Trading football on a betting exchange is also a popular method football betting punters do these days.
Trading Football can be done in a variety of different methods, but it essentially works like this.
In-play trading on a betting exchange
You are watching a match live on Television between Everton and Southampton at Goodison Park. At the start of the match you think Everton will win, so you have £50.00 on them on a Betting Exchange at 2.00 (Even Money). Meaning you win £50.00 if Everton win, and lose £50.00 should Everton not win.
Everton go 1-0 just after 60 minutes, and their odds are now 1.20 (1/5). You carry on watching the match, and with about 15 minutes to go Everton are getting played off the field, and a Southampton equaliser looks inevitable.
You can now lay your bet on the betting exchange
As you placed your bet on a Betting Exchange, you now have the option to lay Everton to cover your initial bet. Or you can lay Everton and guarantee yourself a profit, no matter what the outcome.
If you want to cover your original £50.00 bet, you simply lay Everton at 1.20 (1/5) for £50.00 (costing you £10.00 of your potential winnings). This would make your position as follows. If Everton win, you would win £40.00, if it is a draw, or Southampton win, you break even.
You originally backed Everton at 2.00 (Even Money) for £50.00, giving you £50.00 winnings if Everton win, and £50.00 risk they don’t. You then layed Everton for £5.00 at 1.20 (1/5), meaning you removed your £50.00 risk, at the cost of a tenner.
Alternatively, you could have layed Everton for £80.00 at 1.20 (1/5). This would have given you a return of £34.00 if Everton win. Or a return of £30.00 if Everton didn’t win.
It breaks down like this…….
If Everton win – Your original £50.00 bet placed at 2.00 (Even Money) wins, so you win £50.00. You also lose £16.00 from your lay of Everton for £80.00 at 1.20 (1/5). Resulting in a profit of £34.00.
If Everton don’t win – You original bet of £50.00 at 2.00 (Even Money) is a loser, meaning you lose £50.00. Your lay of Everton at 1.20 (1/5) for £80.00 wins, resulting in a profit of £30.00.
This is where the term football trading comes into play. A trader would make a profit on a bet, and then get out.
Pre Match Trading
Another football trading technique that we are now able to do a Betting Exchange is trade prices pre match. Believe it or not, there are people out there making a living from doing just this.
It’s a simple theory. You back high, and lay low (our laying info page gives you an example of how laying a bet works). Unfortunately in practise, it’s not quite that simple.
In the build up to a football match the market can fluctuate one way and then the other. While in some instances it can pretty much stay where it is. If you can calculate or read which way the market is set to go, you can make some money from this.
An example of how to trade football pre match
For example, Liverpool are at home to Arsenal in the Premier League and Liverpool’s odds (in the match winner market) are 2.00 (Even Money). The chances are that the odds might go in to 1.98 and drift out to 2.02 in the 30 minutes to an hour or so before kick-off.
If you can predict which way the market is going to go, then you can back at 2.02, and lay it at 1.98. Doing this with – say for example – £100.00, you can make around 1-2% profit on all three market outcomes (Home Win/Draw/Away Win). That doesn’t sound a lot of profit, but if you are doing that all the time, it soon mounts up.
You can use different markets for this sort of trading. I find the Match Winner market and the Over/Under 2.5 Goals market are good for this sort of trading.
Learning which way the market is going to move is another thing thought, that comes with a mixture of watching the market, learning to read it, and sometimes a simple hunch.
If you are doing this with a betting bank of £1000.00, it could be £10.00 to £20.00 a match that you are making. You can decide for yourself the size of your betting bank, the choice is yours. I find that if I aim for 1% of betting bank profit a day, it is achievable without taking too many risks.
You will need to use a Betting Exchange with plenty of liquidity to achieve this, which brings me nicely on to the next section about which Betting Exchange to use.
Which Betting Exchange Is Good For Trading Football?
I would personally recommend using Betfair for this, you can open an account here.
Why Betfair? Well mainly because of liquidity. As a betting exchange is peer-to-peer betting (ie, me against you), there needs to be money there for you to bet against. This is unlike betting with a conventional bookmaker, where you just click on the odds and simply place your bet.
Trading football on Betfair gives you far more liquidity. Betfair are the biggest betting exchange with the most members, meaning more money gets pumped into more markets.
If you are trading a live TV match you will pretty much have no problem getting a bet matched.
If you go outside of Betfair there generally isn’t as much money involved, meaning big gaps in odds. That means you either have to take odds that don’t give a true reflection of where the market should be, or you can’t get a bet matched at all.