When you started betting on sports, you may have wondered about whether there was an optimal sports betting strategy. You may have tried different systems or tailed certain experts, but nothing guaranteed you a profit. What if I told you there were a way to guarantee profits from betting? When you hear of arbitrage betting it can sound a bit hard to believe. People get excited because they are certain that they can lock in a profit by “arbing.” The truth is that they are actually right. Arbitrage betting is when you make a bet on both sides of a two-way market at different prices that guarantees a profit.
Arbitrage Betting Explained: How to Guarantee Betting Profits
How Does Arbitrage Betting Work?
Let’s take an example from an NHL total. The Calgary Flames are visiting the Edmonton Oilers tonight, and the game’s total is set to 6.5 goals. At DraftKings, the over 6.5 is currently at -103, and at BetMGM, the under is at +110.
If the problem with those sports betting odds isn’t immediately obvious, that’s fine, especially if you’re new. But, in other words, DraftKings says the over has a 50.7% chance of winning, while BetMGM says the under has a 47.6% chance of winning.
That leaves 1.7% of implied probability on the floor.
Using arbitrage ,betting you could lock up a profit in this spot by betting a bit more on the over and less on the under so that a profit was guaranteed no matter the game’s outcome.
If you have $100 to wager, and you $51.58 on the over 6.5 at -103 and $48.14 on the under 6.5 at +110, you would profit $1.67 no matter the outcome. Whatever you lost on one side would be made up by the winnings of the other.
Guaranteed Betting Profits… So, What’s the Catch?
There’s really no “catch” in the sense that arbing will truly guarantee a profit. But, notice in the example above how much that profit was. You would need to wager $1,000 to get it to $16.67 and five to get into the hundreds. You need a pretty large bankroll to make that worth your time.
To arb effectively, you also need the maximum number of sportsbooks available in your state. Lots of people have asked me, “How many sportsbooks should I have?“, and, especially in this case, the answer is almost always all of them! Sports betting markets are often inefficient. The more books you have, the likelier you’ll get an arb opportunity.
Another issue is that arbing takes time. You need to hunt around for the right odds to spot the places where you can lock it in. There’s an opportunity cost to that because you could be putting your time to better use on +EV bets from our tools or other higher ROI bets.
Fortunately for you, we at OddsShopper have solved the time dilemma for you with our arbitrage betting tool that finds these spots for you. Take a look at the tool every so often to find out where you can guarantee a betting win. Let’s look at an example arbitrage bet opportunity:
One final arbitrage tactic is to pursue one of the sides in derivative markets or alternative lines. The entire industry may be on the same vig for a bet, but you can look into derivative point spreads and totals to see if you can lock in a profit using two different books. Derivative markets are sometimes not as sharp as the main sides or totals and the pricing can vary widely across the industry.
