The Impact of Cash Out On Sports Betting
There are countless things that have caused the world of betting to change over the years. The move from the dusty and dingy backstreets into the main shopping areas around the country meant that bookmakers needed to change their image, for example, whilst the development of the likes of the Bookmakers Afternoon Betting Service meant that company’s could take bets on races that previously they’d have needed to be on the side of the track to take. Yet nothing has changed the industry as much as the move from customers needing to be physically present in order to place wagers to being able to do it all online.
It’s not just bookies that have benefited, either. Casinos are just as able to take bets online as they are in their physical locations up and down the country. If your local casino doesn’t have Mahjong as an option, say, then simply head home and play it over the internet whilst lying in bed in your dressing gown. The same can be said for if they don’t have the slot game that you like playing or if they only offer European roulette and you’re a fan of the American variation. Yet it’s unquestionable that bookmakers have been the biggest beneficiaries of the move online, thanks in no small part to the fact that the sheer variety of bets they’re able to offer has multiplied exponentially, with one option that’s gained traction in recent years being the ability to Cash Out your bet.
Why Did ‘Cash Out’ Come About?
The invention of the Cash Out option came almost hand-in-hand with the ability to bet on events ‘In-Play’. After all, it would be unfair if bookmakers were willing to allow you to place more bets once the event that you’re betting on had got started but weren’t happy with you ending the bets that you’d already placed.
For bookmakers, the ability for punters to place additional bets during an event was perfect. It increased the likelihood of them improving their profit, given that people often bet emotionally once a match is underway rather than in the dispassionate manner they’re more likely to adopt before the event has started. The natural follow-up to In-Play betting was to give bettors the opportunity to ‘take’ some winnings on their bet before it concluded. This is something of a double-edged sword for bookies. On the one hand, they give people an opportunity to make money on a bet that they might not make if it played out until its conclusion. On the other hand, they increase the likelihood of them mitigating their losses thanks to those customers that Cash Out early on bets that would have been winners.
Just as some punters bet emotionally when they’re doing so In-Play, so too do some tend to use the Cash Out function early despite the evidence suggesting that they’re likely to win their bet. Say someone has placed a wager on Andy Murray to win by three sets in a Wimbledon quarter-final and he’s two-love up, the bettor might be tempted to Cash Out if the opposition player wins the first two games. Never mind that they also won the first two games of both of the previous sets, which Murray went on to win. They feel as though their ‘luck’ might run out and they take a chunk of their bet rather than risk losing it altogether.
It was actually Betfair who first invented cash out, originally on their exchange. It is no coincidence they were the first to offer live betting too. The cash out feature was very quickly adopted by other sites such as Bet365 and William Hill and this competition produced finer tools such as partial cash out and auto cash out. Of course these betting tools used well can be very good for the punter, but as with most things in life nothing comes for free as you will see as you read on.
Using Cash Out To Bet Tactically
For bookmakers, Cash Out works in the perfect way. The further away you are from the end of the event, the less you’ll be offered to take some winnings early. That puts the pressure on the customer to either hold their nerve or else crack and accept potentially ‘losing out’ on some of the money they would otherwise have won. Let’s say that you’ve placed a treble bet on three football teams to win their matches. You’ve taken odds of 3/1, 1/1 and 15/8 with potential winnings of £230. They’re all 1-0 up after 50 minutes, but your Cash Out option is only for £105. Do you take it, knowing that you might lose out on £125? Or do you wait and see what happens?
The tactical aspect of the bet is what some people find so thrilling, knowing that at any moment a goal out of nowhere could send your odds tumbling down. If you hold on until further in the match, the odds that you’re offered could get as high as £180 as long as the scores stay the same. But say the games enter into stoppage time and haven’t yet Cashed Out, the Cash Out offer will be reasonably decent but a goal against your teams in any of the matches will almost certainly result in you losing your bet in its entirety. It’s a tricky decision to make, but it’s a manner of betting that has completely changed the way we think about our wagers.
How Cash Out Works
We’re not going to look too in-depth at the nitty-gritty of how the Cash Out market works here, but rather just explore the reasons why it’s been able to develop to become such a tool for the bookies. The main reason, as with most developments in the betting world, is technology. Not just the technology that bettors use to place their wagers but also the technology used to analyse and store the data from each and every event that takes place. Starting with the former, by June of 2016 70% of remote betting was being done on a mobile device. That means that people could quite literally place and Cash Out bets from anywhere in the world where they had a mobile signal.
When it comes to the latter, however, things move at such a pace that it’s almost impossible to keep up. Nowadays companies can keep track of how far a tennis player has run, how quickly a rugby player has passed the ball or how close to scoring a goal a football team has got. All of that information can influence the Cash Out market, with every single detail relevant to the shifting of the betting markets. If a tennis player has run further in the first set than they’ve ever ran in their career, for example, then the likelihood of them tiring before the end of the match that they’re playing increases. Likewise, if a football team’s chance of scoring has increased as the game has gone on then odds on them scoring within the ninety minutes will fall.
Paying The Vig Twice
If you’ve ever watched a gangster movie then there’s a decent chance that you’ll have heard of the expression ‘the vig’. This is short for ‘vigorish’ and is another way of saying ‘take’. We all know that bookmakers don’t offer us genuine odds. That is to say, if the actual likelihood of an event occurring is 15/1 then bookies will offer you 13/1. That missing amount is their ‘take’ and it ensure that they never really lose in the long-run.
Let’s say that you placed a bet at 10/1 on the away team to win a match, with the genuine odds of that occurring being closer to 12/1. In that instance the bookmaker has taken their cut from your bet. If you then decide midway through the match that your bet isn’t going to win and you choose to Cash Out, what you’re actually doing is the equivalent of placing another two bets – one on the home side winning and one on the draw. Again, the odds of those things occurring might be 3/1 and 5/1 in real terms, but you’ll be offered 2/1 and 3/1 by the bookmaker in the form of you Cash Out odds.
You can see, therefore, that when you take a Cash Out offer you’re actually giving the bookmaker exactly what they want. You’re essentially paying twice as part of the same bet, allowing the company that you’re betting with to increase their profit margin on the same bet. Yes you’ll only ‘lose’ say £4 instead of £10, but the bookie is taking your original loss and the additional vig from the second bet. There’s nothing you can do about it, of course, and it’s also worth noting that losing £4 instead of £10 is better for you. Yet the bookie doesn’t mind as they know that you’ll more than likely re-invest that £6 they gave you back from the Cash Out offer and that will give them an increased chance of winning the total amount of your money.
