One of the big questions matched betting beginners ask our support team is; Do I need to follow sport for matched betting? Surely the two go hand in hand.
As always, we’re continually looking for ways to increase the profitability and effectiveness of our matched betting. Therefore I thought we’d clear up a few misconceptions and find out if taking an interest in sport leads to more successful matched betting.
Matched betting explained
For those of you who aren’t sure what matched betting is, we’ll have a quick look at the process and find out how it works.
No-risk matched betting is a betting technique profiting from bookmakers free bets and promotions. This method is used by thousands of people from all walks of life to make a second income online. It’s perfect for the likes of students and stay at home parents who have a little spare time each day to complete the latest matched betting offers.
Free bets galore
With the online betting industry so competitive these days, bookies have to work incredibly hard to gain and keep new customers. One of the ways they do this is by incentivising customers to place more bets. Most bookies promote two kinds of offer; sign up and reload offers.
Sign up offers are for new customers and are used as a way to open new accounts. Most, if not all, online bookies offer one of these promotions.
Reload offers are used to keep existing customers betting. There are hundreds of these offers available each week which matched bettors can profit from.
With this bonus culture set to continue for a long while, it makes matched betting incredibly profitable and worthwhile. So how does this method work and how can it be risk-free?
How matched betting works
We use a technique called back and lay betting to mitigate any risk from normal betting. This involves placing two bets on the opposite outcomes. We place one bet at a bookie like Coral and one bet at a betting exchange like Smarkets. If you’re not sure what we’re on about, I advise you to check out our back and lay betting guide.
This process allows us to qualify for our free bets without risking any of our own money. In essence, we end up where we started, except we now have a free bet to use! We repeat the same process as above and make a guaranteed profit from our free bet. Do this over and over again and that’s what we call matched betting.
What are the best events and markets for matched betting?
When it comes to the nitty-gritty of matched betting, we’re not so interested in the event we place our bets on, we’re more concerned with what the odds are. The closer the back and lay odds, the more we’ll make from each matched bet. So if the back odds for a given market are 2.50, we’d want the lay odds to be around 2.60. This is the same for both qualifying and free bets. However, there are certain markets that are more likely to have tight back and lay odds.
Betting on sport
Sports betting makes up a huge proportion of the bookie’s total revenue. There are thousands of people wagering money on sporting events on a daily basis, making it by far the most popular event for people to bet on.
This has its benefits for us matched bettors. More popular events generally have more uniform odds across different betting companies meaning we can find markets with incredibly close odds. As we mentioned above, this makes our matched betting more profitable.
Another benefit to placing matched bets on sports is the amount of offers available. As there are more customers placing bets, the bookies are more inclined to market free bets and promotions. It’s more worthwhile to them. For matched bettors, offers are our bread and butter. Without them, this technique wouldn’t exist.
Other markets to bet on
Whilst sports betting is incredibly popular there are other events we can place our matched bets on, like Politics and TV shows. However, none of them are really that exciting. Politics betting is generally quite dull unless Donald Trump is involved.
There are far fewer offers and promotions available for these kinds of markets simply due to less popularity. However, it’s not to say these markets aren’t worth using for our matched betting, we actually recommend you do. It mixes up our betting patterns and helps us blend in with the betting crowd more easily, keeping us below the bookies radar.
What our members think
We thought it would be interesting to find out what our members thought about how sport affects matched betting. We asked them if they place their matched bets on sporting events more than 10 times a week with a simple yes/no question. Here are the results:
The graph above shows that 93% of The Sure Bettor members place their matched bets on sporting events more than 10 times a week. This goes to show how popular and easy sports betting is for us matched bettors.
It’s also worth noting that most of these members follow sport to some degree i.e. they’re checking scores and outcomes of their bets. That’s not to say they all follow sport religiously.
Interestingly, not all of these members followed sport when they started matched betting. It seems this technique and the continuous involvement with the sporting and betting worlds seem to induce people to watch and follow more sport over time. Therefore, I think the more sport you follow, the more you’ll enjoy no risk matched betting.
Does following sport make your matched betting more successful?
Overall, following sport has very minimal effect on the profitability of matched betting. As we’ve already said, matched bettors are generally not interested in the event we place our bets on (as long as the odds are good). We make a guaranteed profit regardless of the outcome.
Having said that, I would say following sport does make matched betting far more interesting. Another benefit is you may know slightly more about how certain betting markets work. However, we cover everything you need to know in the tutorials and pages we offer our premium members.
So should you follow sport?
Following sport doesn’t seem to increase the profitability of matched betting, but it does make the whole process more interesting for us. Overall, I would say following sport does help with matched betting, certainly in the long run. If the process is more exciting you’re more likely to stick at it and continue earning some great income online.
Why not join in the fun and start making money online with The Sure Bettor. What’s more, it’s free to join.
We’ll see you on the inside.