Why do sports arbitrage opportunities occur?
How is it possible to place bets that never lose and therefore make a risk-free profit? We all know that bookmakers are not renowned for giving money away to punters and there is no such thing as a guaranteed winner! Well, sports betting arbitrage opportunities come to exist mainly because of the large number of bookmakers pricing up sports events and because an odds compiler’s opinion determines what odds each bookmaker offers. In the past, arbitrage betting was possible through traditional high street bookmakers’ betting shops. For instance it was possible to use their football coupons to find arbs on the weekend football matches. However, it was laborious to travel to each betting shop to place the bets. The number of bookmakers has increased in recent years, and the advent of online betting means that we now have access to literally hundreds of them thanks to the Internet. An arb player can now get all his bets on within a few minutes from the comfort of his PC. Each bookmaker has
