Is Being a Bookie Safe?

Being a bookie is not like some gangster or mafia movie. Booking action on sports is a multibillion-dollar a year industry full of multiple different players such as Vegas Casinos, and other Casinos from around the world, online sportsbooks, and local bookies. Each of these sectors of the industry earns large amounts in profits because the house always wins and players lose over the long term.

When talking about if it is safe to be a bookie that question usually refers to whether or not you can go to jail or have legal problems. Just like any other business in the world, if you don’t follow the rules and laws in that specific industry, then yes you do run the risk of being penalized by the law by either fines or steeper penalties. 

In this specific business, not all places allow legal gambling, so the first step is just making sure that wherever you are operating your bookmaking business, that it is legal in that area. Depending on which country you are in, the rules are different. For example, if you are located in the United States, the laws on legal gambling are quickly changing with each state being allowed to determine if they want to allow legal gambling or not.

Various states have already legalized gambling, and many more states are in the processing of legalizing gambling in the near future. Probably within the next 10 years, almost all the states will have some form of legalized gambling.  So if you live in the United States and are interested in booking action, it’s best to speak to your local attorney to see whether or not you are legally allowed to accept wagers and what that process entails.

If you are fortunate enough to live and operate in a place where it is legal to be a bookie then the next step would be getting a sportsbook website platform set up. Luckily you don’t have to spend huge amounts of money to build a website and hire workers to input all the sports betting options each day and have servers to run your network.

Instead, you can utilize one of the already established pay-per-head companies that offer a turnkey solution that does everything for you for just a small flat fee. These companies provide you with a professional-style sportsbook website where they are the ones posting thousands of betting options each day and updating and grading all wagers up to the second 24/7. They invest millions of dollars a year on servers and technology to enable local bookies to have a site that is always functional, and with little actual work from the bookie.

You as the bookie just need to only have players that want to bet on your website. These services are called pay per head because the only fee associated with the service is a per head active player a week fee. Typically the cost is around $10 per active player a week but can vary depending on the quality of each website, service, and betting options available.  Then whatever the players win or lose, you as the bookie handle all the payments directly with your players and keep 100% of the profits.

So as long as you live in a place where gambling is legal, then not only will booking action be safe, but it will be an extremely lucrative business where you can make hundreds and or thousands of dollars a week, with an extremely small overhead cost.