Or at minimum, banning advertising for it.

If people want to gamble, they are free to look for a bookie, if people want to buy heroin, they are free to look for a street pharmaceutical sales representative, but neither should be allowed to manufacture demand for their poison, or hand out free samples.

> In 2022, Washington Post reported a bettor Beau Wagner who bet $1,000 and won $50,000 on an NBA game. He tweeted a screenshot of his winning bet, and DraftKings reposted it with the caption, “BEAU KNOWS BETTING”. However, a day after his successful bet, his betting limit was severely restricted to a grand total of three dollars and sixty three cents. DraftKings used his win as an advertisement to lure new, unsophisticated bettors to the platform, but they shut down the very bettor they were advertising.

Absolute scum.

I don't think they should ban it, but they shouldn't be allowed to ban good bettors.

Maybe regulate, not ban, or it just goes back underground.

Reminds me of when I was a teenager and Denny's banned me and my other hungry, teenage friends from eating at their "All you can eat" buffet. The manager was at least transparent about it, telling us we were literally eating his profits for the day. LOL

Why?

You haven't made any argument.

And lots of industries ban unprofitable customers. All-you-can-eat restaurants will ban customers who eat/take absurd amounts of food, which is unprofitable. Landlords don't rent to prospective tenants who have a history of not paying rent, which is unprofitable. Every major retailer will ban you if you return too many items too often, which is unprofitable.

So why would betting be any different? Banning highly unprofitable customers is normal business practice across many industries.

There's a reason we call it the free market rather than the forced market. Businesses aren't forced to transact with individuals (unless they are discriminating against specific protected classes like race or gender).

There's more to it. Even if the sports-book functions as an exchange, holding ~zero stake in the outcomes, they still want to ban anyone who consistently wins.

That's because if you have a few smart players who consistently win, that means you have a lot of fools who will consistently lose money on the platform - which will drive them away, and impact both betting activity and the spread you collect.

Ideally, you want a bunch of uninformed fools generating huge volume gambling against eachother, while you siphon away spread.

It's a deplorable, lose-lose industry.

No, it doesn't work that way. Bettors, in this context, aren't price-sensitive so the book is never balanced. There are some tools that bookmakers use to get more balanced - handicap markets - but it still never ends up being balanced if you are a largely retail-facing book.

Depending on how the money comes in for a given line, the line will move to account for possible losses for the book. So the odds aren’t just set once, they slide around.

Generally this happens based on how the sharks bet, not dissimilar to how market-makers affect stock prices, as a bad/loose analogy.

Odds providers have their models on how likely each outcome is. They add a spread to this (for example if it's 50/50, they'll pay out 1.8x instead of 2x). The line can also be affected by other factors, like how likely it is one side is oversubscribed. They don't make money on all markets, just most

But if someone has a model that is so significantly better than theirs that it beats the line _and_ spread, they will make money in the long run. Haralabos Voulgaris for example is likely one of the most successful sports bettors. Very interesting guy imo

They have to compete with others. If the 'good' betters go with you that means you have worse odds that your competition and anyone else who knows goes elsewhere.

the real money is in pools where only a few people bet. however that works best if you get people to bet on the unlikely thing you want to take the other side as you can win more often. Often the unlikely thing is only possible because you take a side - so the savey better is taking away your bets.