A Complete Guide To Arbitrage Betting Strategies

Quick answer: arbitrage betting involves finding bets whose odds are overvalued, and then placing a second bet on the opposing outcome, either with a betting exchange or another bookmaker, to lock in a profit. An arbitrage betting strategy aims to find the most efficient and profitable means of carrying out this process.

Online sports betting is an enormous industry in the UK, generating £2.6b in revenue in the 2024-2025 financial year.

But while sportsbooks are raking in the profits, the bettors themselves are losing significant amounts of money.

• In the UK, only 21% of remote gamblers recorded a net gain over a 12 month period (although it’s worth noting that this statistic includes all forms of remote gambling, not just sports betting)

• In the US, a study found that only 4% of gamblers made a net profit over a five year period

• An estimated 290,000 sports betting accounts in the UK lose more than £2000 each year

With the odds so stacked against the average bettor, you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s simply impossible to reliably make money from sports betting.

However, there are strategies that can allow you to lock in a profit no matter the outcome of an event, including arbitrage betting.

In this article, we’ll look at exactly what arbitrage betting is and how it works, before examining the essential arbitrage strategies you can use to build profits safely and consistently from sports betting.

What Is Arbitrage Betting?

Much like Matched Betting, arbitrage betting involves betting both for and against a single outcome. For a full explanation, check out our dedicated guide to arbitrage betting, but we’ll give you a quick rundown here.

With arbitrage, you aren’t aiming to unlock a free bet or other reward. Instead, you place your bets exclusively on selections where the back odds are higher than the lay odds, resulting in a profit with every single bet.

For example, consider the following match between Swedish football teams IK Sirius and IFK Göteborg. You find the following odds at Grosvenor’s sportsbook:

Meanwhile, the following lay odds are available with Smarkets:

We can therefore see a fantastic arbitrage opportunity on Göteborg, with back odds of 8.5 and lay odds of 7.4. A simple Matched Betting calculator allows you to work out the optimal stakes for your back and lay bets that will result in a profit on, say, a £50 bet:

Similarly, an upcoming horse race shows potential for a profitable arbitrage bet.

Take a look at the odds available with Bet365 and Betfair as shown below:

Hopefully, you’ll have spotted that the odds for Sierra Belle are significantly higher with Bet365 than with Betfair, making for an excellent arbitrage opportunity.

With less availability at the exchange, we’ll have to limit our back stake to £30 - but even so, there’s a solid profit to be made here:

Consistently betting on selections like these, where the back odds are higher than the lay odds, allows you to turn a small profit on each bet into an ongoing profitable strategy.

Alternative Types of Arbitrage Betting

The most common option for arbitrage betting in the UK is bookmaker-exchange, where you place your back bet with a bookie and your lay bet with a betting exchange.

However, there are other possibilities out there.

• Bookmaker-bookmaker. This involves Dutching, i.e. finding odds on opposing outcomes at different bookmakers that allow you to lock in a profit. The benefit of this method is that you have the potential to cover more than one outcome. The downside is that it can be quite tricky to locate suitable odds and identify an arbitrage opportunity.

• Exchange-exchange. This is just as easy as a bookmaker-exchange arbitrage bet; you just place your back bet with the exchange as well. However, we don’t recommend attempting this method of arbitrage betting, as betting exchanges don’t appreciate exchange-exchange arb bettors, and you could find yourself being banned.

Data Insight:

Researchers identified 545 genuine football arbitrage portfolios when comparing bookmakers' prices, but found that bookmaker account restrictions often prevent informed bettors from exploiting many of them in practice.

- European Journal of Finance

What’s The Difference Between Arbitrage Betting And Matched Betting?

In many ways, they’re very similar, as the mechanism of placing a back bet and matching it with a lay bet is crucial to both strategies.

The difference lies chiefly in the way you make the bulk of your profit.

With an arbitrage bet, you make a small profit with each matched bet, and build your profits over time.

With Matched Betting, however, most of your profit comes from offers and rewards, like free bets and price boosts, which usually generate more sizeable profits than can be found when arbitrage betting.

There is a lot of overlap between the two strategies, though, and arbitrage betting is often a significant aspect of a successful Matched Betting career.

What Are The Best Arbitrage Betting Strategies?

Arbitrage is a simple process in most respects, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need a strategy behind you when you embark on an arbitrage betting career.

