The Expert’s Guide to Sports Arbitrage Betting

Crypto888 Members Club uses sports arbitrage betting as one method of putting profits in our members’ accounts. Our team of experts handle this form of sportsbetting, because it is a fairly complex method of gambling. You won’t find the average punter using it, so we thought we’d ask an acknowledged professional to give you an expert’s guide to sports arbitrage betting because we want Crypto888 investment strategies to be as easy to understand as possible.

Can you make gambling an investment strategy?

Simon Renström, who is CEO of RebelBetting, one of the most important sports arbitrage betting software designers, says that it is, but he also adds that whilst it turns gambling into a profitable investment methods,

“few know the intricacies and requirements of successful trading, still", he adds, "people with knowledge have been making good profits for over a decade and continue to do so."

What is financial arbitrage?

In general finance, ‘arbitrage’ is a term for buying and selling the same asset in two different markets. By doing this, traders take advantage of different prices. For example, let’s say you buy shares in BP on the London Stock Exchange and then immediately sell them on the New York Stock Exchange for a profit. That’s the basic idea, but in the finance world, an opportunity such as this only exists for microseconds, so you have to be fast and lucky!

 What is sports arbitrage?

Sports arbitrage betting is different to the finance sector arbitrage in three ways: first, bookies don’t need the same exact balance that the stock markets do. They have to make their odds attractive to customers, and this makes hundreds of arbitrage opportunities available at any one time. If you look at an odds aggregation site you’ll see that many bookies have different prices on one horse for a particular race.

Second, the sports market moves pretty slowly compared to the money markets. Sports arbitrage situations often exist for many minutes, sometimes even hours.

The third significant difference is that a bookie can refuse to take a bet. They know who the expert gamblers are and can limit their exposure to them. This allows the bookies to deliver attractive odds and protect themselves from ‘traders’ taking advantage of their prices. However, as Simon Renström points out, not all bookies prohibit expert players and a number of them positively welcome them.

What is the formula for an arbitrage bet?

Simon Renström says that the basic formula is “An arbitrage arises when the sum of two or more inverted odds is below 1.”

He gives the following example based on a Nadal v Federer tennis match:

Nadal to win has odds 1.80 (-125) at bookmaker William Hill.

Federer to win has odds 2.45 (+145) at bookmaker Gamebookers.

Suppose you place $585 on William Hill for Nadal to win and $430 on Gamebookers for Federer to win, then you have placed a total of $1,015.

The different outcomes of the event are:

If Nadal wins, your win will be a total of $1,053 (1.8 * $585 = $1,053)

If Federer wins, your return will be a total of $1,053.50 (2.45 * $430 = $1,053.50)

This means that you will profit $38 or $38.50 depending on who wins the match. Thank you Simon for explaining that so clearly.

Why isn’t everyone in sports arbitrage betting?

He also says, that if you’re wondering why more people aren’t involved in it, the reason is that it is very time consuming to do it right and you need to act fast. Plus, as he said before, you need the betting industry knowledge.

That’s why Crypto888 Club has a team of experts in sports arbitrage betting, so that you can have confidence that you’ve joined the best club that makes you money.