What Issues with Bookmakers You Can Encounter If You Are Not Careful Enough When Betting On Sports

More people than ever are betting on sports, thanks to the widespread availability of sports betting platforms, offering a huge choice of markets and sports. Top bookies Australia allows to operate. Many leading bookmakers in the US, UK, Ireland, and other countries are trying to ride the wave of the growing interest in sports betting and provide attractive betting offers to both new users and existing customers. 

Betting on sports, however, is no different from any other financial transaction. You should always know what you are risking, what rules apply to your bet, and what happens in even unlikely scenarios. Failure to fully understand the details can be costly. Bookmakers do not need any encouragement to withhold winnings or to void bets, and if you fail to know the rules, you’re making it too easy for them! Read on, and we will tell you about some of the sensitive aspects you should be especially careful about.

Know What You’re Betting On

Many betting mistakes are down to a failure on the part of the punter to fully understand what they are betting on and what the rules of that market are.  

Caught Out by Extra Time 

Let’s say you’ve had a bet on Brazil to beat Germany in a World Cup Round of 16 matches. The game goes to extra time and penalties, but Brazil wins the penalty shootout, and as the Brazilian players celebrate on the pitch, you open up your betting account to check how much you’ve won. 

Unfortunately, there are no winnings in your account. Why? Well, you didn’t check the market you were betting on closely enough. In the case of soccer tournament knockout games, or any game that has to be settled on the day, the standard 1×2 betting market refers to the normal time result. In this case, you had bet on Brazil to win in normal time, and that bet was a loser.  

Instead, you should have been betting in the ‘Which Team Will Advance?’ market, where there are only two options. This can catch out football punters who are used to betting on standard football games.  

Goalscorer: First or Anytime? 

In this scenario, you are quickly clicking through the various football markets for a high-profile game, and you open one of the goalscorer markets. You see that your favorite striker is priced at 3/1, and you think that is a bargain, so you have a bet. Sure enough, he scores his team’s second goal of the game.  

So how much did you win? Well, nothing. Check the market more closely, and you will see that you’ve bet on the First Goalscorer in the game. The market you were looking for was the Anytime Goalscorer option. This is why you should never make a bet in a hurry, particularly when you are scanning through dozens of available markets. If you don’t have time to check and double-check your bet, you shouldn’t make it.  

Dead Heat Confusion 

Futures markets are very popular ahead of major tournaments, and they can attract a lot of bets from punters who don’t bet very often or who don’t usually bet in this type of market.  

Let’s say you bet on Player A to be the top scorer at an upcoming tournament. Player A has a good tournament, as you predicted and scores seven goals, tying with Player B as the top goalscorer. That means you won your bet, right? After all, he was technically the top goalscorer.  

Unfortunately, you’ve just fallen foul of a common mistake. When there is a dead heat, certain rules apply, and in this case, although you will be paid out, you will only get half the odds as there were two players finishing level at the end of the tournament. 

Read the Terms and Conditions

So you’ve signed up for a new sports betting account that offers a 100% deposit match bonus for new customers. You make a £10 deposit using your Neteller account and wait for the free bet to appear in your account. But you may be waiting for some time.  

You angrily get in touch with customer support, who calmly inform you that since you made your deposit using Neteller, it isn’t eligible for the welcome bonus. Certain that they are making it up, you check the terms and conditions for the bonus offer, and sure enough, there it is: Neteller and Skrill deposits are not eligible for this promotion.  

Don’t Forget the Wagering Requirements 

No one likes wagering requirements, but they are even more unpleasant when you aren’t expecting them. Let’s say you sign up for a new sports betting account, claim a £10 deposit match bonus, and use the free bet to wager on a football team to win at 2/1. Great news!  

Unfortunately, when you head to the cashier section of the site to withdraw your winnings, you find that you can’t. Why? Because this particular welcome bonus has a 10x wagering requirement, which means that you have to bet 10 x your winnings before you can withdraw your money. It’s a nasty surprise which could have been avoided if you’d read the terms and conditions.  

Bookmakers: The Last Word 

Of course, there are circumstances in which bookmakers are wrong. You should certainly never accept their word without question, and if there is a genuine dispute, you may have to contact the betting regulator in your jurisdiction. To make yourself a bit more secure, you can find trusted and absolutely reliable betting sites on platforms like Match.Center, which analyses bookmakers’ operations and compiles their lists according to different parameters.   

Often, however, the perceived error is simply the result of a customer has failed to fully understand what they were betting on. Betting on sports is a financial transaction, and you should treat it as such, making sure that you understand all of the rules and know exactly what you’re betting on.