The Truth About Paid Betting Tipsters: Should You Pay for Picks?

If you’ve been into sports betting for a while, or even if you’re a newbie, you’ve probably come across paid tipsters.

Maybe you’ve seen them mentioned on Twitter or another form of social media, or perhaps you’ve been offered their services.

Nowadays, with the rise in the popularity of sports betting on social media, paid betting tipsters are certainly not in short supply. In fact, if you follow just a few sports betting or gambling pages on social media, then you’ll likely see lots of posts relating to paid tipsters pop up.

What are paid tipsters?

So, what are paid betting tipsters? Or what do paid betting tipsters do? Essentially, a paid betting tipster sells betting tips. They do this in a variety of ways, but in general, the paid tipster charges a fee, which could be weekly, monthly, annually or a one-off fee, in exchange for betting tips.

There are several ways in which paid tipsters operate, and these have increased over the last few years, along with the number of paid tipsters.

Lots of paid tipsters charge their customers either a weekly, monthly or annual fee for betting tips. At regular intervals, the tipster will send their paying customers betting tips at regular intervals.

Some tipsters provide their customers with tips via email, while some like to use WhatsApp. Other tipsters will message all of their customers together as part of a group on an app such as Telegram, while others opt for a private Facebook group to deliver their tips.

Why would somebody pay for betting tips?

To many, paying somebody else to provide betting tips is futile. Many sports bettors feel that they’re capable of doing their own research and identifying their own bets; therefore, paying somebody else for tips doesn’t really work.

However, for many other sports bettors, paid tipsters tick lots of boxes. Lots of people either don’t want to or don’t have the time to research their own sports betting picks, yet they still want to place viable bets without just playing it by ear.

Paid sports betting tipsters are ideal for those bettors who are short on time and simply want to get regular, well-researched betting tips sent to them. Paid betting tipsters are also great for people who have little betting knowledge themselves but want to pay other people to essentially try and make money for them. This is reasonably similar to paying a stock broker to manage your investments. In this case, you only pay the tipster for their tips, you have to make the recommended wagers yourself.

Many people also feel more comfortable placing wagers that have been recommended by others. This could be because then, if it goes wrong, they don’t feel responsible, or because they feel more comfortable placing a bet recommended by an expert, and we’ll use this term lightly, that they trust, which in this context should also be used lightly.

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The trouble with paid betting tipsters

Unfortunately, the one big issue with a lot of sports betting tipsters nowadays is that you can never be entirely sure what it is that you’re paying for. The vast majority of tipsters operate online, and they operate under a page or brand name. That isn’t the case for all betting tipsters, who do operate under their real name and are there for all to see and contact.

However, the vast majority operate behind some form of guise, often referring to themselves as “we” or a “group of experts” without ever really providing details beyond that. Now that is, of course, fine. After all, you don’t know the names of the workers involved in shipping the product that you buy from a brand online, but you know where it comes from and what the general process is.

However, with tipsters that operate in this way, there is something of a transparency issue. It’s hard to know what they’re actually doing behind the scenes or whether you’re paying for something that you could very easily do yourself.

There’s also the issue of recording profit and loss. Many tipsters will record their results according to the price a bet was several hours before the event, just because this was the price advised, which isn’t exactly dishonest, but it doesn’t tell the full story. The problem with this is that lots of the subscribers will not be able to take such odds, and if subscribers are consistently betting the tipster’s picks at lower odds than the advised odds, not only will they not record the same profit as the tipster, but they may not record a profit at all. The odds discrepancy could be the difference between profit and loss.

Don’t believe everything you read online!

Following on from the above, by their very nature, paid betting tipster services leave people open to being scammed.

There have been several cases of people paying for tips off the back of tipster claims only for the service to shut down after a short while. This is where people need to be careful. If you are considering a paid tipster service, try to speak with somebody who has used the service before.

Betting tipsters will often post outlandish claims and statements on social media platforms such as Twitter, and while it can often seem convincing, it can pay not to believe everything that you read. You should always try to get things verified. As touched on above, see if you can speak to someone who has already paid for the services of the tipster or picks service in general.

Also, it’s worth remembering that if a tipster makes a claim on social media or elsewhere that seems too good to be true, the chances are that it is. It is very difficult to be profitable as a sports bettor in the long run, and in relation to the number of bettors out there, very few are successful. If a tipster claims to have insider knowledge on social media, they’re almost certainly lying, and if they’re advertising something that seems like a get-rich-quick-scheme, then you know that they’re not to be trusted, as getting-rich-quick and sports betting do not go hand in hand.

Pros and cons of paying for sports betting picks

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. There are plenty of paid tipster services out there that have stood the test of time. They’re popular, with lots of subscribers, and the service is well-run by people who are transparent and honest.

Pros

Here are the pros of paying for sports picks:

• Saves time – if you don’t have the time to research and come up with your own betting picks, then a decent tipster service can help you.
• Profitable – some tipster services can be profitable and have proven to be profitable in the long run
  Part of a community – many tipster services involve a group for the members, which can be a good place to meet like-minded sports betting enthusiasts.
• Could encourage you to place winning bets you wouldn’t otherwise – the tipster may find bets in events or on sports that you wouldn’t if you didn’t follow them.

Cons

• Claims can be misleading – it’s easy to be sucked in by claims of big profit only to see little evidence once signing up. Hard to know exactly what you’re paying for.
• Profit isn’t guaranteed – despite some claims, paying for picks certainly does not guarantee long-term profit.
• Results can be misleading – some tipsters record their P&L according to the best price or the price that they advised, but most people following may not have been able to get those odds.

Should you pay for sports betting picks?

There’s not really a concrete, black-and-white answer to this. Yes, there are some very good, highly recommended and proven to be profitable paid tipster services out there, but there’s also lots of trash.

If you’re somebody who doesn’t have the time to research your own betting picks but you still want a little action, then a paid picks service could be for you. If you’re using a service that has reviews that you trust, is transparent and has been around for a long time, then go for it.

On the other hand, if you’ve got the time to research your own betting picks and already have lots of sports betting experience, then you may want to work alone.

As long as we’re talking about reputable, trusted sports betting picks providers, then whether or not somebody should pay for picks is really a question of personal preference. As covered above, there are upsides to both paying for picks and not paying for picks.