On-line Sportsbooks and the Transfer Portal
I’ve completely had it with the proliferation of advertisements for sports betting on television and radio. With total sports betting hitting $6 billion last year in New Jersey, we have probably just seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the plethora of advertisements to lure you into the world of sports betting.
It is not only the number of advertisements by sportsbooks that bothers me, but it’s the deceptive nature of the advertising.
As competition for new customers grows among the dozens of on-line sportsbooks, the firms are constantly upping the come-on ante to luring firsttime betters to their site. Welcome to the wonderful world of alluring sign-up bonuses. While the amount of the sign-up bonus is prominently highlighted in the advertisement, the details are not.
What are not spelled-out in betting advertisements are the precise conditions that must be met to receive the upfront bonus, which is different from betting site to betting site, i.e., how much must be pre-deposited in your account to receive the playthrough bonus, the time frame for the playthrough and the odds for the playthrough.
Suffice to say, figuring out exactly what terms and conditions you have to fulfill before you’re able to withdraw your so-called bonus is not simple. First, you need to understand the lingo of on-line betting. What does playthrough bonus mean? In short, playthrough or rollover requirement refers to how many times you have to wager the bonus amount, deposit or both before you can withdraw funds. This requirement is presented as a multiplier, so the amount of your bonus affects how much you’re required to bet.
An example might help in understanding just what this mean. Let’s say that you deposit $250 to a sportsbook that is offering a 50% bonus with a 5x rollover. This means that you’ll have $375 to bet with, but can’t withdraw the bonus money until you’ve placed $1,875 ((250+125) x 5) in bets. Suffice to say, this provides the house with lots of opportunities for you to lose the bonus money you were given.
Every bonus offered by an online sportsbook, regardless of whether it’s an initial deposit bonus or a free bet bonus, comes with a set of specific wagering requirements. Understanding the detailed terms of bonuses can be complex, and sportsbooks use jargon to obscure the complexities of what they are offering in way of incentives. Depending on the sportsbook service you sign up with there can be a wide range of additional requirements on your sign-up bonus.
Talk about complexity, welcome to the NCAA basketball transfer portal where rule changes have prompted a game of musical chairs in college basketball. The NCAA, in a move designed to give athletes more power, recently implemented a new transfer rule which allows student-athletes one penaltyfree transfer in their college career. This year because of the pandemic, the NCAA gave every
single college player an extra year of eligibility. Even graduating seniors who had already used up four years of eligibility were allowed to play one more season. Under the old rules, players had to sit out a year following a transfer, unless they were granted a rare eligibility waiver.
It appears that the NCAA will shortly be making the transfer portal a permanent feature of the college sports landscape. All indications are that players who decide to leave a college, for whatever reason, will in the future not be required to sit out a season.
College basketball fans next year are going to need a scorecard to identify their team’s roster as more than 1,400 players have announced their intention to enter the transfer portal. With 357 Division I teams and each school getting 13 scholarships this translates into about 30% of all players leaving their current programs. That is free agency for amateur athletes on steroids. Is it good or bad?
I think Villanova coach, Jay Wright, got it right when he said, “I don’t think it’s good for college basketball, but it’s good for the student-athletes, and that’s what we’re all here for,” Wright said. “We’ll all adjust. It’s going to make it a little messier.”
It’s hard for me to say that student athletes should not have the opportunity to leave a college if they think another school is a better fit. After all, colleges have gotten rich off their athletes for years and coaches constantly leave for better offers. As ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas said “No other student is told when they can leave and when they can participate in the school’s extracurricular activities.”
In the end, I don’t think the transfer portal is going to destroy college hoops, but I do think it is going to have consequences that will make college basketball less appealing to me as a fan.
First, I think it is going to create a small number of super teams in basketball, like in football, which could reduce the number of long-shots which have historically destroyed the brackets of many of us during March Madness. Bigger schools, with more exposure, would be able to cherry-pick seasoned talent from smaller schools.
Second, it will probably reduce the likelihood of magical seasons for teams like Rutgers, who recently lost three really good players to the portal after finally making it back to the big dance after 38 years.
Third, the portal could reduce the ability of coaches to push players to earn their minutes by playing hard in practice or by being selfless on the court. To put it another way, it could result in more players wanting their minutes guaranteed.
Forth, there is going to be less time for coaches to teach players the game and how to handle themselves and situations that arise on the court.
Fifth, it is going to become more difficult for coaches to build a strong winning team culture in their program if players are constantly transferring in and out. It is hard to build a sense of family when family members are deciding, for whatever reason, that they no longer want to be a member of the family. It’s hard to preach team commitment when there is very little team loyalty.