Fantasy Sports and Player Props

Odds Trading 101

What is odds trading? Most people are familiar with sites like e-Bay, where a person with something to sell posts it online and finds someone who is looking to buy that thing for the price offered. Because a wholesaler or retailer is not involved, transactions happen more quickly and more cheaply than they would under other circumstances.

Betting Exchanges: The eBay of Online Betting

Odds trading makes use of betting exchanges just like betting for Ben Tate at NFL Draft, which function just like eBay, except in this case the “product” for sale is a bet. Rather than posting a beloved lamp for $200, you might post a win for Manchester United over Real Madrid, selling the opportunity to take Real Madrid for 2-to-1 with a wager of $100. If someone wants to “buy,” they can see the bet you’ve posted online just like what you see when betting on a roulette online game and take the side you are offering. On eBay, the price you want isn’t always the price you get, bidding and negotiation come into play. Similarly, if someone likes your bet but not at quite the odds you want, you can haggle until you find an odds point that seems fair to both bettors.

Benefits of Odds Trading

As explained above, bettors like odds trading because it cuts out the middleman. They are not dependent upon a bookmaker or website to decide what bets they can make and what odds they should get or offer. Bookmakers must strive to make odds fair so that they can get even money on both sides and make money with their percentage, but odds traders are subject to no such restrictions.

Bookmakers and Odds Trading

Bookmakers that offer odds trading do it because it makes their lives easier. These sites make money by taking a vig, a percentage of each winning bet like winning on a us online casino. They try to get equal bets on both sides of a situation so that they can pay the winners with the money of the losers and just take their profit off the top, but it doesn’t always work out that way. With odds trading, they bookmakers know that they will have a loser for every winner, so their profit is guaranteed.

As you can gather from the information provided above odds trading presents an opportunity to make more than you would placing wagers with a traditional sportsbook and provides a unique opportunity for fantasy sports players who also place wagers on player props.