Booking Sports: Take Control Of Your Business

By Author: Gerald Perry
Total Articles: 28
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Bookmakers who have made the decision to move their players into a pay per head office have made a big first step in the right direction for building their business. However, many new agents feel overwhelmed by the abundance of wagering options they are suddenly confronted with. Many have never offered the more complex wager types or sports that per head shops make available to them. In fact, by using a price per head service bookmakers suddenly find themselves to be the proprietors of a fully fledged offshore sportsbook.

The thing to keep in mind is that not all bookmaking operations are created equally. Just because you can offer wagering lines on a particular sport or wager type does not necessarily mean that you should. Before making the decision to offer certain types of bets you need to determine their value as it pertains to your bottom line. A good pay per head company will work with you to help you determine what you should be taking action on from your players.

Proposition bets, like will Tom Brady throw ...
... Ov/Un 3 ½ TDs in today's game, are becoming more popular with bettors. They can be a good money maker for you but do not get carried away. You should keep your limits low on prop bets, futures and quarters to avoid getting picked off by your players. Some of the biggest offshore sportsbooks who take millions in action every Sunday will only take around $200 on certain types of bets. If you are booking sharp player action you may want to disallow prop wagering entirely.

A good example of a wager that all bookies should accept without hesitation is the parlay. When a bookie is on his own parlays can be a pain in the butt because they are time consuming to write and grade and of course there is the potential for the player to hit a big win. With professional price per head bookmaking services this is no longer the case. Parlays are a huge source of income for bookies because they rarely hit, but even if they do you can limit the payout to keep those winnings at a manageable level. Do not let players bully you into accepting big parlay payoffs, if they want to hit a big win on a ticket by wagering a few dollars, I tell them to go play the lottery.

A good rule of thumb is once you have set a limit for full game lines, sides and totals your limits on other wager types should be 50% of regular maximum bets.