How to Spot a Shady Online Sports Betting Site

A ton of people are going to bet on the Super Bowl this Sunday. Sports betting is legal in some form in 30 states, and 31.4 million Americans are expected to put down a total of $7.61 billion on the game, according to projections from the American Gaming Association.

But before you join the throng, take a few minutes to make sure you’re not being scammed or mislead. As Carmen Million with the Better Business Bureau put it, “everybody wants to get on board, everybody’s excited about it, but you have to take a moment and investigate before you invest.”

Here are some things to look out for to avoid being scammed when betting on sports online.

Determine whether and how you can bet in your state

Gambling laws vary from state to state, so look into the legalities before you place any bets anywhere.

If you live in a state where sports gambling is illegal, you shouldn’t bet. Even “social gambling” is illegal in some places, so unless you fully understand the intricacies and accept the risks of illegal (or quasi-legal) gambling, don’t bet on the Super Bowl…or anything else.

Bet with state-approved bookies only

If you live in a state where sports gambling is legal, you can try to avoid illegitimate and criminal betting scams by evaluating betting sites and apps individually. But instead of taking that defensive approach, play offense: Go with “white-listed” sports books that have been approved by your state’s gaming commission.

Go to the Action Network’s site, click your state, and choose from the list of established online and in-person bookies who will take your bet.

If you’re contemplating placing a bet with a site or app that has not been approved by your state’s gaming commission, don’t. It could be a scam, and even if it isn’t an outright money-grab, it could be illegal. So ignore all gambling-related pop-up ads, email spams, or random texts and make the proactive choice to go with a “safer” bookie.

That said, it’s not as if state-approved gambling operations are guaranteed to not be shady—shadiness and gambling have a long history, after all, and not all sports books are equally ethical.

Look into the site’s reputation

Before you lay your money down with any sports book, head over to a consumer-centric site like the Better Business Bureau or Trust Pilot to see what other users are saying about them. Stay away from reputation and feedback sites that are run by the gambling industry itself.

The devil’s in the details

Gambling sites and apps often offer incentives or bonuses, particularly to new users and around big games. But like any sales pitch, these can be deceptive. If it sounds too good to be true, you’re probably missing something, so read the fine print on bonus offers and other incentives carefully.

Here are some examples of questionable and/or confusing offers from betting sites, courtesy of New York attorney-general Letitia James.

• Despite their name, “risk-free” bets are often not free of risk. Instead, “risk-free” can mean that the money you lose becomes credit on the site that you can only use to place other bets.
• Sites that offer “enrollment bonuses” to new users often require them to gamble some amount of their own money before they can access these bonus funds, sometimes to ridiculous extremes—like a site offering $1,000 that can only received after playing through $25,000 of your own money.
• Some sites penalize gamblers for taking advantage of offers and promotions in strategic ways, even labeling working the rules as “suspicious behavior.”

Make sure you can withdraw your money

Some users of gambling sites report being penalized for seeming to have an “unfair advantage” or “irregular playing patterns,” and sometimes have their winnings frozen by gambling sites for these reasons. Sites generally reserve the right to restrict users’ activity without warning, but whether those users actually deserve it depends on the situation and point-of-view.

The exact definitions of the betting tactics considered suspicious or irregular vary from site to site, so you need to understand that gambling companies can and do freeze people’s money for various reasons, and trying to “unfreeze” it could involve red-tape, hassle, and even legal action. (All that said, good luck!)