Technical arbitrage and hedging in spread sports betting

I have quite a bit of experience spread betting on the stock markets, so I am looking forward to getting my teeth back into trading sports and taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities. Stocks are too volatile right now and could be for a while for my trading style. As you can imagine, spread betting arbitrage opportunities in sports are rare these days, no matter how good, because it’s impossible to match decent amounts as spread betting providers keep improving their pricing systems.

By hedging/technical arbitrage I mean (as an example) seeking to exploit cross-market returns in sports by removing component parts and reducing exposure or sometimes creating an arbitrage situation…

I was initially introduced to the concept of spread sports betting arbitrage when I was a client of SpreadTrades. Unfortunately, they have since disbanded. At that time, the team’s performance in football was the most important thing. However, firms got better and better at pricing as time went on and it’s harder these days arb to be successful.

What I do to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities is buy and sell the ExtraBet team performance index and cover the best available time of the opponents 1st goal. Occasionally you can still get a few in rugby, but these days they are as rare as chicken teeth.

That was one of the options. The best was the Irish component where they got three for a conceded corner. These days they had an unusual method of pricing fixed markets in tennis, when they started. I took full advantage of it, even though they had a couple of tries to get it right, their market maker was sorely wrong. Unfortunately I didn’t last long with them. They took my internet trading away and when I called them on the phone they referred me to the trade manager who restricted me and moved all the prices as well. They were basically telling me I wasn’t welcome anymore so I gave up on them. After that, I noticed that they changed their tennis bets to align with their competitors.

Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch or a holy grail and I have to accept that. My next step is to invest in decent software as trading off Betfair’s site is not suitable and therefore I need to investigate further.