Many online sports books offer various types of bonuses for players to sign up, deposit funds, and play. They also offer special event based bonuses such as free bets and bonus payouts. Recently a friend of mine opened an account with an online sports book, deposited funds, and thought he was going to receive a deposit bonus, only to learn afterwards that there is a betting requirement associated with the bonus. He also learned that his initial deposit is tied up unless he makes the betting requirement. He is pretty frustrated, but there is a fairly easy solution to his problem.
Many sports books offer deposit bonuses such as a 100% first deposit bonus. The sports books understand that most players will deposit funds, claim the bonus, and lose the entire amount deposited. The sports books are trying to give players a taste of the action and hope those new players become regular customers. Even though the sports book offers players “free money”, the sports books know that most players don’t have a bankroll strategy. Most players don’t size their bets to match their bankroll using a statistical method like the Kelly Criterion. Most players just bet a an amount picked “out of the air” and end up betting above their bankroll, and so blow thru their entire deposit plus the bonus.
Players can also get caught up by not reading the fine print. Most deposit bonuses have a betting requirement attached to them. The requirement will be a betting factor of the deposit amount in order to withdraw the bonus cash, the player must run the deposit thru at least 50 or 100 times. This betting requirement effectively bleeds out the bonus by way of the edge built into the game odds. But if you are stuck with cash at a sports book with a betting requirement, but you want to get your money out without meeting the betting requirement, below I have provided a way to do this.
Let’s use an example of a first deposit bonus offered by Sports Interaction. The basic description of the bonus reads:
“Sports Interaction gets right to the point with their sportsbook bonus – 100% cash bonus with a $200 maximum when you sign up. The rollover rate on this bonus is 10x. If you deposit the maximum of $200 – your account will show $400.”
So with this bonus, you may have to make $4000 worth of bets in order to withdraw your deposit plus the bonus cash. If you are unwilling to make these bets, there is a way to withdraw your money plus the bonus amount without running it thru the required number of times.
The first thing to do is to open an account with a reputable sports book that is regulated and legal in your home jurisdiction. Make sure you disclose all your personal identification to this sports book and confirm that you can make deposits and withdrawals without any hassle. I suggest actually making a deposit and making a withdrawal to confirm you won’t have a problem. Also research the limits the sports book might place on withdrawals. They could limit withdrawals up to certain amounts without further delays. Test out these limits if you think they may be relevant. Fund this account with enough bankroll to cover any bets you might have with sports books where you are trying to claim a deposit bonus or another bonus (more on that below).
Now that you have a “home” account setup and in good standing, search out a deposit bonus that you’d like to take advantage of. Using the example above, you could deposit $200 into a Sports Interaction account and be eligible for the 100% deposit bonus. What you are going to do next is make one bet at Sports Interaction and the exact opposite bet at your “home” sports book. Find an event with a favourite and an underdog. It also helps if you can get the sum of the odds on each side to be close to break even, but if you are claiming a 100% deposit bonus, a fee of 1% isn’t such a big deal (but every penny counts).
Let’s assume that Ladbrokes is your “home” account, and you find a bet on an NBA game with a moneyline bet between Chicago and Philly for the odds listed below:
| Chicago | Philly | |
| Sports Interaction | 1.30 | 3.65 |
| Ladbrokes | 1.29 | 3.60 |
In this case, to get rid of the deposit bonus with a single bet, you would bet the entire amount in your Sports Interaction account ($400) on Philly. If you lose the bet, your Sports Interaction account balance will then be zero. At the same time, you bet $1,400 in your Ladbrokes “home” account on Chicago. If you win this bet, your profit will be $400 (which is the amount you would have lost in your Sports Interaction account). Oppositely, if your bet wins at Sports Interaction, you’ll win the exact amount in your Sports Interaction account as you lost in your Ladbrokes account.
The reason why you may want to choose bets with an underdog and a favourite is its more likely the favourite will win and shift your money to your “home” account right away. Otherwise, it will take several bets to shift the funds. Obviously, you need to be able to calculate your ability to fund further bets in your “bonus vulturing” (Sports Ineteraction) account should your underdog bet win. But this calculation can be done separately based on the size of your overall bankroll. If your bankroll is not big enough to shift the money using a single bet, you can split up the transactions in any number of smaller chunks. They key thing to remember when doing this is the house edge. Just make sure that the sum of the odds on both sides of the bet are close to 100%. You will probably be able to find an arbitrage opportunity (and even make more money in the process), but if you’re lazy and don’t want to search, just find a bet where you are only paying about 1% spread between the two sports book’s odds.
Using this method, you can go around the internet and “bonus vulture”. You shouldn’t even care much about the reputation of the sports books where you are vulturing since you won’t even need to withdraw the money from these accounts anyway, you don’t need to verify the account at the vulturing books. Hopefully, all you’ll be doing is opening an account, claiming the bonus, and losing it in one big bet, or a series of smaller bets. The funds in your “home” account should grow proportionately to the bonuses you are vulturing. This is also a good way to grubstake an online sports betting bankroll. You could probably make at least $1,000 in bonuses with some effort and research. Also, if you do this with a team, you can also grab the “refer a friend” bonuses.
Here are a couple of links that have long lists of deposit bonuses, there are many more online, just do a Google search:
