How Much Money Can You Make From Arbitrage Betting?

Quick answer: in theory, there’s no real limit to the profits you could make from arbitrage. However, in practice each arbitrage bet is likely to produce quite small profits, resulting in a slow, steady increase over time. Combining arbitrate betting with other strategies, like Matched Betting, is the best way to turn sports betting into ongoing, reliable profits.

There are all sorts of reasons people get into sports betting - because they find it fun, because it adds a level of excitement to the game, because they’re hoping that betting on their favourite team will somehow secure a win - but realistically, every time someone places a bet they’re mostly hoping to end up with more money than they started with.

And yet, statistically the majority of bettors lose more money than they win. So it’s no surprise that many people turn to smarter betting strategies to try to turn their fortunes around.

Data Insight

The UK Gambling Commission found that 72.54% of active betting accounts were in a net loss position, while only 25.42% were in net profit. This highlights why structured approaches that lock in small, repeatable returns appeal to many bettors.

- Gambling Commission

Some strategies, such as Value Betting, involve making statistically sound choices that, generally speaking, result in mounting profits in the long run. But Value Betting does involve risk and requires a good bankroll to get started. What if you’re looking for a reliable means of locking in profits with minimal risk?

That’s where strategies like Arbitrage Betting and Matched Betting come in. Both allow you to lock in profits when betting on sports, with essentially no risk when you complete your bets correctly.

But how much can you actually make with an arbitrage betting strategy? Is it worth the time you’ll put into it? And what can you do to get the greatest possible profit from your efforts?

In this article, we’ll answer all these questions and more, to give you a thorough understanding of the profit potential of an arbitrage betting strategy.

How Does Arbitrage Betting Make Money?

If you’re reading this article, you probably already know roughly how arbitrage betting works. If not, it’s worth taking a look at our full guide to arbitrage betting before reading on.

As a reminder, though, arbitrage betting involves covering two or more potential outcomes of an event at favourable odds, resulting in a profit no matter the outcome of that event.

In the UK, it’s most common, and easiest, to use the bookmaker-exchange model of arbitrage betting, placing a back bet (for a certain outcome) with a bookmaker, and a lay bet (against the same outcome) with a betting exchange.

However, it’s also possible to place your bets with two bookmakers, using the bookmaker-bookmaker model, or even with two exchanges, although we strongly advise against doing the latter.

The most difficult part about arbitrage betting is finding odds on opposing outcomes that produce a profit. As a rule, bookmakers set their odds with a profit margin built in, so logically you’d expect never to find pairs of odds that allow the punter to claim a profit instead.

But odds change all the time, and bookies don’t always keep up. They also adjust their odds to attract bettors to certain selections, and sometimes bookmakers might disagree about the chances of a certain selection winning. Consequently, arbitrage opportunities crop up all the time - although they often disappear pretty quickly too.

To illustrate exactly how you can produce a profit from an arbitrage bet, we’ll look at an example.

You spot an upcoming Premier League football match with Coral, and notice that the odds for a draw seem quite high, at 3.2. Sure enough, you check Matchbook (a betting exchange), and find lay odds of 3 available there.

Using a Matched Betting or arbitrage calculator, you work out the optimal stakes for a £20 back bet with Coral, as well as the locked-in profit you can expect, regardless of the result.

As you can see, the end result is a profit of £1.33, whether or not the match ends in a draw.

How Much Money Can Arbitrage Betting Really Make You?

Our example above shows that profits can be made - but it also demonstrates the limitations of arbitrage betting when it comes to the amount of profit you’ll end up with per bet.

Between your £20 back stake with Coral and your £42.66 liability with Matchbook, you’re tying up £60 until the match finishes, making you a profit of only £1.33. Compared to the profits you can make from simply winning a standard sports bet, this may feel distinctly paltry.

But the beauty of arbitrage betting is found in the long run, with lots of small individual profits building up to make a significant boost to your income. Let’s say you found three similar arbitrage bets every day for a full year - that would add £1,456.35 to your income, for just a few minutes of your time per day.

And as your bankroll grows, you’ll be able to afford to place larger stakes on your arbitrage bets, resulting in larger profits per bet.

