Costa Rica-Based Sportsbooks, Pay Per Heads Growing at a Rapid Pace

Gambling911.com had the pleasure of visting Americas Bookie, RealBookies.com and MyBookie.com to close out our time here in beautiful Costa Rica.

Despite the US Supreme Court throwing out decades of prohibition against sports betting one year ago, the Costa Rica-based sportsbooks and Pay Per Heads continue to grow at record numbers.

MyBookie has had to move into satellite offices in order to accommodate their ever growing number of affiliates.

"Growth is amazing," expressed a representative of MyBookie.ag. 

Her affiliate team outgrew the current office space (pictured below) and has moved into spacious new digs the very day we met with the long time Affiliate Manager.

When it comes to the Pay Per Head businesses, gambling911.com confirmed with RealBookies, one of the biggest in the biz, that agents in the States have been increasing their head counts in a significant way.

"The bookie business stateside is certainly growing," Pamela from Realbookies confirmed to G911. "It will be a long way until the US gets it together."

Pamela pointed to the situation in Colombia some five years ago.

"The law was so dumb and restrictive, nobody could make a profit.  They eventually had to amend the law.

"In the US legal market, no sportsbooks can afford to pay 1% off the volume like the MLB wants with integrity fees."

RealBookies business is almost entirely online with a ratio of 97% of bets coming in via the Internet and just 3% over the phone.  This ratio was reversed when the company first got started well over a decade ago.

AmericasBookie, meanwhile, continues to grow at a steady pace.  Another member of the Gambling911.com family, AmericasBookie focuses on a boutique service while discouraging bonus hunters.

While MyBookie is one of the emerging sportsbooks on the scene with deep pockets and a management team that comes from various other gambling companies, much of the offshore sportsbook industry has consolidated in recent years.

Some experts we have spoken to believe there is room for newcomers in what is commonly referred to as the post up bookmaking business now that the US market sports betting has become more mainstream thanks to legalization.  The main obstacle over the past decade continues to be payment processing, but bitcoin could change all of this.

In addition to MyBookie, another of the big newcomers over the past five years has been the Bitcoin-only sportsbook Nitrogen, now believed to rank among the top ten online sportsbooks catering to the US market with offices and a license offshore (Costa Rica in this case).

Consolidation will likely take place in the Pay Per Head industry as well, though companies like RealBookies want no part of it.

"We really do want to provide a premium service," Pamela tells Gambling911.com.  "We are not interested in taking on a one-man show servicing just a few agents from his garage.

If you're a bookie or agent, RealBookies is definitely for you.  Their newly released video

"We spend more time than most.  (We're) not interested in giving the worst service possible for cheaper."

In the case of RealBookies, the lowest price offered is $6.50.

"At that price, the agent will need to have a lot of customers," Pamela said.

$10 is the average per customer per week paid by agents with RealBookies.   The company currently services some 25,000 customers.

Time will only tell if MyBookie starts swallowing up smaller books and those that don't have the same type of marketing budgets.

MyBookie has entered into affiliate and advertising arrangements with the biggest and the best in the industry including Oddsshark, VegasInsider, Spookyexpress.com and of course Docs Sports. 

What we learned from our trip here in Costa Rica is that the offshore industry is going nowhere but up.

Pura Vida.

- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher