Beware of Sportsbook Scams
by Predictem.com Staff
With the 2013 NFL and NCAA football seasons on the horizon, offshore sportsbook marketing departments will kick into high gear with hopes of gaining you as a client.
If you’ve ever signed up at an online sportsbook, you’re going to get a slew of emails promoting 100% signup bonuses, reduced juice offerings, free half points and everything else that you can think of. You’re going to be promised everything under the sun.
Let’s go back to the “if you’ve ever signed up with an online sportsbook, you’re going to be contacted with email promos” comment. This is where the potential problem starts… A ex disgruntled employee or sellout employee of an online sportsbook has access to a sportsbook’s database of players. This info includes the player’s names, addresses and phone numbers and most importantly, email addresses. This is valuable stuff that tons of people are willing to pay for in order to gain access to these targeted “leads”. The list gets sold, your info gets circulated and like a chain letter, every Tom, Dick and Harry in the industry eventually gets their hands on your email address. All the while, you’ve only ever signed up at one sportsbook!
While most sportsbooks are legit, a handful of the offerings that you’re going to receive come from organizations/companies that lack integrity and that are going to be leaving some holding an empty bag. Yes, there are outfits that are all-out scams from the get-go and that have absolutely no intention of paying you should you win your bets. That’s where we come in…. By no means do we have access to the financials of our sportsbook advertisers. What we do have is a repoire and that will go a long way for you, should you run into any (legit) issues with a sportsbook that is advertised on Predictem.com. We have leverage! These joints aren’t going to screw over the players we refer to them because if they did, they know we’d drop them from our site.
Furthermore, we’ve been in and around the industry since 1998. We know who the good, the bad and the ugly are in the industry. While we don’t proclaim to be insiders and as noted above, we don’t have access to the financials of our sportsbook advertisers, we do have a good idea of who the best are to work with.
With that being said, please be careful about accepting email offers that are too good to be true. These scam sportsbooks are always out in full force at the beginning of football season because they know bettors are out loading up their wagering accounts prior to week 1 starting.
As a general rule of thumb (and this goes for everything in life), if something looks too good to be true, it probably is! Pass on it and stick with a proven commodity, an online sportsbook that is advertised on Predictem.com!
Here’s a list of NO NONSENSE online sportsbooks where your money is safe and you won’t have to worry about any issues. Keep in mind the promos may not be as hot as the killer offer that you’re receiving in your email, but you’re assured of getting paid at our recommended sportsbooks and more importantly, not getting scammed!
Here’s our list of the most solid sportsbooks on the web:
5Dimes – Offers -105 reduced juice. This means that you risk $105 per $100 that you’re trying to win rather than $110 to win $100 like most online sportsbooks. This will save you HUGE money and trumps any bonus that you can receive. Don’t care about reduced vigorish? They’ve got you covered as they offer a 50% match play bonus if you’d like that instead!
For Non-USA Bettors
Bet365 – This might quite possibly be the most credible, trustworthy and most player friendly bookmaker on the internet. They’ve been around forever and have a ton of land based sportsbooks in Europe as well.
