A winner has no name: Why winning bettors choose to remain anonymous

March Madness is a time of year where you’ll find some of the craziest bets and biggest payouts. The week of the Final Four, news came out about an anonymous bettor who dropped $1,500 USD on a 200–1 Texas Tech futures ticket that would net him a $300,000 payday if they cut down the nets. But he wasn’t in fear of losing. He was in fear of not being allowed future action.

“He doesn’t want his name known because every sportsbook in the country seems to be kicking out winners…”

“There’s a huge movement to ban anyone who wins a buck. It’s very frustrating for the gambler. I totally sympathize with them on wanting to remain anonymous.” said Luke Pergande, co-founder of PropSwap, a company that started selling future tickets in 2015 in an interview with Darren Rovell of The Action Network.

Come again?

Sportsbooks refusing action to bettors who have profited in the past is just plain wrong. It’s akin to casinos kicking out winning blackjack players. They’re just playing the game by the same rules as everyone else and accomplishing what they set out to. That old adage really is the dark truth of gaming — the house always wins. And if the house thinks they are giving up their edge by letting certain winning players play, they want them GONE. But that begs the question — if wagering on games is an open offering, shouldn’t all players be allowed to play regardless of prior results?

This mentality of punishing success in the betting world should not be norm, yet it somehow is. Although risk management is essential to long term preservation of a sportsbook operator, preventing players from playing isn’t conducive to long term health of their sports betting ecosystem. We need to change how the industry views and ultimately accepts players winning their bets.

Last year ABC News reported that William Hill, one of the largest books in Europe, had started banning customers who were winning at a rate that made them uncomfortable. “They don’t give you any reason,” one cut-off customer said. “We called corporate and didn’t get anywhere. It’s almost like they’re saying, ‘We don’t have to serve you,’ which is unfair. You can’t win. It’s not really bookmaking.” Another bettor was informed of his banishment via email: “While we appreciate your previous business, the company has decided to no longer conduct business with you.”

This is just flat out wrong. It goes against the integrity of competition and isn’t what sports betting should be like. And it certainly goes against the values of integrity and transparency on which FansUnite was founded.

The FansUnite Protocol is an industry standard for sports betting and sports data applications built on the Ethereum blockchain. The protocol redistributes the responsibility of bet execution and resolution from centralized operators to a network of independently operated and incentivized Oracles. This provides bettors with assurance that their bets are executed as entered, free from bias or tampering, while all bet details are immutably and transparently stored on the Ethereum blockchain.

FansUnite is aiming to shape a new sports betting world where bettors are not only accepted regardless of results, but also rewarded for participation. So long as the bets are legal and above board, we hereby vow to never ban sports bettors that place winning bets. Period.

Since inception, FansUnite’s mantra has been to make things “Better for Bettors”. Maybe now is the time to point out that winning bettors fit under that umbrella as well.