Peter Smith
On the surface, sharing your sports betting account with a family member or a friend may seem relatively harmless enough. However, this is something bookmakers prohibit due to the risk of potential fraud. But why can sharing a betting account become problematic?
Online Betting Sites
Bettors are not short of online bookmaker options, thanks to the industry's growth. Licensed operators provide players with safe digital betting environments, and punters can be confident in the reliability of legitimate betting sites. For example, if you visit the Legalbet website, which reviews and ranks bookmakers, you’ll see that analysts recognise most licensed sportsbooks as safe, focusing their comparisons on factors such as offers and usability. However, players also need to follow each platform’s own rules. Betting experts advise familiarising yourself with key terms, from bonus requirements to withdrawal conditions, before placing any wagers.
The rules may vary from one betting site to another, but some principles are universal. For instance, sharing your account details will almost certainly breach the terms and conditions you accepted when registering, no matter which bookmaker you chose.
In doing so, you could then see that the account is suspended or even closed.
The Risk of Sharing
Bookmaker sites keep close tabs on user accounts, and use automated monitoring systems that track IP addresses, betting patterns, locations and the ID of devices being used to access services. If an account is being used in Bucharest and then the next day a login to the same account comes from Cluj-Napoca because it’s been shared with a friend, that will raise a red flag.
Primarily, the reason against sharing accounts is compliance. Bookmakers must verify that their users are of legal age and eligible to play within their jurisdiction, and will perform rigorous identity checks to ensure that everything is above board. However, if the primary account holder then shares their account with a friend, that friend is not the authorised account holder placing a bet, and that violates the T&Cs.
The friend could be of any age, for example, and that could get the bookmaker into hot water if caught. But this also extends deeper because of the financial risks to the bookmaker of money laundering. A person could open an account using their real details and then allow someone with malicious intentions to access that account for illegal activities, such as a withdrawal leading to untraceable funds.
It could also be a way for a user to circumvent the limits placed on their account. If a player has become profitable or has fallen foul of placing too many low-risk bets, then by using a friend's account, they could just continue to place their bets. This even brings the potential area of matched/arbitrage betting into frame. A person could bet on one outcome of a football match on their main account and then use their friend’s account to bet against that initial option.
Bonus Problems
Account bonuses, such as welcome promotions, are limited to one per person, household and IP address, and this is to protect against individuals abusing a bonus offer. A person attempting to claim multiple sign-up offers by using the details of their friends and then using those accounts for betting would ultimately create a large mess of IP address interactions with the site, which would get spotted. This is also why it is advisable not to use a VPN (which is often blocked by bookmakers anyway) to access a legitimate betting account.
To play it safe, never share your account information with anyone and use your account responsibly. After all, when you open an account with a bookmaker, you are entering into a contract as a verified individual to hold and use that account. Any information the bookmaker gets that suggests otherwise will lead to a suspension.
The Bookmaker's Role
A bookmaker must abide by regulations, and they have a responsibility not to let money that’s moving through user accounts be used for illegal activities, for example, nor to allow underage gambling. Everything is monitored in order to protect their own interests, because if they are found in breach of something, then they could be heavily fined, or worse, have their operating licence suspended.
Peter Smith