At its most basic, arbitrage can be a matter of keeping an eagle eye on bookies and on betting exchanges, hoping to spot an arbing opportunity. Realistically, though, you’re very unlikely to spot a good arb, and even if you do the odds are likely to change by the time you’ve worked out your stakes and are ready to place your bet.

Instead, there are a few more systematic strategies we’d recommend, as well as dedicated tools to make it an easier process.

Expert Insight:

The biggest improvement most arbitrage bettors can make isn't finding higher-profit opportunities—it's reducing execution mistakes. A single misplaced stake, selecting the wrong market or betting after the odds have moved can wipe out the profit from several successful arbs, making accuracy just as valuable as speed.

Odds Scanning

This is essentially an automated version of a manual search for bookies offering arbing opportunities.

The Outplayed Oddsmatcher highlights all good odds matches, including arbitrage opportunities, as shown below. Anything with a rating of more than 100% constitutes a potential arbitrage bet, where you’ll make a profit by placing a matched bet on the listed back and lay markets.

If you’re pursuing an arbitrage betting strategy, you can simply use the Oddsmatcher, available with a standard Outplayed membership, to track down arb opportunities and use the in-built calculator to work out your stakes, as shown below.

The chief downside of this strategy is that it doesn’t take into account the risk of having your account restricted by the sportsbook.

Generally speaking, bookies become aware of when they have overpriced certain odds. If they notice that you’re exclusively betting on those selections, they’ll figure out pretty quickly what you’re up to, and they’re likely to respond by limiting your access to offers, stake restrictions, or even banning you altogether.

Data Insight:

The UK Gambling Commission found that 4.31% of almost 15 million active betting accounts were commercially restricted, while nearly half of restricted customers were lifetime net winners. It highlights why successful betting strategies often attract bookmaker attention.

- Gambling Commission

We therefore recommend limiting your reliance on this kind of technique, perhaps by using only accounts that have already been gubbed to place basic arbitrage bets, so it won’t much matter if further limits are imposed.

Price Boosts

Price boosts can be a fantastic part of a Matched Betting strategy, but they also make for an excellent arbitrage strategy.

When a price boost results in your back bet having higher odds than your lay bet, you’ve got the potential for a profitable arbitrage bet - often holding significantly higher profits than you’d see from a standard arbitrage bet.

Because the sportsbook is intentionally offering particularly high odds when they offer a price boost, it doesn’t come across as suspicious - their boost is, after all, specifically designed to encourage people to bet on it.

That said, betting on nothing but price boosts can draw attention from a sportsbook, so you’d be wise to mix in a few mug bets to look more like the average punter.

Sharbing (shop arbitrage)

‘Sharbing’ sounds odd, but it’s just a combination of ‘shop’ and ‘arbing’ - because this strategy relies on placing your back bets in person, at a betting shop.

This strategy will be most effective if you have a few betting shops with different bookies local to you, to allow you to make the most of any opportunities that arise.

In essence, you simply place an arbitrage bet as normal, except your back bet is placed in person with the shop, and only your lay bet is placed online.

There are a couple of advantages of this strategy:

• Shops are often slower to update their odds, meaning that arb opportunities are more likely to occur and are easier to take advantage of.

• Betting in person counterintuitively adds a layer of anonymity to your betting. A betting shop doesn’t store your betting history, making it much harder to identify you as a potential arbitrage bettor.

• Shops will often accept much larger stakes than online sportsbooks, allowing you to maximise the profit you can make from a single arb.

There are also some significant disadvantages, however:

• Changing odds. Shops may be slower to update their odds, but it’s still quite possible for you to identify an arb, ready your back and and lay bets, and then find that the odds have changed by the time you get to the shop counter to place your bet.

• Inconvenience. Clearly, it’s much more convenient to bet from your laptop or phone from your own sofa, as opposed to having to leave the house in search of a betting shop. And unless you’re in a town or city centre, travel costs will eat into your profits, potentially making a sharbing strategy completely unworthwhile.

• Becoming too well known. Although your betting history doesn’t follow you when betting in person, after a while the staff will recognise you. If you place a lot of obscure bets, they may well catch on and decide to ban you. It’s therefore wise to throw in a few mug bets if you decide to sharb regularly, to better blend in.

How Can An Outplayed Membership Help With An Arbitrage Betting Strategy?

