Arbitrage betting - Risk free profits

Here we have the match betting odds from 2 different sportsbooks.

Sportsbook 1

Sportsbook 2

Just by inspecting the odds from the two sportsbooks we can see a big difference in odds for the same outcome. This is what is required for an arbitrage opportunity.

Previously we learned how to calculate book percentage by adding the implied probability of each outcome together. We can find arbitrage opportunities in much the same way, but instead of adding implied probabilities for odds on the same sportsbook, we do this across different sportsbooks. What this looks like is comparing team 1 on sportsbook 1 to team 2 on sportsbook 2 and then repeating for the opposite combination.

We can see the combination of 'Jaguars' from sportsbook 1 and 'Saints' from sportsbook 2 yielded a sum of less than 100%. This means an arbitrage opportunity exists - by betting on both teams in the match we will profit regardless of the outcome.

Following on from the above example:

This value allows us to figure out how much we can profit from the opportunity. Betting a total of $200 across the outcomes would result in a profit of $10.47.

For Jaguars outcome

For Saints outcome

We can now calculate the actual profit for each outcome of the game by calculating the profit for one outcome and subtracting the stake from the opposite outcome.

If Jaguars win

If Saints win

To confirm our calculations we can check that the stake size for each outcome adds to our total stake amount and the profit for each case equals our previously calculated profit figure.