PITTSBURGH- A pair of prominent sports bettors reiterated their calls for greater fairness and transparency from regulated sportsbooks at a gaming industry conference Friday.
Billy Walters, widely recognized as one of the most successful sports bettors of all time, and fellow pro Gadoon “Spanky” Kyrollos said sportsbooks’ practice of limiting or outright banning winning players was unfair and even “UnAmerican.” Speaking at a panel of the National Committee of Legislators from Gaming States conference, Walters said that the practice needs to end.
“The thing that I'm really concerned with for legalized sports betting is that we have disparities,” Walters said. “I think in the United States that we were all born and raised to believe in everyone being treated equally and being treated fairly. So if you qualify for a sportsbook account and your money is clean, it's legal, I think you should be treated equally legally.”
Downsides of limiting
Walters is arguably the most famous name in pro sports betting. Over multiple decades he became renowned for successful sports bets and was featured on 60 Minutes.
While he's praised legal sports betting in the past for its transparency, Walters is pushing for sportsbooks to allow players like himself to participate.
“They are arbitrarily throwing people out of sportsbooks because they just want to throw them out,” Walters said. “They haven't violated the rule. They haven't done anything wrong, and the majority of time is because, frankly, many of these people who operate these sportsbooks don't have the expertise to be an operator.”
Walters claims that bookmakers’ inexperience leads them to fear winning bettors. To protect their bottom lines, regulated U.S. books have adopted a model common in Europe where bookmakers severely limit successful players or ban them entirely.
Instead, Walters believes books should use the knowledge from these “sharp” bettors to adjust their betting lines and make more money along with the winning bettors.
Billy Walters criticizes current US bookmaking strategies to ban winning bettors; he said books should use the expertise of "sharp" bettors, take their bets, and adjust their betting lines accordingly; regulated sportsbooks are missing out on revenue by banning winning bettors
— Ryan Butler (@ButlerBets) July 19, 2024
Walters argues that by banning these players instead of using their expertise to create better lines, sportsbooks are hurting their bottom lines more than accepting their bets. As a result, players turn to offshore sites or unregulated bookies, diminishing the tax revenue legal books generate and hurting one of the key benefits of a regulated market.
Kyrollos agrees. A prominent bettor on social media, Kyrollos has gained a large following in part for his videos of getting removed from sportsbooks due to his winning bets and his advocacy for books to end this practice. He argues operators know the practice of banning bettors and not adhering to universal customer betting minimums hurts the industry’s long-term sustainability.
“The operators that have said ‘that we don't know how long the legislation and the rate vendors
will allow us to do this’,” Kyrollos said. “Essentially, they know their hands [are] in the cookie jar,
and they're letting their investors know that ‘my hands in the cookie jar, I know. I can't believe it's
been in the cookie jar for this long.’”
"If you're good at something you're not supposed to be penalized for it," pro bettor "Spanky" Kyrollos said during today's NCLGS conference about US regulated sportsbooks limiting or banning bettors
— Ryan Butler (@ButlerBets) July 19, 2024
Solutions
For the pro bettors, the solution includes established betting limits accessible to all bettors.
On a casino floor, Kyrollos said, every game has posted minimums and maximums. Sportsbooks are the lone exception. They can adjust limits based on the player, a practice Kyrollos said was unfair.
The speakers Friday also said books should be more transparent with their odds and provide clear probabilities so bettors can better understand what they’re wagering on.
Casino industry veteran Richard Schuetz, who joined the bettors during a panel at Friday’s conference, said state regulators can take key steps toward those aims. Largely agreeing with the other panelists, Schuetz commended Massachusetts regulators for pushing books to explain their process of banning players.
Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal wagering ban in May 2018, 38 states plus
Washington D.C. now offer some form of legal sports betting. No regulators in any of these
jurisdictions have policies prohibiting operators from banning winning players.
Pro bettors are a vocal subset that has argued this unfair practice is detrimental to not just customers but also the books themselves.
“To my knowledge, I don't think anyone with knowledge of sports betting was involved in that process,” Walters said about the rollout of legal sports betting outside Nevada. “I don't think the regulators have heard from sports bettors. And I think we need to have a voice.”
