A Quick Look at Bookmaking as a Profession

If you are thinking about moving to a full-time career as a bookie, or bookmaker, then you are joining one of the oldest professions in the world.

The first written record of bookmaking dates all the way back to ancient Rome when people gathered to put down bets on chariot races, gladiatorial bouts, and other sporting events. It reappeared as a modern phenomenon in Great Britain in the 1700s, after a long period of time when the Church had a great deal of political sway and sent gambling deep underground. Even today, in some countries, legal bookmaking can only be done by organizations supervised or owned by the government. However, the recent liberalization of in-laws about sports betting have meant that more and more people can set up their own books.

Let’s take a closer look at just what a bookie is and does, and how a pay per head platform can make your book many times more profitable.

A Look at Bookmaking as a Profession

The actual bookie meaning is short for a bookmaker, which is someone who operates a gambling practice of setting odds and then taking bets on sporting event outcomes, including horse racing but also expanding to just about every other bettable type of sport. Bookies also take action in political contests and a variety of competitions. The United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and Belgium are some countries that allow entities to set up and operate bookmaking organizations.

What about bookies in the United States?

In the United States market, estimates indicate that there are several hundred thousand people at work as bookmakers. However, the number of those currently doing business legally is a small fraction of that number, like New Jersey, New York, and Nevada, at this writing, are the only states that allow open bookmaking operations. There are some casinos in the United States that do business as bookmakers, taking wagers primarily on sporting events. In those casinos, this department is generally referred to as the “sportsbook.” Legal bookmaking focuses on such sports as professional baseball, basketball, boxing, American football, football (soccer), hockey, tennis, golf, and UFC/MMA, along with college football and basketball.

To go further into the idea of bookie meaning, the actual “book” in question is the action that a bookmaker has taken. When that book is in balance, he will bring in profits no matter which way the event turns out. He does this by setting odds that include a built-in “vig,” or vigorish. Let’s say that a bookmaker puts a -110 Moneyline on both sides of an outcome, which means that if you are betting $110 to win $100, and if the betting stays in balance, the bookie will profit either way.

However, achieving that balance can be difficult. If there is enough lag time between the setting of opening odds and the start time of the event, the line will often shift if action comes in out of balance. In order to protect himself from unbalanced action, smaller bookies will either limit the wagering amount on a favorite or will simply re-bet the wagers with a larger business the wagers he would have a difficult time paying in the event of a loss. This has led to the establishment of several organizations that only take wagers from other bookmakers.

What are the advantages of moving to a pay-per-head platform?

It’s the twenty-first century, so any business that expects to have any sort of success must have an online presence, preferably with an app. Why? Because people don’t want to worry about dealing in cash. They don’t want to have to drop cash off, or pick cash up, from their bookie. Instead, they want everything to run through the Internet – preferably on their smartphone. Studies show that people use their smartphones or tablets to access the Internet far more than they do at a computer, particularly when they are looking at non-work-related sites.

This means that, if you want to build your sportsbook, you can’t expect people to sit down at their desktops and visit the site you built on Weebly to manage their betting action. They will dump you for a sportsbook that is mobile optimized and does not look like it was designed as part of a sixth-grade computer science class. However, you may not have the funds on hand to pay for a web developer or to buy the software yourself. You definitely do not have the time to teach yourself how to use the software and then to build the site yourself, particularly if you already have one full-time job that you are building your sportsbook to escape.

Instead, why not take advantage of a platform that already exists to build your business? AcePerHead.com has invested handsomely to put together a platform that offers each of its sportsbook agent clients access to customizable skins so that their websites look like they were designed to be unique. The platform also has casino gaming built-in, including live dealers, to let you engage your betting clients more – and to add to your revenues. You can use the point spreads and money lines that Ace Pay Per Head has set using its research, or you can set your own, and then you can change them, 24/7, in real-time in case the action starts to get out of balance on your matchups.

You get all of this for one low weekly fee. The amount of that fee depends on the number of active betting clients you have on your AcePerHead.com-supported book. The fee is the same, no matter how many bets each client places (and clients who take the week off from betting do not cost you a dime). You get to focus on what you like best – researching matchups, setting lines, marketing your business so that your book keeps growing.

If this sounds interesting to you, reach out to one of our sales and support staff at AcePerHead.com today! We’d love to bring you onto our platform as the next great sportsbook!