A complete list of the sports betting subreddits Reddit has shut down, the ones that went private, the ones that quietly died, and what to use instead.
If you have ever clicked a recommended betting subreddit and landed on a page telling you the community does not exist, you have run into a problem that is much more widespread than it looks. A surprising number of the obvious names are gone, and the lists recommending them have never been updated.
This is every betting community we could find that is banned, private or effectively abandoned, checked individually against Reddit on 17 August 2026, with a working alternative for each one.
On this page
Why so many lists get this wrong
There is a technical reason, and it is worth understanding because it tells you how much to trust any list you read.
When you look up a batch of subreddits at once, Reddit returns a cached record for the banned ones. Member count included. So a community that was shut down two years ago still shows up as a healthy 30,000-member forum in a spreadsheet. Check that same name on its own and you get a flat refusal instead.
Anyone building a list from bulk data therefore ends up confidently recommending communities that do not exist, with plausible-looking numbers next to them, and has no way of knowing. That is how r/nbabetting is still being recommended in 2026.
Banned by Reddit
These return an error page. There is no way in, and no archive of the content.
| Banned community | What it was | Use instead |
|---|---|---|
| r/nbabetting | The main NBA betting community | The r/sportsbook daily threads. There is no live NBA betting sub at all. |
| r/CFBbetting and r/CFBBets | College football betting | r/sportsbook daily threads through the season |
| r/CBBbets | College basketball betting | r/sportsbook, especially around March |
| r/MLBbets | Baseball betting | MLB Betting and Picks, and MLB Props and Home Run Picks, both daily in r/sportsbook |
| r/NHLbets | Hockey betting | r/NHLbetting, which is a different community and still alive |
| r/NFLBetting | Football betting, mixed case | r/NFLBETS in capitals, 13,900 members |
| r/SportsBettingPicks | Picks community | r/SportsBettingPicks1, with the number, or r/BettingPicks |
| r/dfsports | The general daily fantasy hub | r/PrizePicks or r/underdogfantasy. Nothing replaced it as a general hub. |
| r/matchedbetting | Matched betting | r/MatchedBettingUK or r/arbitragebetting |
| r/OffshoreBetting | Offshore sportsbook discussion | r/Bovada, which has become the de facto offshore board, plus r/sportsbook |
| r/betonline | Single-book community | r/sportsbook, or our own BetOnline review |
| r/StopGambling | Recovery community | r/problemgambling, which is larger and active daily |
Private, so you cannot read them
These still exist but are closed. You will get a permission error rather than a ban notice, and joining requires moderator approval that in practice is not being granted.
- r/NBABets. The other NBA betting option, and also unavailable. Between this and the banned r/nbabetting, NBA bettors have nowhere dedicated to go.
- r/betting. A generic name that would carry real traffic if it were open.
- r/ParlayPicks. Closed. Parlay talk happens in the r/sportsbook Parlay of the Day thread.
- r/sportsbet. Closed.
- r/cryptosportsbetting. Restricted rather than fully private. You can read it, but most people cannot post, which is why crypto betting discussion is thin on Reddit.
- r/dfs and r/DailyFantasy. Both restricted, which is part of why DFS on Reddit is so fragmented.
Alive but abandoned
These are the trickiest, because they look fine. The community loads, the member count is real, and there has been nothing posted in months.
| Community | Newest post | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| r/CollegeBasketballBets | July 2025 | Over a year stale |
| r/SportsHandicapping | March 2026 | Abandoned |
| r/FootballBetting | June 2026 | 213 members, going nowhere |
| r/sportsbookextra | July 2026 | Official overflow sub, barely used |
| r/TennisBetting | July 2026 | Quiet but not dead |
| r/sportsbettingsystems | July 2026 | Marginal |
Empty shells and squatted names
A few names exist purely because somebody registered them. They rank in search results, they look official, and there is nothing behind them.
r/PositiveEV has six members. r/EVbets has one. The live positive expected value community is r/EVbetting with 11,291 members, and the naming similarity catches people out constantly.
r/sportsarbitrage has thirteen members. The real one is r/arbitragebetting with 39,011.
r/mmabets has nine members. Use r/MMAbetting with 42,336.
r/PicksandParlays was created in 2026 and has a single member. It has no connection to the established handicapping brand of the same name, which is worth knowing before you assume you have found their official community.
Why betting subreddits get banned
Reddit does not publish a reason when it shuts a community down, so nobody can tell you exactly why any specific one went. The general causes are well documented, though, and the pattern across these names is fairly clear.
Spam takeover. Small betting communities are attractive targets. Somebody moderates a 5,000-member sub, loses interest, and it fills up with pick sellers and referral links. Reddit treats an unmoderated spam pit as a spam operation.
Moderator abandonment. A community with no active moderators can be removed regardless of what is in it.
Ban evasion. If a banned user rebuilds their community under a new name, Reddit removes the new one too. This is the likeliest explanation for several of the near-identical names above.
Commercial operation. Communities that exist mainly to funnel members toward a paid service tend not to last. That is the same instinct behind the strict anti-touting rules in the surviving communities, which we cover in the r/sportsbook rules.
The takeaway for anyone reading a betting subreddit list: the big, strict, well-moderated communities are the ones that survive. The permissive ones are the ones that disappear.
Questions people ask
What happened to r/nbabetting?
Reddit banned it. There is no archive and no replacement. The other option, r/NBABets, is private. NBA betting discussion now happens inside the r/sportsbook daily threads, which means there is currently no dedicated NBA betting community on Reddit at all.
Is r/NFLBetting or r/NFLBETS the real one?
r/NFLBETS, in capitals, with 13,900 members. r/NFLBetting in mixed case was banned. The two names differ only in letter case, which is why so many lists send people to the wrong one.
Why do subreddit lists recommend communities that do not exist?
Reddit’s bulk lookup returns cached data for banned communities, including an old member count. A community shut down years ago still looks alive in a spreadsheet. Only checking each name individually reveals the ban, and most list writers never do.
Can a banned subreddit come back?
Occasionally, if the ban was for moderator inactivity and someone successfully requests the community. Bans for spam or ban evasion are effectively permanent, and recreating the community under a similar name usually gets that one banned as well.
Where did the offshore betting community go?
r/OffshoreBetting was banned and r/betonline with it. Offshore discussion moved into r/Bovada, which has 20,847 members and functions as a general offshore payout board, and into the r/sportsbook daily threads. Neither r/sportsbook nor r/sportsbetting bans the topic.
Sportsbooks.ag may earn a commission from some links on this page, at no extra cost to you. That does not affect our reviews, ratings or recommendations. See our affiliate disclaimer, editorial policy and how we rate sportsbooks.