In the old days, if you could not find your local bookie or get him on the phone, you were flat out of luck getting your wager placed in time for the game. And forget about getting anyone on the phone 30 minutes before kickoff time on Saturday or Sunday. Remember the frustration? Our local guy used to be one of the hardest working guys in town but he always seemed to be running just a little behind.
Then along came the Internet and that changed the wagering world forever.
Sports books started opening up based in the Caribbean around 1994 and at first they were very basic indeed. With the development of modern bookmaking software the industry evolved to be much more customer friendly as sportsbooks competed for the business of gamblers from the United States and around the world. A lot of guys opened accounts with offshore sportsbooks at the beginning and in many cases the system worked well. Players had to send a deposit offshore to what was known as a “post up account” and then wait for his payout when he won. Now, here is where problems started to creep into the system. The problems for the players was that some of these sportsbooks were slow to pay off and some of them never ever paid off on winning wagers. The problem for the local bookie was that he was now left out of the loop. Guys that had been playing with him for years were now placing their wagers with the offshore sports books.
Then came what is known as Price Per Head Services to give a helping hand to bookies and gamblers alike. When a local bookmaker works with a good PPH Service he, in effect, becomes his very own offshore sportsbook. Anything that a player could do with an offshore sportsbook, they can now do with their local bookmaker. This is great news for the players and great news for the bookie as well. All of the book keeping chores that used to take up so much of the bookies time are now taken care of by the PPH Service so he can now have he time to recruit new players and actually expand his players base and income. Players prefer to play with people they know, people they have been playing with for years whom they can depend on based on years of experience.
So, more and more, players are going back to the local bookie to place their sporting wagers. It’s more friendly, it’s more secure and it’s more fun.