What Does a Bookie Do?

A bookie is someone who takes action on sporting events from people that gamble. Taking action means accepting a wager on a sporting event, and then paying the person who made the wager if the bet wins, or collecting from the person if the bet loses.

For example, if the Tampa Bay Bucs are playing the New Orleans Saints and the Bucs are -7.5 and a person bets the Bucs at -7.5 at -110 to win a $100, this means the player will risk $110 to win $110.  The -110 is called the vigorish or the juice and that is basically the surcharge or cost of making the wager which in this case is 10% of the amount won.   For the bookie to earn money on the wager he would need either the Saints to win the game outright or for the Saints to lose the game by 7 points or less.  If this happened then the Bucs would not cover the spread and the player would lose his wager to the bookie and lose a total of $110.  If the Bucs won the game by 8 points or more then the bookie would need to pay the player the $100 for the winning wager.

The more volume of wagers the bookmaker accepts, and the more players he has making wagers each week, will increase his overall earnings. The saying of the house always wins, is a very true statement and that is why Vegas, Casinos, and Sportsbooks are extremely profitable businesses for these companies. Not only are people not very good at gambling and barely win even half of the time, but that 10% juice that is added to each wager, means that players would need to win around 65% of their wagers to break even, which is very rare.  As a result, bookies earn a lot of money over the long term from booking action.

So how does one become a bookie?

Now it is easier than ever to become a local bookie and take action from people you know such as your friends, family, coworkers, schoolmates, and social media friends.  There are companies dedicated to providing a professional sportsbook website to any bookie, which is called pay-per-head companies.

These companies provide a sportsbook website where they post hundreds of thousands of sports betting options each day, and then manage the lines and update all the odds up to the second. Then as soon as each game ends they grade all wagers according to the final result, and all balances get automatically updated into both the players’ and bookies’ online accounts. The pay-per-head service manages all the bookmaking aspects of the business and lets the local bookie reap all the benefits of the overall losses from their players. 

These sports betting services charge a small flat fee, which is usually around $10 per active player a week, where the player can bet an unlimited amount of times each week. Then whatever the player wins or loses, is handled directly between the player and bookie in whatever form of payment they both decide on, and the bookie keeps 100% of the profits from this. 

Considering that gamblers often lose hundreds to thousands of dollars a week from gambling, it becomes quite clear that bookies can earn a lot of money, especially if they have a large group of gamblers that bet consistently with them.

So if you are a local bookie that wants to move your business online, or are just someone looking to get in the business, then wait no longer and get set up today with one of the top-rated pay-per-head companies in the business.