So, while arbitrage betting is far from a get-rich-quick scheme, it holds steady profit potential, especially if you’re able to commit to the strategy in the long term.

Expert Insight

Many people judge arbitrage by the profit from a single bet, when they should judge it by the consistency of hundreds. Sustainable returns come from protecting your bankroll, sticking to disciplined staking and repeating a proven process without chasing bigger wins.

The main factor that could hold back your arbitrage profits is the need to avoid scrutiny from bookmakers. Placing obvious arbitrage bets can cause bookies to limit or even ban your account, so finding ways to fly under the radar is highly important for protecting your profit potential.

What Are The Best Strategies To Maximise Your Arbitrage Betting Profits?

Arbitrage betting is a relatively simple strategy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to execute.

Tracking down arbitrage opportunities is the most important aspect of an arbitrage strategy, and unfortunately it’s also the most difficult. If you decide to go it alone by scanning bookie websites and betting exchanges for favourable pairs of odds, you’ll waste a lot of time and probably have limited success.

Even when you do eventually come across an arbitrage opportunity, there’s a good chance it’ll vanish before you can calculate your optimal stakes and place your bets.

Fortunately, Outplayed is here to help! Included in our range of powerful software are a couple of super helpful tools that will take your arbitrage betting to the next level.

• The Oddsmatcher. The Oddsmatcher may be primarily designed for Matched Betting, but it can also form a strong foundation for an arbitrage betting strategy. The tool highlights close matches between sets of odds, and gives each a rating. Anything with a rating above 100% holds arbitrage potential.

• Price Boost Tracker. This handy tool lists price boosts from bookies that are high enough to create an arbitrage opportunity when compared to the lay odds available with at least one betting exchange. The fantastic thing about price boosts is that they’re specifically designed to draw bettors in, so taking a bookie up on a price boost is unlikely to be considered suspicious activity. That said, it’s still best to avoid betting on nothing but price boosts to avoid drawing too much attention to yourself.

When working out your optimal arbitrage betting strategy, it’s important to be wary of standing out to the bookies, who take a dim view of arbitrage bettors. Happily, our top tips to help you avoid being gubbed can allow you to preserve the health of your accounts for as long as possible.

Data Insight

A UK Gambling Commission review of almost 15 million active betting accounts found that 4.31% were commercially restricted, with 2.68% subject to stake limits. Finding profitable opportunities is only part of long-term success - preserving your accounts matters too.

- Gambling Commission

Bookmaker-bookmaker arbitrage strategies

In the UK, this can often be a more challenging model of arbitrage to perform successfully. Tools like the Oddsmatcher compare bookmaker odds to exchange odds, meaning that they aren’t hugely helpful when it comes to track down pairs of favourable odds between bookmakers.

However, that isn’t to say that it’s impossible to locate bookmaker-bookmaker arbitrage opportunities. The most helpful tool will be an odds comparison website such as Oddschecker, which displays the best odds available across full events for a range of the most popular bookmakers. You can then use a dutching calculator to work out your optimal stakes for each bookmaker in order to lock in a profit.

Are There Any Other Strategies You Can Combine With Arbitrage To Make More Money?

Arbitrage betting is fantastic for generating small, consistent profits at very low risk, but it’s most effective when used alongside other strategies.

Matched Betting

Combining arbitrage betting with Matched Betting is perhaps the very best way to maximise your profits. Matched Betting tends to produce higher profits per bet, especially in its early stages when bettors are completing lots of sign up offers, and can allow you to build your bankroll more quickly.

However, there is a finite limit to the number of offers you can complete when Matched Betting. Throwing a spot of arbitrage into the mix will help tide you over when there are fewer Matched Betting offers to complete (e.g. during the football off-season).

Between the two of them, you’ll be able to generate more profits more consistently than with either strategy alone.

To find out more about how Matched Betting works and how you can get started, check out the Outplayed Beginner’s Guide.

Value Betting

Value Betting is a more advanced strategy than arbitrage betting or Matched Betting, and it’s important to be aware that it does involve risk. For this reason, we recommend that you gain significant experience in arbitrage betting or Matched Betting before you embark on Value Betting, as well as accumulating a good bankroll (at least £1000).

