Forensic Analysis Of Sportsbook Billboard Finds The Smallest Words Were The Important Ones
The offer on a Reno billboard stands eight feet tall. The terms underneath it are smaller than the bolts holding it up, and took eleven months to read.
RENO. For eleven months, Gambling Paper’s investigations desk has studied a single billboard on the road to the airport. It advertises the sportsbook Wagerworth and reads, in letters taller than a grown man, BET $5 GET $200.
Beneath the offer runs a line of smaller text. Working with a typographer, a surveyor and a borrowed cherry picker, this desk has now measured it, photographed it and, after considerable effort, read it.
The measurements
- “BET $5 GET $200”: eight feet per letter
- The Wagerworth logo: four feet
- “New customers only. Bonus paid as non-withdrawable bets. 21+. Terms apply.”: a quarter of an inch
- “Please gamble responsibly”: smaller than the bolts holding up the sign
Type at that size is not meant to be read. It is meant to have been there.
The terms, once read, show that the $200 arrives as eight $25 bets, each to be placed within seven days at minimum odds of Wagerworth’s choosing, none of them withdrawable. A former Wagerworth marketing employee, who asked not to be named because it is embarrassing, said the design brief had asked for “big number, small number,” and nothing else.
Wagerworth said the billboard meets every rule set by the Commission for Fair Wagering, which requires terms to be “present.” The Commission agreed, and said it would consider raising the minimum text size at its next meeting, details of which are posted on a notice in its lobby, in small print.
