Bankrolling Your Bookmaking Business

Bookmakers Bankroll

Anyone who starts their own business needs an adequate amount of cash on hand to aid in its successful daily operation, but this is especially true when it comes to the bookmaking business.

Cash flow is king when it comes to booking bets in what can be one of the most unpredictable businesses you could be a part of.

Bettors have a tendency to go on winning and losing streaks on a regular basis and if the stars do not align properly, you can quickly find yourself between a rock and hard place if too many of your customers get hot at the same time.

One of the keys to maintaining an adequate bankroll that is large enough to handle all of your financial obligations is balance.

The whole concept of bookmaking hinges on the ability to balance out your bets so the leftover profit is the vig or juice that you charge for taking the bet. In an ideal world, you would love to have half of your customers place $100 bets on one team and then have the other half place all of their $100 wagers on the opposing side. What would be left is a nice 10 percent profit no matter what the outcome of that particular matchup turns out to be.

Unfortunately, bookmaking does not exist in such a perfect world like that, so you need to be prepared to pay out large sums of cash when that balance does not exist. It is one thing to take bets, but it is another to fully understand your financial liabilities at any given time. Your goal is to lay bets off against one another, but you may get caught with a heavy amount of cash on three or four totally different games which increases your exposure.

If you are dealing with one large single event such as the Super Bowl, it is imperative that you constantly adjust your betting lines to maintain a balance between all the bets whether they are on a side, total line or money line. Sometimes this is easier said than done, especially when there is a wave of action on one particular team over another.

You cannot control who or what your customers will wager on so you almost have to assume that you are going to lose in the worst possible way to assess your overall current risk.

The ideal bankroll for any bookmaking service is tied heavily to the amount of credit you extend to the sum of all your customers. You should start with your heaviest players to try and develop a weekly pattern of how they bet and what they bet on.

Certain times of the year are obviously crazier than others depending on what teams/leagues are currently playing. It may not be the best idea in the world to start your bookmaking business at the beginning of the NFL regular season.

Sure, the action will be hot, but are you 100 percent sure your bankroll will be able to weather the storm if a couple of your biggest players go on financial tear with an early winning streak?

You might want to consider starting things up right before the beginning of the NBA and NHL playoffs. The action will be decent and you can control your potential exposure by taking bets on a limited amount of games. Even if you get slammed with unexpected winners during this time you will still have the ability to regroup after things will slow down dramatically once Major League Baseball is the only game in town.

Nonetheless, you still have to ensure you have enough cash flow to honor your financial commitments. If you can learn how to achieve the proper balance during the off times of the year, you will be better prepared to handle the fall, when there is action coming in on all the major sports.

You can also layoff bets that you are not comfortable taking if you think the player knows what he is doing or the amount is too large. So for example, if you have a player who wants to wager $2000 on a game and you do not have enough to cover that if he hits, it is wise instead of not taking the action to lay it off somewhere else.

If you do not take his bet, he might find some other bookie who would and there is a good chance of losing him for good.

At BecometheBookie, we can handle such a player providing you collect the cash up front from him and book the bet through us. If he wins, we pay him and if he loses we keep the cash. Contact us for more information about this option.