Sport betting exchanges
Well it does not really make sense to talk about sport betting exchanges in plural. Befair is by far the world leader when it comes to the sports betting exchange model. Being the first mover in the market secured them an untouchable position as number 1 which most likely will remain the situation many years ahead from now.
Two different things
The difference between a normal bookmaker like William Hill and Betfair is significant in the way bets can be placed.
William Hill offer members to back their favorite teams at fixed odds prices. This is old school bookmaking which most punters recognize. Nothing wrong in using the good old way of placing bets on sport events at all.
It has become a lot easier today to beat the bookie. A lot of the betting take place online and are a lot more cost efficient for the bookmaker than it was before. Thus the bookmaker can reduce the juice on the odds and players benefit enormously by getting a better prize on their sport bets today than they did just 5-6 years ago.
The punter versus the bookmaker is a fight where the bookmaker most often comes out as the winner. It is simple mathematics that decides the outcome of this fight that happens many billions time every day. To explain why the bookmaker wins most of the time you should read the following explanation carefully.
A huge fight
A fight has been established between Heads and Tails and the bookie now offer betting odds on the outcome.
The “true odds” would be 2 times the money on each result. However as the bookie has expenses he needs to cover, the juice is deducted from the “true odds”.
Now instead of receiving £2 for a 1£ bet, punters only receive £1.9 no matter if Heads or Tails win.
Imagine you and I flipped the coin and every time I won you had to pay me £2 and every time you won you only received £1.9. It makes it easy to understand why the bookmaker often wins the bets.
It is not cheating nor is it foul play. It is mathematics and nothing but that. Bookmakers seldom make huge errors when determining which odds are correct and thus it is actually really tough to beat them in the long run.
On Betfair sport exchange the fight is a lot different. In the red corner we have a punter and in the blue corner we have a punter too. No bookie involved at all.
There would still be a juice but this is now called commission instead.
The small commission
Every winning bet is subject to a small commission taken by Betfair. As this commission is lower than juice, odds on Betfair on average are as high as 20% better than normal bookmakers. On average mean that on most soccer games there is not a lot of difference but especially on horse racing, greyhound races and small sport events like Cycling and Volleyball there can be significant better odds on Betfair.
On Betfair you either Back (normal bookmaking strategy) or Lay (you are the bookmaker) the odds. It is great fun to use Betfair but it is not always superior to the old fashion way of betting.
Enjoy sports betting on both Willam Hill and Betfair both of them have many qualities that should be explored.