What’s the best way to bet in sports in NC on Monday? With someone else’s money
Who doesn’t like free money — or, the next best thing, playing with house money?
Unless you are completely off social media — and I can’t recommend a Facebook-free life enough — and don’t watch any sports at all whatsoever, you’re aware that legalized sports gambling is coming to North Carolina on Monday, and every online sports book has been offering a bevy of sign-up bonuses.
Hundreds of dollars in bonuses. Maybe even thousands, if you signed up for all of them.
So I did.
Almost all of them, anyway.
In the spirit of not trying this at home, I should say up front that I’m an experienced gambler who knows my limits. While I don’t bet on sports now for professional and ethical reasons, and rarely have on team sports, I’ve spent a lot of time at various points in my life gambling on horses, golf, craps, blackjack and daily fantasy. Modestly, I’ve done OK. But mostly I’ve dabbled enough in this stuff in the past to feel pretty confident I can limit my exposure to this silly experiment. I’m not the target customer, I’m just play-acting as one.
Which is important. As any competent heroin dealer knows, the whole point of these bonus offers is to get people hooked — imagine if it was legal to hand out free booze and cigarettes — but that’s a compromise we’ve become willing to accept in this state, because this gambling was happening anyway, in darker shadows, and we might as well benefit from it. (The same is true of legalized marijuana, but that’s a different conversation.)
It should also be noted that most of the offers are in the form of bonus bets, where you get the winnings if you win but you don’t get the stake back — meaning, if you win an even-money $100 bonus bet, you end up with $100 of real money in your account.
It’s not exactly cash in hand, but if they’re going to offer it, it’s probably worth pursuing. For an hour Friday afternoon, I did just that.
A false start
I started with Fanatics, the Carolina Hurricanes’ official gambling partner, which had the flashiest offer: $1,000 in bonus bets and a free hat. I had been led to believe signing up for these offers would be easy. This would not turn out to be the case. Using a QR code linked to the offer, I downloaded the app and entered my info, but then things got weird. It made me scan my passport and submit a selfie. And after all that? “We’re having issues verifying your account. Please contact support.”
After being on “chat hold” for five minutes I decided a crappy Fanatics hat wasn’t worth it and deleted the app. I tried to close my account but it sent me to the same constipated chat window. I guess technically I have half of an unfunded Fanatics account out there somewhere in the ether.
You’d think they’d make it easier to take your money, but then again, this is a company that can’t print a T-shirt right, either. Fortunately, it was the outlier. Sign-up at every other site was a breeze. No passport required.
Nevertheless, I was slightly scarred from that experience, so I tried DraftKings next, because surely our friends at The OG — as well as Greg Olson — wouldn’t steer me wrong. Except I already had a DK account from my brief trip through the DFS world, and at some point on a road trip somewhere where gambling was legal I’d opened a DK sportsbook account as well to place a few golf bets. I’d actually forgotten, it was so long ago.
After a password reset and re-download of the app, I found an unexpected windfall of $.03 in my account. With no sign-up bonus, the best NC offer was a 50% deposit match in bonus bets, for a minimum of $5 and max of $100. So I Venmo’d $50 to Draft Kings for $25 in bonus bets. This is going swimmingly. I’m two books in, could only sign up for one and I’m already out $50 of my own money.
On to FanDuel, the official partner of the Carolina Panthers. In one minute, I was logged in, verified and had two-factor authorization enabled. Sent $100 via PayPal to get the deposit bonus. Three minutes later, I had $100 in bonus bets queued up. I’ll get another $200 in bonus bets for a $5 bet on Monday and a freebie $50 double-up by betting their special Hornets-Pistons over of … one point. You’d think even the Hornets can score a point, but you never know.
The four-figure finish
Things were getting easier. MGM was a piece of cake. I was able to link to my PayPal account, and got $200 in bonus bets with no deposit. Free money! Bet365 had one of the more appealing offers: Get $100 in bonus bets for a $10 deposit plus $200 in bonus bets after betting $5 on Monday. Except the minimum deposit was $30. Anyway, that’s all set. With one $5 bet, I’ll have $300 in house money to play with.
The last book on my list was Caesars, which was offering $250 in bonus bets with a $10 bet on Monday plus seven “100 percent profit boosts,” and I didn’t plan on making seven days of bets. At this point, I was kind of bonus-betted out. I already had four new apps on my phone and four places to make relatively pointless wagers on Monday.
I was ready to say enough, and that if Caesars wanted my Day 1 business, it should have done better. But I figured, if I could deposit $10 — and only $10 — maybe the $250 was worth it. So I put my $10 in with the bonus code (which the app accepted) ... and there’s no sign of that offer anywhere. We’ll see Monday. I did get an email a few hours later that it had been linked with my younger-Vegas-days Caesars Rewards account. (Sadly, I have no status left.)
ESPN Bet wanted the same ID and selfie business as Fanatics, and by then, it didn’t seem worth the effort. I suppose sign-up bonus fatigue is real.
At any rate, the real question was, out of the more than $2,400 in free money allegedly on offer, if you believe what shows up in your Twitter feed, how much could I end up with by Monday?
For $190 in deposits and less than an hour of my time, I ended up with $825 in bonus bets ($50 of which, on the FanDuel Hornets promo, is all but guaranteed to win) and maybe $1,075, depending on whether Caesars is on the level. No thanks to Fanatics.
Of course, none of this matters if you place all these bets and lose. (Is the smart play to bet half on each side of the same wager?)
There’s a reason they call it gambling, not winning, but at least it’s (mostly) someone else’s money, the best kind.
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