Why you should never sign up for an online casino sportsbook free offer

Because it’s risk-free for the casino — not you

Ben Rothke
6 min readOct 25, 2020

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Source: https://www.fanduel.com/

A free, no-risk bet you say?

The ads are everywhere — online, YouTube, train stations, billboards, airports, apps, and more. Casinos offering you free initial risk-free bets for their online sportsbooks. You’ll be enticed with offers like these:

  • Bet $1 Get $50 In Free Bets
  • Risk-Free Bet up to $500
  • $500 New Customer Offer
  • Risk Free First Bet up to $500
  • $1,000 Risk-Free Bet Bonus

At first glance, they seem to be an easy and risk-free way to make some quick money. It is the nirvana of gambling — betting with other people’s money with no risk.

But in the irrational exuberance of having the casinos show you their money, most of the betters signing up don’t seem to be taking the time to read the Terms & Conditions (T&C) of what they are signing on and agreeing to. And if they did, they would know rather quickly that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch in the betting world.

As Maxwell Strachan writes in The Rise of Mobile Gambling Is Leaving People Ruined and Unable to Quit, financial catastrophe is…

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Ben Rothke

I work in information security at Tapad. Write book reviews for the RSA blog, & a Founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance and Cybersecurity Canon.