Worry About You
What professional bettors and large portions of the industry don't understand about the behaviors and motivations of casual bettors.
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I’ve spent a lot of time around gamblers, from casuals to professionals to problem gamblers, and there are a few things that everyone seems to misunderstand (willfully or out of ignorance) about the middle category.
Price-Sensitivity
First and foremost, casual bettors are not price sensitive. They have a price-sensitivity threshold, but they do not care about a -110 vs a -107 line. Or if prediction markets offer better pricing than sportsbooks. In fact, anyone with that level of price-sensitivity is not a great customer.
As I noted in this tweet from a few months ago:
I said previously:
“Sure, there is a price-sensitive cohort pining for a product like prediction markets, but for the most part, people like to gamble, not treat betting on sports like they’re comparing health insurance plans or retirement funds. The price-sensitive crowd is not a cohort you can build a successful betting company on.”
Bankrolls vs. Disposable Income
Another misconception is that casuals will go broke from being nickel-and-dimed; a common argument from the professional crowd. Unlike professional gamblers, they don’t have closely monitored bankrolls that reduce to zero. They have disposable income that is replenished every pay period. Gambling dollars are expensed just like grocery dollars.
As I said in a June 2025 newsletter, when FanDuel and other operators started enacting policies to offset the per-wager fee in Illinois:
“Casual bettors don’t go broke. They don’t have a bankroll that gets reduced to zero. They have jobs and dedicate a certain amount of their disposable income to betting. The only difference is that instead of betting $10 or $50 per week, they now bet $12.50 or $55.00 per week. While some bettors might cut back, the average bettor isn’t going to really notice, let alone feel the added $.50 charge to each bet. If anything, it might make them more discerning about their small-dollar bets, which is likely a good thing for various reasons.”
And that seems to be precisely what happened. As I noted in December:
“Based on Illinois’ September reports, the number of wagers placed fell by 15% year-over-year (30.2 million bets, down from 35.7 million in September 2024). But there is a significant caveat to that number. Betting handle increased 9% YOY, from $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion.
“So yes, while fewer bets were placed, the average wager rose from $36 to $46.”
So while parts of the industry are pointing to a massive drop-off in the number of wagers placed, handle growth continues.
If Only Someone Warned Them
A third misconception is that they just need to be educated, so they avoid high-hold products. The problem is, those high-hold products offer jackpot-style payouts.
As I said in a May 2025 column, SGPs are precisely the type of wager a casual bettor will be drawn to:
“Parlays are the jackpots of the sports betting universe. These products are low-risk, high-reward (and high-hold) wagers that appeal to small stakes customers who want the potential for big payouts, akin to a lottery ticket — losing $5 or turning into $11 is a meaningless wager, but the possibility of turning that $5 into $500 or $5,000 definitely has some meaning. These bets tend to be the domain of casual and recreational bettors and are anathema to Sophisticates. Still, there is a lot of crossover between traditional and SGP bettors.”
I wrote about this back in 2023 (Side note: I love how affiliate companies will just change the author of the piece because someone else added a random update):
“To no one’s surprise, Gambling Twitter is screaming from the mountaintops about the high hold rates of SGPs and how there is better value in other wagers. But scream as they might, casual bettors aren’t listening. And neither are the sportsbooks.”
“This is the fundamental misunderstanding serious bettors have about casual bettors. It’s not that they don’t know better. Like Peter Gibbons, they don’t care. And that level of not caring can reach extraordinary levels.”
“Just as bettors don’t want the government telling them what they can do with their money, casual bettors don’t want experienced bettors telling them what and how to bet. The person consuming a bag of chips and a soda for lunch knows that healthier options exist, but it’s their choice.”
Or as I tell the kids in my martial arts classes when they start critiquing what others are doing: ‘Worry about you.’
Bottom Line
Betting, for most people, is an indulgence; it’s their cheat day when they’re on a diet; the extra drinks when they reunite with high school friends; the limo to the show. It’s not number crunching and a means to put food on the table.
Here’s the difference between the price-sensitive bettor and the other 95% of the betting population perfectly summarized by poker pro Joe Ingram in a tweet from a year ago that recently came across my timeline:
