A response to European-Style Sportsbooks: Bad for Everyone

I have never been refused action by a single crypto-based sportsbook in my lifetime. I believe that this is the case for anyone who has made any decent amount of money in crypto betting. Spinning up a new account/wallet is easy at many of these sportsbooks.

I begrudge these non-crypto books and, frankly, feel super lucky that I never bet money on their platforms. It is hard enough to make money at a 2.4% margin. In my experience, many professional bettors have made significant profits in some form or another thanks to betting with cryptocurrency, and it makes sense that they are hungry for more opportunities to do what they came here to do: make money.

In my opinion, traditional sportsbooks struggle with antiquated ethical quandaries due to the direct adversarial relationship between themselves and their customers. Thanks to blockchain, trustless betting becomes reality through smart contracts. These contracts are compiled code that once deployed, are immutable and execute exactly as intended. Metaphorically this is the ideal state for punters. You should be able to make bets without the risk of bets not being honoured.

The only valve a bookmaker has on the blockchain is to simply trade better. Bookmaking is a very tough industry in which to make any money, especially nowadays. However, most bookmaking professionals dismiss blockchain because nobody explains the benefits of decentralization. The reality is that adopting blockchain technology, a decentralized oracle network and smart contracts allows for significant savings which can be passed on to customers in the form of reduced margins.

reaPlease tell me you read it too.

Of course, as the Head Trader for a blockchain-based sportsbook, I have no pity for traditional sportsbooks; the fact of the matter is that bookmakers who don’t adopt winning technology should be abandoned. They offer a lower integrity product at a much higher price, feature painfully slow account funding and withdrawals and often only do any business at all due to their natural monopoly that has come as a result of regulation. In fact, if you look at the industry today, all sportsbooks fall into three distinct groups, only two of which, in my opinion, are going to succeed in the technology driven, free market future:

Traditional Sportsbooks

Traditional sportsbooks are clearly for-profit enterprises and will do everything they can to make a profit, even if that is operating in a customer-unfriendly fashion. Personally, I would not operate how these sportsbooks operate- somehow making money while banning customers, taking weeks to deal with payments, not covering every market, offering bad odds with no chance of systematic winning and worst of all, failing to honour bets.

Cryptocurrency Sportsbooks

The crypto (escrow) sportsbooks are, in my opinion, worthy of some respect. They are often unable to offer a large volume of bets because their liquidity is limited. Nevertheless, these sportsbooks often offer a straightforward product with very good ancillary upside value. Traditional books, on the other hand, cut the bettor out from sharing in the financial value of the network’s growth and bettors deserve that opportunity.

Blockchain Protocol Sportsbooks

The FansUnite Protocol and to a lesser extent, some other options currently available, represent the best choice: protocols which allows any new entrant to join the network and take part in the value creation that arises from shared, immutable and fraud-proof data delivered to all participants involved in the ecosystem.

As an individual bettor you should demand some benefit from the network and data you create, which the bookmakers collect and use against you!

What you look like when you participate in a blockchain protocol sportsbook

Blockchain Protocol Sportsbooks: Supreme for Integrity, Lower Operation Costs and Improved Bettor Experiences

Sportsbooks that are not blockchain-based are missing many benefits for operators, bettors, leagues and regulators. Integrity suffers, incentives are not aligned, and middle men are required. This includes payment processors, the costs of which must be passed on to the end consumer. A blockchain sports betting protocol is fantastic for bettors for various reasons:

Data is open.

Blockchain data is transparent, immutable, free and open to everyone. Having a protocol’s betting data written to a public blockchain enables bettors and modelers access to data that was previously siloed by betting operators. Any Data Scientist knows the mantra:

More data is always better.

2. Data is immutable and fault tolerant.

Betting data written to a public blockchain cannot be altered, it can’t be voided, it can’t be hacked, and it is available to any network participant for nearly no cost.

The result is lower odds and forensic grade betting integrity tools (good for the leagues and regulatory bodies).

3. Data costs are very low (Good for operators).

Data is now available to everyone in real time. The entire cost of payment provision and bet resolution is nearing $0. The cost of data is now nearing $0. It’s all in the distributed database and sourced from the decentralized and incentivized oracle network.

4. Cronyism is abolished.

Smart contracts are compiled programmatic sets of rules that are immutable. What is deployed is written in stone and not even hacker cyborgs can change that. A smart contract executes exactly as written.