Has anyone tried this? It sounds good but it seems like you need to pay for alerts about the opportunities, and there are a lot of scams out there. And practically if bets are limited, you may not get far. But I like the idea.
The spread are so thin, and you need to have at least a dozen betting account around the world to exploit this. Better of trying to get in to that The Punter Club in Tasmania...search for them. ATO is pursuing a case against all 7 member, due to their millions of dollar turnover and profit annually. Have u tought of lay betting? Like betfair?
Like oz said, contingency betting exist in many markets, not just limited to sports arbs. Off the top of my head as far as sports arb betting goes: Pros: If bookies pay, profits are guaranteed. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of arb opportunities available every day. It requires no skill, just time and organisation. It is tax free. You can do it at home. Cons: Bookies have different rules meaning one of your bets can be voided, leaving you with only one half of the arb (invariably the losing side) covered. Some bookies are arb haters and will close your account with them if they get wind of your activities. If either of the above occurs, it may wipe out all your profits (and even a portion of your capital) you have accumulated for months. There are bet limits which limits the profits. Time consuming with very low returns if you play it safely and try to stay below the radar. Do not ever or even consider paying someone to provide you with expensive arb services. There are many different services available, ranging from free to about $18 000!!! The free ones are very limited (do a google search to find them), the $18 000 one of which I am aware requires a bank balance in excess of $40 000 and $2000 bets (that'll get you limited quick smart and you'll never get your money back) to put into practice and of course before you make your money make back most of the bookies would have closed your account or limited you, or worse, the arb selction service will close and do a runner with your dosh. I'm not personally familiar with the more popular services (do a google search) that operate on a monthly or yearly fee so I can't comment. Be aware most bookies do not accept AUD, some bookies do not accept Australian citizens. Worse if you're a Yank though. As well, there are hefty fees for credit card withdrawals and deposits, this can be overcome using online wallets but you need to get yourself organised as there are restrictions in place about how much money you can transfer to bookmakers using these and direct services. They are nanny state laws but they have a very serious impact on the capacity to earn a decent income. Also, maximum limits on the amount of $ you can bet on an outcome can be as low as $30. At best it's a part time job.
I've been fiddling with this for the past 4 weeks involving bets generally in the range of $20 - $100 as a test case after I was approached on the phone by AIC International, a company trying to sell me their Arb selection software for about $18 000. Since then, (and after rejecting AIC's generous offer) I've averaged a 2.55% return per bet, and have made significantly more money than if I had put it in the bank or bought PM's :lol: Haven't checked it with BTC though Willrocks???? I started with a bank of $100, then added $100/week (that's about $400 now) and have made $37 profit. That's a pretty good return over four weeks considering I didn't start with $400, and even if I did start with $400, $37 profit over 4 weeks is nothing to be sneezed at, considering it is tax free. Someone with more barins (or better spelling) or thinks they have more brains (pro$pector) may be able to calculate my actual rate of return. As per my previous comments and cautions in the post above, it is basically risk free, but I think it is a dead end as far as making any serious money. There is only one bookmaker who does not oppose arb betting, I have been kicked out of one other bookmaker for winning about $30 on an arb bet, and it was only my second bet with them but it must have been one of countless hundreds that others had also backed. (It was an 8.3% profit bet). They are known banners. The last lot of bets I have tried to place with another bookmaker who frequently appears as one of the pairs in arb bets had limited my maximum bets to about $1.50. A quick check of other random bets with that company showed that the most I could bet in non-Arb bets would only be about $300. That results in a pretty shit return for a lot of work. At 2.55% you need to be able to lay bets totalling in the 1000's to view it as a viable second job. 4 - 5 bets of $1000 - $2000 in total per week at 2.55% return would get you $100 - $200 pocket money. I don't think it is possible to lay that much money on arb betting. Claims of incomes in excess of $80 000/year from arb betting are ludicrous. Promises of being able to make 100's per week are absolute bullshit - damn there goes my plans for next year's vacation. At best I reckon you could make $30/week (if that) with a few thousand dollars deposited into 6 - 10 bookmakers and spending more than 30 hours on the interweb checking prices if you were lucky. It's a hobby or a pastime at best. After all, you don't get any financial reward to watch "The Voice", and Delta doesn't deliver every week. And the last thing you would want would be to pay for an Arb Service that charges $1000's. Goodbye hard earned. Hope this helps.
Thanks shiney! I've had a few arb companies try to sell me their software over the years. Naturally you get mad keen at the thought but the business case smelled so bad that I've still never gone ahead (thank goodness). The margins in absolute terms are very skinny and one cock-up seemed to be enough to undo a lot of work. And that was without knowing that bookies reverse bets and ban people :O
Thought I'd found a way around the very low maximum bets I was allowed with a certain prominent bookmaker, found an arb returning 2.2%. If I clicked on the bet before logging in I could see that the max bets were bigger (in this case it was $60), so I placed my stake ($60), logged in (max stake was still showing $60 so I bet $60), clicked "place bet" and got a "Sorry, your stake exceeded the maximum $1.29." Bastards. It's annoying because I consider it a challenge - but haven't realised yet I cannot fight it. Is that normalcy bias?
I exploited a few opportunities utilising Betfair and a number of Bookmaking agencies from 2004-2006. Betfair has no issue with arbs betting, it's just more liquidity in their markets. Bookies don't usually have too much of an issue with it either but as alluded to here, the margins are thin. Betfair commission rates take the cream off the top as well until you're turning over big numbers. The good thing about the exchanges is that there were often arb opportunities available within markets, but the automated traders have really taken over that space. As a guide on how much time I was putting in, I was doing about 25hrs per week of work and making between $600-$2000/week. My Betfair discount rate was in the 14-22% range so I wasn't a chump, but not a big dog. It was certainly not enough for me to give up my day job and a week missed on the job meant the discount rate went down considerably due to weekly decay (unless you used your holidays). The Betfair fee models have changed a bit recently, but I haven't been involved in that side of betting for a couple of years now. FWIW I was banned from one bookmaker, I'm pretty sure it wasn't for being a prolific winner, though I was infront of them at the time of my departure. For a part-time hobby it's good fun, but if you want to be a full-timer you need to dedicate your life to it, have some decent capital backing and computing/communications power.
Going to copy my own reply to a very similar thread some months back. Almost nothings changed between now and then.
The stock options market arbitrage has far bigger more opportunities mostly because it has not yet been automated on a mass scale yet (usually only brokers do it), but the downside being that it requires a lot more work by you and is overall more complicated leaving more room for error.
I tried sports arbing back in 2007 and I made a bit of money from it for a few months. I decided to quit mainly because the opportunities that was pitched to me as being available was simply not there, the more volume of arbing the lesser the opportunities. Also the risks of one booky having an alternative payout over the other in an unusual outcome situation became more risky the more I got informed.
