you place a certain type of bet, or you place your bets a certain way, you can generate a scenario that’s almost like a no-loss scenario,” Richard claims.
“And that’s just through promos where they say if your horse runs second or third, you get your money back. And there’d be heaps of those promos back in the day – I started doing that.”
Should Richard’s winnings match his estimates from the beginning of the year, his earnings in 2017 will approach the enviable white-collar salary he abandoned. To date, the cash he’s turned over on sports betting – mostly horses, but also golf and tennis – plunges deep into six-figure territory. That’s a pattern bookmakers have noticed.
Patterns are an odd thing for him in general. Richard tells me that in an average day, he’s not ‘working’ for any longer than 90 minutes.
“At the start, I was probably even quicker,” he explains. “I could probably do it all within an hour a day, but that was when I had more bookies available, it was easier for me to find good odds without me having to trawl through them.”
That “trawling” is a result of what Richard characterises as a system-wide crackdown on winning punters, whereby anyone who demonstrates an ability to win, and win, and win, is barred from placing bets when the odds are most beneficial, or taking advantage of those seemingly lucrative promos.
“So, look, conventional bookmakers have the option of rejecting customers like any other business,” Richard says. “They utilise that to full effect.”
“It’s a pain in my arse.”
Bet365, which previously fielded the bulk of his wagers, apparently now restricts him to maximum bets totalling no more than a few dollars. Richard says that when he punches in his account details on William Hill, the odds available to him drop by up to 20%. Taking advantage of sign-up bets from the scant few online bookies he’s doesn’t already frequent can be lucrative, but he’s concerned the new guidelines will make it almost impossible to eke a profit.
After hearing that, flipping back to the Framework is confronting. The report notes “young male sports bettors in particular, [check] reported being encouraged… to open accounts to receive ‘free’ bonuses, [check] and to move between operators to access different incentives.” Check.
Also: “‘risk-free’ bets were considered to strongly encourage sports betting because they create the false impression that winning is certain.” Check.
In addition to the crackdown on inducement bets, Aussies are now forbidden from placing bets with online bookies that don’t have licenses here. Steve tells me it’s nearly impossible for punters to sustain a profit with onshore providers; Richard has already seen his deposits returned as overseas operators resign themselves to the new legislation.
Things have changed drastically in the past eight months alone and look, Richard is even contemplating going back to work to bolster his income. “It’s very much a case of ‘losers welcome, winners buzz off,’” Richard says.
It’s those losers Dr Sally Gainsbury seems more concerned about. As one of the nation’s foremost experts on disordered gambling, she has every right to be.
Speaking to me from her office at the University of Sydney’s Gambling Treatment & Research Clinic, Dr Gainsbury explains inducement bets are less about giving rare leverage to switched-on gamblers than tapping into risk-taking instincts.
“People who have gambling difficulties tend to have difficulties controlling their impulses,” Dr Gainsbury says, referencing the wildly enticing offers available to some new and vulnerable punters. While gamblers who don’t believe themselves to have a compulsion might see an inducement bet as a calculated risk, others may tumble into a gambling session far more costly than anticipated.
Seeing a sign-up offer for an online bookie also means, you know, signing up. That means receiving promotional content in the following weeks, months, and years. Dr. Gainsbury contends those follow-ups have comparable psychological power, and encourage members to keep placing bets well after the thrill of a bonus bets’ potential outcome have expired. (The Framework will ban email marketing to those who choose to self-exclude from online gambling.)
I ask her about Richard, who catapulted himself into sports gambling on the preferential odds offered by inducement bets.
“The reality is bookmakers don’t give away much for free, so they may be some perception of short-term gain,” Dr Gainsbury says. “But the intention is for people to open up an account.”
I can’t help but think about the dozen-or-so bookmakers Richard rifles through looking for the best odds.
“Bonus bets, like any commercial offer, come and go,” Dr Gainsbury says.
While there has been a period where people who are savvy individuals can take advantage of these, there’s no guarantee.
It’s certainly not something that’s needed in society.
It might be a drag on a certain group of consumers, but it’s important to consider the potential impact on the most vulnerable groups. So that’s the balance that needs to be struck.
Steve has a few gripes with that balance, and he’s quick to point out that gamblers on both ends of the spectrum are being squeezed by bookmakers. At the top end are the fortunate few like himself – a bloke who was capable of laying $50,000 of expendable income onto his gambling experiment – who now find themselves constricted by the industry and impending regulations.
“If you’re looking at sports [betting], right now, there’s no point,” he says of the pincer-claw of bookies banning some from lucrative bonus offers. That’s not even considering the incoming government action which aims to finish the job.
The hypocrisy is doubled, he says, because it’s just as easy for an online bookmaker to identify and restrict a problem gambler as it is a winning gambler – but those with compulsive and damaging habits rarely seem to be cut off. Quite the opposite, Steve says.
“Instead of sending them emails saying ‘you might have a problem, how about you talk to a financial counsellor in Australia,’ instead they send them promos, send them away on sporting trips, give them everything they dream of, knowing they’re problem gamblers.”
Steve supports tighter regulations on bookies. By the same token, he reckons the inducements and bonuses locked away from the so-called “savvy” gamblers would likely still be offered to losing punters with genuine, life-altering gambling problems if the new legislation never came into play.
So despite his track record, and the consumer protections on the horizon, Steve admits success is difficult at best, and impossible at worst.
“99.9% of punters should see gambling as an entertaining pastime. If they’re smart enough, they should only lose a bit over the long run.
“But what you’ve got because of all the media marketing [is] people thinking they’re in something they can make money from, which is not true.”
While Richard admits online sports gambling in Australia is only going to get tougher, he doesn’t currently have plans to stop punting. Not until he’s restricted from anywhere that’ll take his bets, at least.
Amid all of the precise explanations of his methods, of how he intends to extract value from a system designed to claw as much money from gamblers as possible, a lone unguarded moment presents itself. It’s when he admits that, yes, “the next six months could completely wipe me out.” Within a minute, he’s back to comparing his portfolio to an investment in the housing market.
For all of that clear intelligence and instinct for a good punt, I can’t help but imagine a moment when Richard finds the bookies have won. Then, I think about the massive bets this new legislation could prevent, and how many Aussies might just escape life-altering losses.
*Although Steve says his full name is available online, he chose not to provide it, citing privacy concerns. PEDESTRIAN.TV has chosen not to publish it here.
