...insider trading like what? With fantasy sports, they controlled the game so could use pick rates. With sports betting, it is one of the most liquid markets i

...insider trading like what? With fantasy sports, they controlled the game so could use pick rates. With sports betting, it is one of the most liquid markets in the world with billions traded every week. Sports books definitely use liquidity to set their lines, but 99.9% of the bets they take are uninformed bettors who aren't going to move the market..that is how they make money. And the books in the US have very little to no staff setting lines, they just work out what margin/risk they want to take and then add that onto current market prices...that is it. They aren't betting against you, you are betting against the market, they are taking a commission. The reason why they are doing the bonus stuff is because they are the most exploited part of the market. I live in the UK, when these bonuses were a bigger part of bookmakers promo strategy I knew people who made a living from them (I will leave it up to you to work out how). Most bookmakers deploy a more careful strategy these days, this clearly wasn't a careful promo that they decided to try and make up with onerous T&C...not a good idea (this is, unfortunately, the way things are going).