5 Profitable Online Sports Betting Strategies

The sports betting markets offer a lot of opportunity for those that know the right sports betting strategies.

Names such Billy Walters, Tony Bloom and Zeljko Ranogajec have made millions in profit from betting on sports.

What are the profitable sports betting strategies you can use to make money?

In today’s article we brought in a professional sports bettor to answer that question!

Bonus Offers

The first profitable online sports betting strategy will we look at is taking advantage of bonus offers. This is one of the best strategies to get you started as it is easy to learn, low risk and can bring in regular profits.

Lets take a look at an online sports betting bookmaker like Bovada. Which is a bookmaker that is renowned for some of its generous bonus offers.

Bovada much like other bookmakers offer a sign up bonus and regular recurring bonuses. These bonuses can often be used to guarantee a profit from a strategy known as matched betting. They can also be used to boost your bankroll if you want to do straight forward value betting.

Sports Arbitrage Betting

The second sports betting strategy on the list is arbitrage betting.

Sports betting arbitrage is a great strategy that looks to cover all the outcomes of an event and guarantee a small profit regardless of the outcome.

Sounds almost too good to be true right!

Let’s take a look at an example of sports betting arbitrage in action.

Sports Betting Arbitrage

In the above picture you can see there is a horse running today called “Tommy Cullen.”

This horse is available to back at odds of 1.8 with a bookmaker called 32Red and a lay bet is also available on the Betfair exchange at 1.69. A lay bet is basically the opposite of a back bet, we are betting that something will not win.

Sports Arbitrage 2

Using the sports betting arbitrage calculator from Oddsmonkey, we can bring up the stakes that we would need to use in order to lock in a profit across all outcomes. 

Sports Arbitrage 3

Due to the fact we were able to back something (bet to win) at higher odds 1.8 then we layed it 1.69 (back to lose), a profit of £5.62 could be guaranteed from a £100 bet.

This is the beauty of arbitrage betting, it removes the risk from sports betting and enables you to make small consistent profits.

Value Betting

Third on the list of profitable online sports betting strategies is “Value Betting.”

Value betting is a strategy that uses the sharp bookmakers and betting exchanges as a marker for where value may exist at other softer bookmakers. The theory behind this is that bookmakers that limit and ban players, known as “soft bookmakers” are less efficient at correcting their odds.

Whilst sharp bookmaker that take winning bettors usually have odds that are closer to the true probabilities of an event happening.

Above is an example of what a value bet looks like. 

Venezia are 3.23 with the sharp bookmaker Pinnacle and are 3.5 with a soft bookmaker. The difference in odds between the two bookmaker indicates there is value in backing Venezia.

Click Here For Our Guide To Value Betting To Learn More

 Betting Tipsters

Next up on the list is using betting tipsters to make a profit. 

There are thousands of betting tipsters on the internet and unfortunately the majority of these tipsters will lose you money in the long term.

If you want to make money from betting tipsters then you are best of going through a website that proof’s tipsters to make sure that they are profitable first.

Betting Tipsters

Two websites that I like to use are the Smart Betting Club and Betting Gods network.

Both of these websites will run “proofing periods” to see whether or not a tipster is really profitable. Looking at whether the odds they tip up are really achievable or not.

Team Information

Last on the list of profitable online sports betting strategies is using team information to make value bets. 

Betting odds change due to new information entering the market however there are some times when you may have information before the majority of the market.

When this happens you can use it to either make a profitable value bet or even sometimes use it to lock in a guaranteed profit due to the odds movement. Similar to arbitrage betting.

Below is a video explaining the strategy and showing how a £400 profit was locked in before the game kicked off.

There are several factors you can look which can help you profit.

  • Player Injuries
  • Contract Issues
  • Player transfers
  • Managerial changes
  • Weather conditions
  • Team rotation

You don’t have to be the first person to get this information either. If you can react to this information quicker then the majority of the market you put yourself in a good position to make a profit.

Conclusion

There you have it 5 profitable online sports betting strategies that will help you to earn a profit. 

Whichever level you are at as a sports bettor their are strategies in this article that should help you make money. Beginners should probably focus on the first two. Making money from bonuses and arbitrage betting.

Those that are a little bit more advanced could bring in value betting, betting tipsters and profiting from team information. These 3 additional strategies can really increase your edge in sports betting!

Ryan is a former mixed martial arts and kickboxing competitor. After finishing university he played online poker and taught English for a living in Thailand for a few years.

Upon returning to England his focus has been on making a living from sports trading, betting and arbitrage. Over the course of 5 years he has managed to make a six figure profit using the strategies discussed on this site.

Ryan runs the sports betting and trading website www.smartsportstrader.com

Time Stamp:

More from Smart Sports Trader