In this brand new article of our Freelancing Guide to Becoming a Bookie series, we are going to talk about how to obtain and manage your funds properly.
Getting Funds for your Bookie Operation
Before you start a Bookie business, you need to come up with an operating budget; otherwise you will not have the necessary funds to run things the way you supposed to do so.
There are many ways to get funds for your bookie operation. Let’s explore some of the best ones:
Your Personal bank account
If you actually have some good extra money in the bank, then that is actually the best way to fund your Bookie business. This is because if you lose some cash after paying winning bets, then you are losing your money, and not anybody else’s.
Sure, sometimes you’ll end up short of cash after paying your players, but on the good side, you really don’t have an external outstanding debt, which means that even though you have lost some cash, you are still in good shape because no extra money is going anywhere.
Obtaining a Loan
You can also opt for getting a loan. Although at first it might seem difficult for you to get one because of how easy it is for banks to refuse loan applications, if for some reason yours is denied, you still have other great options such as credit unions.
If you actually want to go for this option, then you must try to be as convincing as you can in order to get the bank representative to grant you the loan.
Before heading to the bank, go ahead and create a nice proposal that is sure to impress the people at the bank, or at the very least, encourage them to see you with good eyes.
We certainly recommend you not to tell the banks that you are trying to fund a Bookie operation. Of course you don’t want to lie to them completely too as this can create an adverse situation from different perspectives.
In order to have better chances of getting your loan approved, tell the banks that you are actually planning to start a small client attention business, for example.
Another great strategy to improve your possibilities of getting a positive answer is to anticipate the questions of the loan officers.
Indeed, the more prepared you feel, the better you will do when the time to ask for the loan arrives.
If you are able to afford the monthly payments, then this is certainly one of the best ways to obtain the funds that you actually need to run your own Bookie Price per Head Services operation.
Angel Investors
Some people sometimes confuse the term philanthropist with angel investor, but the two are nothing like it. The first one is a person that gives away money without expecting anything in return and he or she does it in order to support a given cause.
Angel investors are quite different as they do help business to grow by infusing much needed capital, but they do it with the goal of making a profit.
When you deal with an angel investor, you must do so with the same approach as you will have towards banks. This means that you need to convince the person with deep pockets that your Bookie sportsbook business has the potential to come up with some good earnings.
The difference between an angel investor and a bank is that you really don’t need to hide anything from the former, which means that you can feel free to tell the person that you indeed are running a sports betting operation.
If an angel investor likes your idea, it is likely that he or she will take a calculated risk and will give you the capital that you need in order to get your Bookie business going.
Venture Capital and Private Equity
This is an option you might want to consider at a later time than angel investors. This is because venture capital is not delivered by a single individual, but by a company, and the amount of cash that they are willing to provide is fairly larger than the one you can get from an angel investor.
They might even ask you for a share of ownership, which means that this is a good choice only if you are planning to go big from day one.
Private equity firms are similar to venture capital companies as they are willing to grant you the funds you need with the condition of getting a share of your business.
Types of Funds
When it comes to the funds of your Bookie operation, there are two sides to it: Paying and Collecting. Let’s check out some information on what agents must pay on a regular basis and what they are able to collect.
Paying the Pay per Head Shop
When you obtain the services of a top Price per Head provider, you must pay for their services. You actually pay the PPH shop every week (usually every Monday) and you pay based on services rendered to every client.
This means that you only pay the PPH shop every time your clients make use of either the internet, call center or casino solutions.
For example, if you have 50 clients and only 25 of them were active during a given week, then you only have to pay for those and not for the remaining 25 that didn’t had any action.
When you first start working with a Price per Head provider, you will be asked to agree on a fixed weekly deal for the services that you acquired. This fixed price is only going to vary if you decide to acquire a service that is considered an extra.
Requesting Credit
A top Pay per Head Solutions Company usually offers credit to his clients. If you decide to work with credit, then you need to make sure that you’ll have the money to pay up when you need to.
When a PPH shop offers you credit, it means that they are allowing you to pay your fees at a later time and not precisely on a weekly basis. This is a deal that a customer of a Price per Head Company obtains after a degree of trust has been established.
Split Business
When you work a split business with a pph shop it means that you don’t have to pay weekly pay per head fees. Instead, you are splitting the profits.
Split profits also means split risk. For example, when a client of yours wins, then you, the Bookie, and the Price per Head Services Company have to pay such player’s winning bet.
On the other hand, when a client loses a wager, then you and the PPH shop collects the winnings.
A split Bookie business with a Pay per Head shop it is usually based on a 50-50 proportion, but it is not unusual that either the agent or the shop assumes a larger responsibility for better profits while the other party gets less cash but the financial risks involved are also lower.
This is a great alternative for a new Bookie that doesn’t have enough funds to run a large business all by him or herself.
Paying what you owe to both your clients and the PPH shop is in your best interest. Otherwise you might end up with no business at all and with a bad reputation that will make it really hard for you to get new players in the future.
Players and Sub-agents
When you run a Bookie business, all of your profits are going to come from players, either from those that are directly under your command, or from those whom are handled by sub-agents.
Players: At the end of every week, you can start collecting your earnings from players, or you can also start paying up what you owe them.
You can either opt for handling every single situation separately, or you can also work with a set of general rules for all of your players.
This means that you might have some players that don’t pay you right away but that are always good on your word, so you might want to keep a separate deal for this type of individuals.
On the other hand, there are players that always pay on time. The thing is that if some of them realize that you allow some of your clients to pay you at a later time than what you had originally established, then chances are that they will want to get the same kind of deal for them, and this can certainly affect your regular income.
For this reason is that we recommend you to keep your deals with individual players a private matter unless you don’t want to offer deals to anyone and use the same set of rules for all of your customers.
The attitude that you take considering this aspect of your Bookie business depends entirely on the type of wagering operation that you are running.
Remember: When collecting from players, you must try not to show that much flexibility with people that don’t want to pay. It is actually better to say goodbye to such type of clients as they are just basically wasting your valuable time and resources.
Sub-Agents: Apart from yourself, the only ones that should be collecting funds for your Bookie operation are your sub-agents.
These individuals, whom are the face of your business in other areas of the country, have under their wing a number of players whom they either pay up or collect from.
You can basically ask your sub-agents to stick to your very same personal policy for paying and collecting cash from clients in order to be able to run an overall homogeneous operation.
Of course there may be the case with some sub-agents whom will ask you for personal deals for given players, and to say yes or no to their request is totally up to you.
We hope this article has helped you to understand how to handle the funds attached to your Bookie operation in a better way. If you want to check out our previous releases off the series, feel free to do so:
We invite you to read our previous releases from the series: