It’s not a secret, that a lot of sports betting fans are making their table, MS Excel files, put all their stakes in it, calculate costs and winnings. Somebody does this to follow their costs, somebody does it to keep their betting budget under control, somebody does it to make a win strategy, but do they calculate good? Let’s go through it and think if nothing is missing in calculations.
For sure, keeping your gambling or sports betting budget is a clever way to follow how much do you spend on sports betting. It’s just good to know, how much it costs to you and then compare what you get from it and what you invest in it. In case of winnings it’s very simple to calculate your earnings. You just put your stakes in a table and then just mark, which bets were successful and which were not. Calculating your costs can be tricky.
Taxes
Taxes are very tricky thing and they are calculated in a different way in different countries. In attempt to record all your bets in your statistics you have to have very clear and detailed information about what taxes do you pay while betting on sports events. Depending on the country, rules can be different. Log in to your betting account on your sports betting website and check, what taxes do you pay. You can find, for example, that taxes are being cut from your deposit amount or in case of making a bet of 10 dollars, your real bet amount is different, because of taxes. Taxes are eating your potential total winnings and because of very strong taxation rules almost in all African (and not only) countries, some taxation burden a betting company and players.
You can find, that when you made a bet of 100 Ethiopian Birrs in Ethiopia, your real bet amount after tax will be less than 90 Birrs and it makes your stakes lower. Then after you receive your winnings in case of correct prediction, you’ll find that it’s lower than you thought. This is because of win tax, that makes a big impact on winnings exceeding 1000 Birrs. There’re some solutions players invented in Ethiopia: they divide their stake into several tickets in order not to pay win tax in case of success. So, as you see, you have to really have it clear, what you pay on taxes right at the moment of depositing, betting and withdrawing your winnings. And this is also what to be recorded in your costs while making bets and followings your costs.
Transactions fees
Transaction fees are the thing which invisibly affects your costs and cut your final winnings. Normally you don’t see fees you pay to mobile operator for making a bet, or depositing funds to your gaming account or even withdrawing your winnings back to your pocket.
At the moment you record data about your bets and winnings, keep in mind, that depositing funds to your gaming account can cost you some fee (just like paying to Safaricom in Kenya when depositing and those fees are bigger than just sending money to your friend). Some companies are offering a bonus and compensating transaction fees (just like depositing with PlayMaster is totally free, Betika returns you back 5 KES and BetKing gives your back 15 KES in case you deposit 250+ KES).
SMS Betting can also be tricky. Some companies offer free SMS Betting, but it’s very rare, mostly players do pay for SMS messages and commands from their pockets. Ok, you say that this amount is very low, but while analyzing hundreds of bets you make during a certain period especially in case you bet small amounts (but a lot of them), fee for SMS message can be essential for your total betting budget and those costs belongs to your costs table as well.
Time is money!
Don’t forget, that the time your spend to bet , check results and putting your sports betting statistics – it’s all belongs to costs you have to bet.
Keeping your sports betting statistics and recording all your bets is a very clever way to have your funds and budget under control. For sure, you are keeping your records not only for having a shock in the end of the month while checking how much money you invested.
But this is a good approach when you are not a truly gambler, because you do very good understand that you are putting some money in it and you are expecting some money back. I bet you are following sports news, players’ transfers between clubs and analyzing game statistics for your favorite club. And this is correct: you do some job and you expect some return from it. But do you really calculate the cost of money you invest in it? Yes, in case you are really interested in sports and it brings you fun and please, then you can take your costs like a payment for your emotions, leisure and spending your free time the way you want, but in case you take your betting activity merely like a way to earn money (or not to spend more than you get in return back), they you have to remember, that all time you spend by following statistics, reading news and even making records in your table, – it has some value as well.
Everybody understands that the time you spend on calculating which multibet you’ll make, checking sports event result and comparing odds on different sports betting websites, you can spend another way: for example working (even part time) in supermarket. Surely, you have you main job, but additionally you could have a little bit more money when helping your friend in car repair service or even selling newspapers. And then you have just to take a minimal hour rate of a job everybody can you (even you), and transfer those hours into costs and add them to your calculations.
Result
As you see, real costs of your betting activity can be bigger than you thought. You are paying transaction fees for depositing, you are paying fees for SMS messages to make stakes, and in the end you are investing your work and free time for betting. All those factors are very often being neglected while calculating a real price for your betting activity. And don’t forget that your winnings must cover not only your direct costs, but also indirect (for example, your lost earnings).
