How I turned $700 into $148 betting on sports in Ohio
This is the story of how I turned $700 into $148.02 in my experiment with sports betting, which became legal in Ohio on Jan. 1. My experiment was inspired by ads for free betting money. I signed up for FanDuel, Barstool, BETMGM and DraftKings.
I received $700 in free betting money. You cannot withdraw betting money, but you can withdraw the money you win by betting it. Some required a small cash bet (none over $5) to start.
There are several steps to signing up, but the customer support was good and I had no difficulty getting the free betting money. I thought they all did a good job confirming my age (you must be 21 or older) and location to be sure I wasn’t betting from a place where it’s illegal.
They have many links to The National Council on Problem Gambling’s website, and all the apps offer safety options such as putting yourself in timeout and placing limits on how much you can bet and limits to the time you can use the app per day, week, or month. You can cancel your limits, but there is a waiting period.
I made several bets on highly favored teams and players, and all my bets were straight-forward bets to win. I bet $5 on a very highly favored tennis player. She won, and I got 12 cents. And since the $5 wasn’t mine, it was gone.
One thing that struck me was how much there is to bet on. Being a novice, I had no idea. You can parlay bets on endless things such as point spreads, total points, and a wide range of performance marks for players such as yards gained and three-point shots made. You can even group bets from multiple unrelated games to increase your potential payoff.
You can use any one of the apps and literally never run out of things to do.
They have sports from other countries, so there is rarely a time you don’t have the opportunity to follow a live game on which you have a bet. And you can make bets and change bets for games in progress. This includes the option to cancel a bet and get a portion of your money back if your team is losing.
Columnist Dan Sewell’s takeSports gambling a boon for Ohio? Wanna bet?
They sent me an endless stream of promotions. I got a bonus offer for the Cleveland Browns-Washington Commanders football game that would pay me $25 if I bet on the game and one touchdown was scored. I did that and won. However, I noticed the promos gradually grew into benchmarks with lower odds.
My experiment lasted until I ran out of free betting money. That took eight days, though I could have easily used it all within 24 hours.
Withdrawing my money was easy with one exception. I won $44.56 with Barstool. They don’t offer PayPal, so I requested a check, but that requires a $250 minimum. I never got my winnings from Barstool.
The last part was the most interesting − canceling my accounts.
Bet360 is the only one that offered a way to close my account on the app. All the others required contacting a customer service agent. It was similar to canceling a cable TV account.
Along the way, I was reminded that I can use the limits instead of canceling, and I was offered other options such as pausing my account. I was warned I could never reopen the account. They also asked why I was canceling my account. (I told one I had just learned gambling is a sin. That ended the conversation, and he immediately canceled it.) For some, the process took over 30 minutes.
Here is the primary lesson I learned. Sports betting companies are careful to meet their legal obligations, but within that, they make it as easy as possible to get addicted.
That’s how I turned $700 in $148.02. I donated the $148.02 to The National Council on Problem Gambling.
Sam Lapin is a former resident of Northern Kentucky who now lives in Willowick, Ohio.
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