I've taken a lot of interest in sports betting recently, and if done correctly it feels exactly like trading. First, let's go over the wrong way to look at it, which is how most people do it.
I think the biggest hurdle to being successful is being a fan of the sports you want to bet on. Let's use football as an example. Most people who watch football every Sunday (and Thursday and Monday) have an opinion on how good each team is. They have an opinion on what the spread in a game should be (or the over/under, etc.). Unfortunately, they have a strong belief in that opinion and that's where the trouble comes from. No matter how big a fan you are, no matter how much football you watch, you will never be better at making an accurate betting line than the sportsbooks. Let me repeat that.
YOU WILL NEVER BE BETTER AT MAKING A LINE THAN THE SPORTSBOOKS. As soon as you accept that, you can start winning. Much in the same way your opinion on how to value AAPL stock doesn't matter compared to the big banks, your opinion on what the line should be doesn't either.
FanDuel is worth 20 billion dollars. They are investing millions in creating these lines. Planting yourself on your couch every Sunday does NOT qualify you to compete with them. They make very accurate lines, and they also price in their profit (or juice, or vig, or whatever). The advantage in making the correct line is all theirs.
However, that doesn't mean you can't gain an edge. Unlike the stock exchanges, each sportsbook is a separate entity and they do everything independently. That allows for some very good opportunities. As good as the sportsbooks are, they don't always agree. Imagine if the NYSE was pricing AAPL at $173 and the BATS exchange had it at $172. You could immediately buy it for 172 on one and sell it at 173 on the other. Or, just as importantly, if 6 exchanges had it priced at 173 and 1 exchange had it at 171, you could just buy it for 171 and keep it knowing that you have tons of positive expectancy. It's much more likely that the 6 exchanges are correct and that the 1 exchange screwed it up, so you buy it at the incorrect price and hold it.
The key part of it is getting the data. There's no way you can monitor the betting lines for every bet on every game on every exchange. For that data, you'll have to pay. Fortunately, it's not overly expensive and obviously the hope is that it will make you money. I have one service that I use and I like it a lot. They give you the data and filter it so that the good opportunities are listed at the top. I'm putting a link at the bottom. It's called OddsJam.
I'm not a part of the company, just a satisfied customer. They do offer a small referral bonus, so if you subscribe to them using my link I'd be willing to teach you how I use it to make money. They have a free trial, which is how I got started.
That's it for this blog. Next time I'll go into some of the math of sports betting, and how much you can expect to realistically make.
OddsJam Link: https://oddsjam.com/?ref=mjjiztyk
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