While you can certainly have a go at arbing on your own, it’s a lot of manual work without any tools to help you - and that’s where Outplayed comes in.

We have a range of powerful, market-leading tools specifically designed to make arbitrage, Matched Betting and Value Betting as easy and profitable as possible.

For an arbitrage betting strategy, our most useful tools will be the following:

• The Oddsmatcher. This handy bit of kit is our fundamental Matched Betting tool, and is available with every Outplayed membership tier - but it’s also the perfect basis for an arbitrage betting strategy. The Oddsmatcher constantly tracks odds with bookies and betting exchanges, highlighting the best available matches. Anything with a rating of 100% or more on the Oddsmatcher is an arbing opportunity.
  
  Once you’ve found a likely arb, the in-built calculator will work out the optimal stakes to allow you to get the greatest possible profit from your bet.

• The Price Boost Tracker. Available with an Outplayed Diamond membership, the Price Boost Tracker takes your arb strategy to the next level, honing in on potentially profitable price boosts listed by bookies in the UK.
  
  Again, the in-built calculator tells you exactly the stakes you should use to extract the greatest possible profit from any price boost on offer.

What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Arbitrage Betting?

Tips And Tricks For Successful Arbing

• Mix things up. To better blend in with regular punters, throw in a few matched bets that don’t make you a profit on popular events.

• Use available tools. If you’re an Outplayed member, use tools like the Oddsmatcher and Price Boost Tracker to find good arbing opportunities.

• Use your accounts wisely. If you’ve already been gubbed, but not stake-restricted, by one bookie, that could be the ideal account to use for arbing. As you’ve already been offer-restricted, it won’t be a huge blow if the bookie catches on and restricts you even further.

Expert Insight:

Many bettors judge an arbitrage strategy by the profit from individual bets, but the more meaningful measure is how long their accounts remain usable. Preserving access to bookmakers often has a greater impact on long-term returns than squeezing a few extra pence from each arb.

• Use arbitrage as part of a wider betting strategy. Arbs are great, but it takes a lot of dedication to make significant profits from arbing. If you pursue arbitrage betting alongside Matched Betting and even Value Betting, the benefits and drawbacks of each strategy will largely balance each other out, while growing your overall profits more rapidly than you would with arbing alone.

Summary

Arbitrage betting is a beginner-friendly strategy with great potential for creating steady, ongoing profits.

However, it does have a few downsides, and we therefore recommend pursuing an arbitrage betting strategy alongside Matched Betting, and potentially Value Betting too, if you’re already an experienced matched bettor. And all three of these techniques are made much, much easier with an Outplayed membership, which supplies all the tools, guides and expert support you need to maximise your profits.

To find out more, take a look at the Outplayed Beginner’s Guide to Matched Betting for all the information you need to get started with Britain’s best side hustle.

Or if you’re ready to dive right in, take out our free trial to get immediate access to £850+ of offers and our essential Matched Betting tools.

FAQs

1. What is an arbitrage bet?

An arbitrage bet involves betting both for and against the same outcome, but at higher odds on your back bet than on your lay bet, allowing you to lock in a profit no matter the outcome of the event.

2. Is arbitrage betting legal?

Yes, it’s perfectly legal - you’re simply taking the bookies up on whatever odds they’re offering. That said, sportsbooks aren’t very keen on arbers, whose strategic bets can threaten their profit margin, so it’s best to try to disguise your activity, or to make use of accounts where you’ve already been gubbed for your arb bets.

3. How do I find arb bets?

You can scour sportsbooks for good odds and check them against betting exchanges and other sportsbooks, but this is a slow process and you may miss out on some great opportunities. A platform like Outplayed, which includes a powerful Oddsmatcher plus a Price Boost Tracker, makes an arbitrage betting strategy much easier.

4. How much profit can I make?

You aren’t likely to make a lot of money from each arbitrage bet, as the differences in odds are typically quite minor. Over time, however, your profits will build up, especially if you combine an arbitrage betting strategy with other smart betting strategies, like Matched Betting or Value Betting.

5. What are the risks of arbitrage betting?

So long as you make sure you stake the right amounts on your back bet and lay bet, you shouldn’t be at risk of losing money with an arbitrage bet. However, it is possible that the bookie might restrict your account if they catch on to what you’re doing.