What is a Sports Bookmaker or Bookie?
When it comes to placing those big bets on any type of sports event, a bettor has to have a plan. And that plan is to get all of the elements together to place that first bet and hope that their selections will lead them down the path of a nice sum of winnings.
So when it is time to get ready to find that location to place bets, who you gonna call..? Bookmakers! (sung to the tune of Ghostbusters, obviously.)
The bookmaker (or “bookie”, as they are more fondly known) is essentially the United Kingdom’s Version of Nevada Sports Books. It is either an organization or a single person that legally accepts wagers from bettors to participate in gambling on a sporting event, and if that bettor is lucky, they bookmaker will also be paying out a nice sum of money for a well played wager. This is a legal, regulated industry in the UK.
Bookmakers play a larger role in the various kinds of bets that can be made versus their American counterparts. Whereas, American sports books usually covers the more high profile sporting events, bookmakers will also focus on the smaller scale sports, political events, reality television programs, and even weather conditions! So there really is a fun sense of “anything goes” when it comes to bookmaking, in addition to proving that if a person can possibly think of an obscure wager, odds are there is an actual chance to make some money off of it.
A bookmaker will work to keep a point spread / odds in his or her favor. After all, it wouldn’t make sense to keep the betting margins so narrow that every gambler has a chance to get the right win percentage. What the bookmaker works for is having a “balanced book”, which is basically getting enough bets on each outcome that will make for an equal reflection of the odds. In other words, one side cancels out the other, with the bookmaker taking a percentage (usually called the Vigorish).
It is in this way that bookmakers actually work more to get a profit from the actual event instead of attempting to profit from the bets themselves. So in other words, they get paid for simply doing their job, and not having to risk their income on the results of an event. Trying to earn a living off of gambling is not exactly the most stable way to keep food on the table.
We would be remiss if we did not mention illegal bookmaking. It’s rampant in the US, with almost every neighborhood having a local “bookie” who will take action (NFL Football does huge numbers with illegal bookmakers). Law enforcement usually turns a blind eye to small scale bookmaking. It’s when it gets ugly (and “Louie the Lip” needs to pay someone a visit) that the police will get involved.
As long as people want to bet, the bookmaker (legal or otherwise) will always be there.
