Quarterbets Newspaper Article

Student creates Web site for legal sports betting
By Adam Samson

Published on Mon., March 23rd, 2009

Throughout the year, events such as the Super Bowl, the World Series and college basketball’s March Madness create a stir in the sports gambling market.

Although sporting event gambling is illegal, new Web sites are allowing people to bet legally.

Grayson Ediger, Olathe junior, collaborated with two friends from the University of Missouri, Jermemiah Reardon and Taylor Swartz, to launch Quarterbets.com, a free and legal sports betting Web site.

“Technically in legal terms, we’re a sweepstakes company,” Reardon said. “In everyday terms to explain to everyone, we say betting because people understand it more.”

Ediger, Reardon and Swartz had been using offshore sports betting Web sites and bookies to place bets during last year’s March Madness, but decided it was too risky and came up with Quarterbets.com.

“The offshore betting Web sites got so complicated to deposit money into the Web site and it was becoming a huge process to get around the rules,” Reardon said.

Congress prohibited Internet users from depositing their own money into betting Web sites with the SAFE Port Act of 2006. Quarterbets.com is legal because it gives users 25 cents to begin with and users don’t deposit money into the site. Once a user reaches $20, the user can cash out and the trio will send a check in the mail for the account balance.

“We did a lot of different research for this,” Ediger said. “From searching Google to calling lawyers to make sure everything we were doing was legitimate.”

Quarterbets.com features seven sports: NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, tennis and NCAA basketball and football, but Ediger said he would consider adding more sports in the future.

To cover upkeep of the Web site and start up costs such as the server and domain name, the three students spent close to $5,000 of their own money. Ediger said they also found ad agencies that would pay the site for each time a user accesses Quarterbets.com.

Ediger, Reardon and Swartz said the biggest way of getting advertising and marketing for the site was by word of mouth. The trio has done everything from posting on Internet discussion boards, to putting fliers on cars and spamming their friends on Facebook.

In the month and a half Quarterbets.com has been fully functional, Ediger said, more than 1,000 users have joined. Of the 1,000 users, only three have been able to cash out. Ediger said they started with a handful of people from Kansas and Missouri, but spread to other states and reached users in Canada as well.

“It’s very gratifying having an idea, finishing it, and then seeing it gain momentum,” Ediger said.

Ediger, who described himself as a huge sports fan and very competitive, said the Web site was an entertaining way for users and sports fans to wager legally on sports and make a game more interesting.

“It’s a very fun feeling watching a sports game with money on the line,” Ediger said. “It makes any game, the game you want to watch.”

Although Quarterbets.com is a legal site, offshore betting Web sites and sports betting are still a problem.

Last week the NCAA issued a news release about education outreach on the participation of sports wagering for student athletes, coaches, administrators and fans.

The NCAA also created a multimedia feature with real-life experiences of those affected by gambling.

Rachel Newman Baker, director of agents gambling and amateurism for the NCAA, said in the news release, “We want people to realize that money and gambling do not have to be involved for our games to be exciting and fun.”

— Edited by Carly Halvorson