Every successful punter will experience bookmaker restrictions at some point in their betting career.
Why do Bookies restrict accounts?
- Arbing or Arbitrage Betting: is a way of exploiting bookmakers different odds in order to make a profit on sports betting. Bookmakers hate this and have systems in place to detect suspicious behaviour and patterns where your trade activity suggests you are arbing.
- Following Tipsters: Some Bookmakers don’t like popular tipsters as if everyone is betting on the same thing it gives them with a large hole in their pocket if the tipster is right. Bookmakers like balanced bets so that they can guarantee a profit whatever the outcome, Tipsters with large influences can outweigh the opposing backing and so should Bookmakers see a high influx of betting patterns on your account similar of that to the most popular Tipsters they might restrict your account.
- You’re Winning: This is pretty common and if you’re making consistent and large profits overtime on your account, you are an unprofitable customer and so your account could be frozen, restricted or closed regardless of if you were exploiting their system or not.
- Trading & User Behaviour: Bookmakers have systems that log your user activity, if you’re someone who simply logs in, places a bet and logs out without watching the live matches and moves onto the next bookmaker your account may be flagged and inspected for further suspicious behaviour.
Isn’t it illegal for Bookmakers to close your account?
The short answer is no it isn’t. They are private companies that are profit-driven after all and in their T&C’s they may have a line that says they can close your account at any point which you agree to when you open an account with them.
The Gambling Sector is regulated by several organisations however their goals are more focused is to adjudicate on bets that have already been placed and not on account restrictions and closures that are often flagged for arbitrary.
