Sports Arbitrage World Outlook: January 2009
Traditionally seen as a quiet month in the sporting calendar, December 2008 turned out to be surprisingly profitable for sports arbitrage traders not taking the month off.
Last month, ArbAlarm reported a total of 14,909 sports arbitrage trades across 798 separate matches and games. The average profit yield of these trades was 4.06%.
The most most active sports were soccer (8193 arbitrage trades) and the American sports Basketball (NBA) and Ice Hockey (NHL) which provided a combined total of just over 4000 trades.
Darts and snooker featured prominently during December with most of the arbs created by Boylesports, Coral, Skybet, Stan James & VCBet. Profit yields were as high as 7%.
January looks set to bring us a huge amount of trading opportunity with 3 snooker tournaments, 8 golf events and 12 tennis events including, of course, the Australian Open.
The Australian Open is the first Grand Slam event of the year and it always provides a wealth of sports arbitrage trades as bookmakers struggle to work out the form of more than 200 hundred players on a surface that have not played on for months.
Look out for sports arbitrage trades in the normal match-betting and also by cross-betting match bets with set bets.
Set Betting
These bets specify which player will win, and by what set-score. For example, in a 3-set match, the winner’s score will be either 2-0 or 2-1. These bets provide an alternative way to hedge against a match bet on one of the players. Here is an example.
| PLAYER | HEWITT | GONZALES | |
|
|||
| BEST MATCH ODDS | 1.30 | 4.00 | |
|
|||
| BEST SET ODDS | |||
| 2-0 | 2.30 | 8.00 | |
| 2-1 | 2.40 | 12.00 | |
Although the best prices available on simple match-betting do not produce an arb, placing a bet on Hewitt to win the match (1.30) and combining that with bets on Gonzales to win 2-0 (8.00) and 2-1 (12.00) produces an arb of just over 2%
| HEWITT | GONZALES | |||
|
||||
| 1.30 | 76.92% | 8.00 | 12.50% | |
| 12.00 | 8.33% | |||
|
||||
| TOTAL PERCENTAGE = 97.76% | ||||
Keep in mind the extra profits up for grabs by taking advantage of bookmaker bonuses at the start of the year. 188Bet will give you a 48% bonus up to £88 (or €95) between now and 21st January 2009. Just open your account and send an email to promo@188bet.com using the same email address that you registered with them when you opened the account. Include the following information:
- Email subject: (PromoCode: FTD0109 )
- Email contents: Your member code, Your deposit transaction ID
This is an easy bonus to pocket as the wager requirements are only 6x
I wish you a very profitable month ahead!
Tags: Sports Arbitrage Outlook