The Different Types Of Bettors: Which Do Bookmakers Prefer?
Bookmakers are easily accessible in this wonderful modern age of technology, but is there a certain type of customer that they like? Bookmakers are a business and that is an important thing for punters not to forget. They exist to make money.
The more customers that they get through the door, be that at a physical location or their virtual door at an online betting site, the better news for them. That all equates to more money going into their pockets.
But interestingly not all customers are equal in the eyes of the bookmakers, because of how individual of a pastime it can be. Some punters hit betting sites regularly and play a lot of money, while others may be more risk aversive and others just occasional bettors.
Some punters hunt around and scan through a list of bookmakers. Here we take a look at the different kinds of bettors and which of those bookmakers may prefer.
The Casual Bettor
Someone that just dips into a bit of sports betting now and again is the casual bettor. It could be someone who just bets on annual events like the Grand National, the Super Bowl or the FA Cup Final.
This type of punter is not really too worried about searching out the best odds, as putting a stake down is just a means to an end of trying to enjoy the moment. These are actual bookmaker-friendly punters in a way, because of not trying to beat the odds. But they are not the type of customers that bookmakers like those mentioned at https://legalbet.uk/bookmakers/ take in a lot of money from.
The Recreational Bettor
Going up the ladder in terms of frequency is the recreational bettor. This is the most common type of bettor. It is the type of customer that still enjoys the recreational side of sports betting but does things with a more studious approach.
The recreational bettor has a fair degree of knowledge and skill when it comes to studying stats and understanding markets and odds. While the casual bettor may dip into different sports because of mainly doing big event betting, the recreational bettor in contrast will tend to focus on a narrower range of options.
A recreational punter is more selective and disciplined than the ones from the previous category. This is a good type of customer for online betting sites because things like biases still come into play as well as emotions, creating losses.
The recreational bettor will probably play bets that have moderate margins, but go at them with a little more frequency. So that larger volume of bets means that people who fall into this category are a lot more engaged and will stick around exploring a good amount and range of bets. The recreational bettor will probably shop around a lot and look for the best odds and best promotions.
The Regular Bettors
Regular bettors are players that the bookmakers will like the most because these are loyal players that turn over plenty of bets. They are more likely to stick to the one bookmaker because of the time factor.
Regular bettors are more focused on their betting systems and doing everything in their power to exercise and extract as much value from odds as possible, even dipping into more complicated betting practices like arbitrage and hedging.
So shopping around for things like promotions is probably not going to be as much interest to them. It’s about the system, relying on it to win bets. Bookmakers like regular bettors because they are consistent and reliable in placing wagers, plus the bookmaker doesn’t have to go chasing them for retention.
The Nuances
Even though you may fall into one of those above categories right now, you may not stay there. You may have traits from one or two of them and be somewhere in between. That’s part and parcel of sports betting, it’s a very personal thing and it’s a dynamic thing that can change over time.
But for the bookmaker, the best customers for them are those that play consistently. Such a customer means that they were a low-cost acquisition and retention isn’t going to be costly either because regular bettors play for odds more than things like offers and bonuses.
One type of punter that we haven’t mentioned is the professional bettor. These are players with massively high bankrolls who try to make a living from doing it, putting endless hours of knowledge and skill into practice.
At the end of the day, bookmakers like and dislike different types of bettors based on their profitability and riskiness.