Can you show me a working example of a sports arbitrage opportunity and how the investment would be staked?

A sports arbitrage opportunity is shown below:

A correctly staked investment of £1,000 guarantees a return of £1,041.77 no matter the outcome. That's £41.77 profit due to discrepancies in the bookmakers' odds guaranteeing a 4.178% profit on your investment in less than 24 hours!

The above information tells us that a betting market exists in the Premier League darts match between Van Gerwen and Van Barneveld. It also tells us that BetVictor have odds of 1.727272 for Van Gerwen to win and that Paddy Power have odds of 2.625 for Van Barneveld to win.

By applying a simple mathematical formula to those odds, we are able to calculate that we can cover both possible outcomes of the bet and make a guaranteed 4.178% return on our investment. There is no option for a draw in this betting market.

We would invest our money in proportion to the odds on each possibility. The amount to invest on each outcome is calculated using another simple formula. £603.13 invested on Van Gerwen returns £1,041.78 and £396.87 invested on Van Barneveld returns £1,041.78.

£603.13 x 1.727272 = £1,041.77
£396.87 x 2.625000 = £1,041.78

Risk free profit = £41.78

Our members have access to several arbitrage calculation tools that automatically calculate the size of the arbitrage opportunity AND how much to stake on each selection!

Back to our sports arbitrage frequently asked questions.