Sports Arbitrage Betting
Although sports arbitrage betting is a common term today, arbitrage originated as an economics term, used strictly when discussing finance. It referred to the act of taking advantage of price differences between markets and making a combination of deals that would result in a profit of that difference. Although many consider it to be a risk free practice, financial markets can fluctuate and can decrease the expected profit. It is important to remember that very few things in finance are risk free an any time you are putting up money, you are taking a risk.
The term may have originally applied to economics, but it did not take long for the concept to be applied to gambling. Sports arbitrage betting, also known as miraclebets or surebets, involves placing bets with more than one bookmaker on more than one predicted outcome. This is possible, based on the fact that different bookies often have different predictions, or can make mistakes in their calculations. As long as sports arbitrage betting is used with different bookies, they don’t care, since they are making their profit as well.
There are several different types of sports arbitrage betting that have been successful. One type, called betting investment, involves numerous bets of small amounts of money, placed on overvalued odds. Most will lose, but enough will win to make a profit. The most common form of sports arbitrage betting is the type involving the betting on discrepancies between bookmakers’ odds. Since the bookies’ calculations are usually only a few percentages off of each other, the profit margin of this type of sports arbitrage is usually around 4%. Because of this it is often better to place large bets to ensure a larger profit. Another variation on sports arbitrage betting, called bonus sports arbitrage, takes advantage of cash bonuses offered by bookies for an initial deposit. The bonus, factored into the regular arbitrage bets, allows for a small loss of 2-5% on each wager, still guaranteeing a profit.
The principles of sports arbitrage betting can also be applied to betting exchanges. This is called back-lay sports arbitrage and is also known as scalping or trading. Back-lay sports arbitrage betting is based on the idea that in a betting exchange, it is possible to lay as well as back an outcome. Unlike regular arbitrage betting, which results in a profit that is a certain percentage of the original bet, back-lay arbitrage is designed to result in many small profits that add up to a larger one.
As it is on Wall Street, sports arbitrage betting is risk-free only in theory. Discrepancies between bookies have a tendency to disappear quickly before an arbitrage bettor has time to complete their bets. In online sports markets they last for an average of fifteen minutes, while with traditional bookmakers, they usually last several hours. Also, if one bookmaker cancels a bet, what used to be arbitrage becomes a standard wager, with all its implied risks. The most common risk in sports arbitrage betting, however, is simple human error. This can be reduced by using one of the many arbitrage calculators that have cropped up on the internet, by employing someone else to place the bets, allowing you to stay at the computer, gauging the numbers and by a solid understanding of how sports arbitrage betting works.
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Hi, My name’s Mike and I've spent 6 months testing 20 different Betting products readily available online. Due to the various bet selection methods and research techniques, some of the products had little to no results. Picks must be based on a solid statistical system.
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