Sports Arbitrage Betting, ‘Arb Trading’, ‘Sure Bets’ and ‘scalping’ all basically mean the same thing: the idea of realizing a profit from the fact that different bookmakers have different views about the statistical probability of a particular event happening.

Under normal circumstances, if you place a bet on both possible outcomes of a sporting event at one particular bookmaker, the odds are calculated in such a way that, although you are guaranteed to win, the cost of the bet will be more than the payout.

If you can find two bookmakers, however, who offer different odds for the same event, you might well be in the pound seats. You could then e. G. Place a bet that team A will win a certain match at one of the brokers, and place another bet that team B will win the match at the other broker. If you do your calculations properly, you can end up with a guaranteed profit of around 4% to 5%. Since bookmaking has become computerized, it has become much more difficult to find such opportunities though.

What follows is a very basic example.

Let;s say you want to bet on an upcoming tennis match. Bookmaker X has the following odds: 1.10 on the visiting player and 8. 00 on the home player. Bookmaker Y has a different opinion, and thus different odds of: 1.20 on the visiting player and 5.00 on the home player.

Now calculate how much you have to place on each possible outcome to make a profit of $2000.

Bookmaker 1:$1818.20 on 1.1 wins $2000,$250 on 8 wins $2000

Bookmaker B:$3333.40 at 1.20 wins $4000,$800 at 5 wins $4000

A quick look at the above calculation shows clearly that if you should both on both players at bookmaker X, the total cost would be $7272.80 plus $1000 = $8282.80. You will win $8000, but at a cost of 8282.80, resulting in a net loss of 282.80. Similarly, should you bet on both players at bookmaker Y the total cost will be $8266.80 with a guaranteed net loss of $266.80. Now you see how bookies make their money, don’t you?

Nonetheless, if you bet on the underdog at bookmaker 1 (8.00) and the front-runner at Bookmaker 2 (1.20) you would have to bet only $1916.70 in order to win $2000. That is a sure win of $83.30 since you’re using the arbitrage opportunity arising from the different odds offered by the two bookmakers. Regardless of who wins, you will still win $2,000, and you will have only paid out $1916.70.

Sports arbitrage betting might therefore sound complicated, but is in fact quite simple. The challenge is to study odds offered by potentially hundreds of bookmakers to find an arbitrage opportunity and then to act quickly to make use of that opportunity.

Don’t make too many deposits and withdrawals though – they come at a price. If your bookmaker charges you a fixed amount every time you deposit or withdraw money, this can very quickly add up and leave you with no profits to show from your sports arbitrage better at all. Similarly you might incur losses as a result of fluctuating currency exchange rates and canceled matches, resulting in canceled bets.

Searching for a new way to gamble? If you’ve never heard of arbitrage betting, you need to! Learn all about sports arbitrage betting here and find out what everyone is talking about!