Once you’re in that position, though, Value Betting can provide a massive boost to your profits. It relies on a similar principle to arbitrage betting - that of locating favourable odds from bookies. Specifically, odds that are higher than the true probability of a win would imply.

By betting exclusively on selections with disproportionately favourable odds, you’re statistically likely to end up profiting overall, even though you aren’t locking in a profit on any individual bet.

To find out more about how Value Betting works and how you can get started, check out the dedicated Outplayed guide.

Summary

Benefits And Downsides Of Arbitrage Betting

There are plenty of benefits of arbitrage betting, but you should be aware of the downsides and risks as well before you dive in.

Benefits

• Locked in profits. By betting on both sides of a particular market, bettors can ensure that they produce a profit no matter which way the event goes.

• Low risk. Because your profit is locked in typically before the event even begins, the risk of losing money is extremely low. Making a mistake is the only real reason arbitrage bettors ever come out with a loss.

• Beginner-friendly. Arbitrage betting requires no sporting knowledge or expertise to execute (although it’s a good idea to make sure you fully understand the market you’re betting on).

• Quick and easy. Placing an arbitrage bet is a very straightforward process. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll be able to place your back and lay bets in seconds.

• Constant opportunities. Unlike Matched Betting, where the number of offers available has a hard limit, arbitrage betting opportunities crop up all the time.

Downsides and Risks

• Small profits. Generally speaking, each arbitrage bet is likely to make you a fairly small profit.

• Fleeting opportunity window. Arbitrage opportunities crop up frequently, but they don’t often last very long. You’ll need to act fast to get your bets in before the odds change.

Expert Insight

Speed matters, but accuracy matters more. Rushing to place bets without checking stake calculations, liquidity or market movement is one of the quickest ways to turn a genuine arbitrage opportunity into an avoidable loss caused by execution rather than the strategy itself.

• Risk of gubbing. Most significant of all is the risk of losing access to bookie offers, or even to your account. Bookies use software to detect arbitrage bettors, and if they catch on to you they’re likely to restrict your account or even ban you.

Benefits and Downsides of Arbitrage Betting: Summary

Summary

Our overall conclusion is that arbitrage betting profits are typically small and steady. You can make a decent amount of money in the long term from arbitrage betting - but why settle for that when you could make so much more by combining arbitrage with strategies like Matched Betting or Value Betting?

And regardless of whether you decide to stick to arbitrage, or to include Matched Betting or Value Betting in your strategy, an Outplayed membership is the perfect partner to extract the greatest possible profits from your betting activity.

To find out more, check out our Beginner’s Guide to Matched Betting for all the information you need to get started.

Or if you’re ready to dive right in, take out our trial to make your first profits totally free!

FAQs

1. How much money does a typical arbitrage bet make?

It depends on your stake size! You’ll generally struggle to make more than 10% of your back stake in profit from an arbitrage bet - but if you’re able to bet larger amounts, this will result in larger profits.

2. Which model of arbitrage bets will make you the most money, bookmaker-exchange, bookmaker-bookmaker, or exchange-exchange?

While there’s no reason bookmaker-bookmaker arbitrage bets can’t be just as profitable as bookmaker-exchange bets, you’ll probably find that bookmaker-exchange arbitrage makes you the most money, because this model of arbitrage is the easiest to execute in the UK. Although exchange-exchange bets can often be very profitable, we don’t recommend trying to find these, as you risk being banned from the betting exchanges in question.

3. What risks are there to arbitrage betting?

The biggest risk is of drawing the attention of the bookies, resulting in your account being restricted or even banned. You can help to mitigate this risk by mixing in a few non-arbitrage bets to come across more like a regular punter, and to look for popular events to bet on.

4. Can I lose money arbitrage betting?

If you make certain that you complete your bets correctly, you should be able to ensure you produce a profit with every single bet. However, there is always the risk of human error, and it’s also possible for the odds to change while you’re in the process of placing your bets, which may eliminate your arbitrate opportunity.

5. Is arbitrage betting legal?

Yes, arbitrage betting is completely legal. Bookies may not like it very much, but from a legal perspective you’re simply accepting the odds they offer, presenting no legal problem at all.