Sports Arbitrage Betting – What is it?

Arbitrage situations causes

Arbitrage situations often result from the difference in bookmaker odds, and there may be several reasons causing such differences:

1. Market competition. Hundreds of bookies operate on the betting market. Each bookie is interested both in retaining its existing customer base and attracting new bettors. Therefore, they often set their odds too high, resulting in arbitrage situations.
2. Moneyway betting A situation in betting when an excessive monetary flow gets "poured" onto one of the outcomes. The odds for such an outcome "dip", and for the opposite - surge. This situation results in the emergence of a surebet.
3. Belated reaction of the bookie to live events. In dynamic sports such as basketball and tennis, the game situation may change in a matter of seconds. The bookies often literally have no time to react and change the odds.
4. Incorrect assessment of the likelihood of an outcome. In the lower leagues of peripheral soccer countries, as well as in the non-top sports, the sports analysts may not have comprehensive information for impartial odds calculation. Often, the chances of opponents may get assessed incorrectly, resulting in arbitrage situations.
5. Technical glitches on the side of the bookmaker. These ones may also lead to the occurrence of surebets. However, gamblers prefer to avoid such bets due to the fact that it may get calculated as a cashback or with 1.0 odds in case of an error in the betting line.

How Sports Arbitrage Betting Works – example

The ideal illustration of an arb is an event with two possible opposite outcomes. For example, a team qualifies for the next round of a cup competition. See a table with hypothetical Sportsbooks (A and B), and Teams (X and Y) below.

Both sportsbooks have included margin in their odds and are to make a profit regardless of the final result. For clarity, let's make a calculation:

Anything over 1.0 is to be considered the bookie's earnings. In our case, the margin is 5.6 and 5.1 percent, respectively.

That is why working with a single bookmaker in terms of arbing is an absolute disadvantage. To make a profit, we will choose qualification tips for Team 'X' with Bookmaker 'A' and Team 'Y' with Bookmaker 'B'. After substituting numbers in the formula, we'll get:

The final indicator (L) is <1.0, meaning there is an arbitrage situation. The lower it is, the more profitable the bet is.

The next step is to split $1,000 between both outcomes. To do this, we must divide the total amount by the produced surebet index and odds.

Bookmaker 'A': 1000 / 0.96 * 3.90 = $269.30

Bookmaker 'B': 1000 / 0.96 * 1.43 = $731.70

The last step is to wager $269.30 at 3.90 and $731.70 - at 1.43.

All that is left to do is wait for the end of the game and get credited with $1,050 to Bookmaker 'A' account or with $1,046 - to the other bookmaker account.

Net profit is either $50 or $46 (in percentage, 5 and 4.6, respectively). You surely must admit that this is a very fine investment. No bank in the world is able to offer you something like this!

How much can be made from arbing?

The above example shows how to make five or six bucks of every grand invested. And there is more to come. In fact, your income may reach 10-15% of your stake on a monthly basis, or even more. It all depends on the size of the investment and some other factors, such as time spent, game strategy, etc.

As you already saw, the arber makes profit in every match, and the value bettor - over a long distance. At the same time, arbers do not even need to be well versed in sports, and they certainly do not need to spend time analyzing the pre-match situation and watching live games.

Previously, the main problem for both the arbers and the value bettors were the bookmaker sanctions to avoid them from losing their money and thus applying said sanctions to professional bettors (such as cutting stake limits, blocking accounts, etc.).

Types of arbitrage betting situations

There are two types of arbitrage situations. Live ones being generated in real time during the event. Prematch ones being generated before the start of the event. Most often the arbs and value bets occur in live, but those are a little more difficult to work with due to the rapid odds change.

Popular sports for Arbs Betting

Soccer, the king of sports, arbitrage situations and value betting. In this sport, the bets are being mainly wagered on the win of one of the teams, on double chance, total, handicap, both to score (yes / no), resulting in a stable income.