When placing bets online, the standard practice is to head to a sportsbook such as Bet365, William Hill or Paddy Power and place your bets at the prices offered by the bookmaker. However, there is another option and that is to place your bets on a betting exchange.
In this guide, we’ll be showing you what betting exchanges are, how they work and compare the pros and cons of using them to standard fixed-odds bookies.
What Are Betting Exchanges?
Betting exchanges allow customers to place bets on sports and other events just as you would with a standard bookmaker. However, the main difference is that you are not betting against the bookie and instead are betting against other punters.
Some of the biggest online betting exchanges include Betfair Exchange, Smarkets, Matchbook and Betdaq.
Advantages Of Using Betting Exchanges
Potentially Bigger Prices & Returns
Bookmakers make money by offering slightly lower prices than the true odds. This is often known as the bookies margin. However, as there is no bookmaker associated with betting exchanges, you can often get bigger prices which can result in greater returns from winning bets.
Betting exchanges make their money by charging a commission which is usually applied to any bets that you win. Despite this, your returns are often still greater than when using a traditional bookie.
Ability To Place Lay Bets
When betting with a bookmaker, you are always betting on something to happen. For example, Manchester City to beat Liverpool or Red Rum to win in the Grand National. These are known as back bets.
In addition to placing back bets on betting exchanges, you can also place lay bets. These are when you are betting on something not to happen. For example, if you placed a lay bet on Manchester City against Liverpool, your bet would win if the match ended in a draw or Liverpool won. Basically, any result in that Manchester City DON’T win.
No Restrictions
One issue with bookmakers is that they will often restrict customers if they win too much. This doesn’t happen on betting exchanges as there is no bookmaker to restrict you.
Disadvantages Of Using Betting Exchanges
Not For Beginners
Placing a bet with a bookmaker is easy and many who have never placed a bet before manage to do so around the time of major events such as the Grand National or World Cup.
However, betting exchanges are slightly more complicated. It’s important that you understand things like back & lay bets, liability and commissions before placing your bets otherwise you could possibly lose more than you expected to.
Lack Of Betting Offers
One of the main attractions to bookmaker websites is that they often offer customers things like free bets, price boosts & best odds guaranteed etc. Unfortunately, these type of offers are rare at betting exchanges and so you do lose some value when using them in these circumstances.
Conclusion – Which Should You Choose?
If you’re a casual punter who places the occasional bet, we recommend sticking with a traditional bookie.
More experienced bettors may wish to consider using a betting exchange as the ability to get greater prices is a huge draw to them and can result in much greater profits over time.
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.