A Definitive Showcase of Arbitrage Betting and its Rising Profile
Despite the win-chasing profile of some of the most hardcore sports bettors, many gamble casually for the sake of having fun and seeing if they can pinpoint winners. Some others try to make some extra money to have disposable income in an increasingly difficult environment. If winning some extra money can sweeten a paycheck-to-paycheck experience, why not do your utmost to profit from these opportunities?
Bettors have historically tried numerous strategies in order to make the odds work in their favour. Some have even attempted to use intricate mathematical formulas to decode the probabilities of certain betting scenarios. In other cases, some have used their understanding of specific sports and other insights to make direct bets.
However, one of the new-age strategies that stemmed from the availability of online sports betting has become arbitrage betting. It’s a practice that is gaining traction despite its relative complexity. Naturally, it attracts all kinds of usage and attention from bookies and players alike.
This article’s set of objectives is to define arbitrage betting, outline its context within the sports gambling industry, and see if there are any metrics that would determine its popularity and usage.
Defining Arbitrage Betting
Arbitrage betting is a complex method of placing sports bets that emphasises exploiting differences in odds. Since the alternative name of this practice is placing sure bets, you can understand the appeal quite fast. Arbitrage betting is all about making sure that you always land on a winning outcome regardless of the result.
For example, you would have a sports event with multiple outcomes. In the case of basketball or tennis, the game is played until there is a clear winner. As such, you only need to place bets on both outcomes to ensure that at least one of them lands. If you’re betting on a sport that accepts draws, you’ll need to place three bets to cover all scenarios.
The logical question would be about how to make a profit if you’re betting on such outcomes. This is where the crucial detail of odds exploitation comes in.
In their effort to stay competitive on the bookmaker scene, various gambling brands scramble to provide competitive odds for the sake of being the chosen platform. In the cases of some events, these bookies will provide differing odds.
When arbitrage betting, you’ll just need to place bets at the bookie that provides the best odds for that specific scenario. Since doing this comparison takes time, the BetOnValue model of aggregating odds from various brands makes the process feasible.
Why You Should Opt For or Avoid It
Now that we’ve stated the definitive facts, we ought to also make an analytical inspection of this betting methodology.
There’s a clear reason why people call it sure betting: it provides the best chances of not losing. It’s a betting style that emphasises covering every scenario rather than betting on a single outcome. As such, it provides a guaranteed win once the results come in.
Moreover, being in tune with multiple bookmakers and understanding their tendencies is good homework if you’re going to be a long-time bettor. At the same time, using the services of multiple gambling platforms also means taking advantage of as many sets of bonuses as possible.
There’s a set of deterring issues associated with arbitrage betting. The first would be the fact that it has a relatively negative profile in the eyes of online betting platforms. For them, it’s against the principle of gambling and can lead to cancelled bets or closed accounts. As such, discretion is very advisable, not to mention a rotation of various platforms so as to not look like you’re continuously doing this arbitrage betting thing.
Another notable downside is the slow upside. Since you need to start with a considerable amount of money to cover multiple scenarios and ensure profit, this means that you’re going to start looking at money in your pockets a bit harder.
Raw Stats – Awareness & Upside
In terms of present arbitrage opportunities within the eyes of experts, we have a few resources. In a collaborative article by Egon Franck, Erwin Verbeek, and Stephan Nuesch for Economica called Inter-marketing Arbitrage in Betting, the study of this phenomenon yielded the most insightful study case.
Despite its relative old age, this study, launched in 2012, analyses arbitrage opportunities across the top 5 European football leagues. In this context, the results found that 19.2% of these matches provide such opportunities. This proves that there have always been arbitrage opportunities on the market due to inefficient price settings on behalf of the bookies.
Based on several (somehow unreliable) sources from the internet space, arbitrage betting yields profit margins that are barely within 1–5% range.
Awareness is also quite low when arbitrage betting is the topic. In one of its countless surveys, Statista showcased that the UK market, one of the biggest domestic markets for sports betting, had a 56.67% rate of its subjects within the unaware column. Moreover, more than 43% of the surveyed subjects stated that they know the concept but haven’t applied it. Note that this study is from 2018.
If we were to think about the combination of reputation, complexity, and financial difficulty, arbitrage betting could hardly be more than a niche betting concept. By being incompatible with casual betting, it has a low chance of becoming a mainstream practice. If it were to gain traction, it would probably lead to an industry-wide initiative that would see it banned unequivocally.
Conclusion
We sincerely hope that our breakdown clarifies enough about the implications and core elements of arbitrage betting. As such, it’s an admittedly smart practice despite being difficult. If you choose to bet in any way, arbitrage included, we strongly suggest that you do so responsibly!