Arbitrage Betting Finder

What Is Arbitrage Betting?

Quite simply, Arbitrage betting is a mathematical strategy designed to lock in a profit by placing bets on all possible outcomes of a betting market at sufficiently different sportsbook prices. How is this possible? Well, sportsbooks set their own lines and as a result there can be large discrepancies available. Some of those discrepancies can be large enough that the available prices let you cover both sides of a game or player prop and lock in theoretical profit.

Take for example, if FanDuel has Shohei Ohtani at OVER 1.5 hits at +130 while DraftKings has UNDER 1.5 hits at -110, this would create an arb opportunity with the right bet amounts.

So looking at this, if we placed $100 on the OVER and $120.48 on the UNDER, the return either way would be $230, while our stake is $220.48 guaranteeing approximately $9.52 in profit, or a 4.32% return on the $220.48 wagered. You can use our Arbitrage calculator to quickly see what bet sizes you need to place and what the profit will be.

How Does A Sports Betting Arbitrage Finder Work?

As you see all over Prop Professor, we scan over 40 sportsbooks every second. Because of this, we are able to identify opposing prices and what we’re ultimately looking for is the implied probabilities of all possible outcomes to total less than 100%.

This is related to positive EV betting, but the math is used differently. In a typical sportsbook market, the implied probabilities exceed 100% because of the sportsbook’s vig. With an arbitrage opportunity, prices available across different sportsbooks can combine for an implied probability below 100%, creating room to cover every outcome for less than the resulting payout.

For the Shohei Ohtani example above, if you were to combine the implied probability of OVER at +130 (43.48%) and UNDER at -110 (52.38%) you get a combined 95.86% which is below 100% and signals an arbitrage opportunity. After properly allocating the stakes, this particular arb produces a return of roughly 4.32% on the total amount wagered.

How Are Arbitrage Stakes Calculated?

Some arbitrage opportunities make it fairly obvious how much you need to stake, while others require a little more thought. If a given event has a plus-money option on both sides at two different sportsbooks, you can simply wager the same amount at both books to lock in a profit.

But in the example above, you have one book with a plus-money option and another with negative-money odds; this requires two different stake amounts. The reason for this is quite simple using the example above, if your unit size is $100 and you place it on the +130 side, you know the potential return is $230. If you wagered another $100 at -110 the total return would be $190.91. Do you see the problem?

If the UNDER at -110 is to be the winning side, your total return would be $190.91 but you wagered a combined $200 and thus lost $9.09. So we need to adjust our stake on the -110 side above $100 to bring the return close to $230 while keeping the combined amount wagered below that return, in this case a $120.48 stake achieves this goal, ensuring a $9.52 profit.

Why Do Sportsbook Odds Create Arbitrage Opportunities?

Sportsbooks post and adjust their own prices, and those prices don’t always move in lockstep. Understanding this one simple sentence allows you to see how arbitrage opportunities become available. As a result, the same outcome can temporarily carry meaningfully different odds from one sportsbook to another.

This highlights one of the most important habits in sports betting: having access to multiple sportsbooks so you can line shop. That matters for arbitrage betting, but also for positive EV betting more broadly, where getting the best available price can improve your expected return.

Finding Arbitrage Bets With Prop Professor

Finding arbitrage opportunities manually can be extremely time-consuming, especially across dozens of sportsbooks and markets. You need to be scanning several books for all sports betting markets all the time.

Lucky for you, Prop Professor’s unique algorithm is doing this for you automatically, every second. Our arbitrage finding tool scans over 40 sportsbooks every second and calculates the required stake sizes so you don’t have to calculate them manually, just head on over to the given sportsbooks, place the required wagers before the opportunity disappears.

Are Arbitrage Bets Risk-Free?

Arbitrage betting isn’t 100% risk-free. Severall things can happen while placing an arbitrage bet that can expose you to risk. Odds move very fast so the moment you see an arb opportunity, you may head over to those sports betting apps to place your bet but in that time, one line has moved after you’ve placed your bet elsewhere. Thankfully, our One Click product lessens this risk with its direct slip builder on the given sportsbook.

Sometimes sportsbooks will reject a bet, this happens more frequently for live betting than pre-game but can still happen. A bet could be graded differently at different sportsbooks which could also result in two losing bets. Sportsbooks may also limit how much you can wager, which can make it difficult to place the exact stake needed on one side of the arb. When both wagers are accepted at the required odds and settle according to matching market rules, the arbitrage math locks in the calculated return regardless of which side wins.