Sports trading is another great way to compile some extra money too if done correctly. The key to successful sports trading is not to get over greedy.
Sports trading works by using movements in the betting exchanges backing and laying markets to open and close positions on various sports events. Below are a couple of examples of how I have used sports trading to profit from betting exchanges.
euro 2008 football tournament in switizaland
I backed Holland to win the tournament at the start with odds taken at 16 decimal. After their first match they beat Italy 3-0 Holland’s odds of winning the tournament fell from 16.0 to 8.0. When this happened I swiftly traded out of the bet by laying them on betfair to secure profit. Even though Holland did eventually get knocked out of the tournament I still managed a decent profit.
Wimbledon 2008
I hedged my bets in this trade by backing both Murry and Nadal.
Murry was at odds of 50 at the start to win the tournament, after his first three matches his odds fell to 30. I traded out on the murry bet to green up on all possible outcomes.
As Nadel was joint favourite for the tournament his odds of winning were only around the 3.5 mark. I decided not to trade out on Nadal as the Murry trade meant that i was green on all outcomes anyway.
Despite not trading out on Nadel he happened to win anyway so I came away with a great profit.
Trading styles
There are plenty of different methods and techniques that you can adopt in sports trading; I personally prefer to stick to long term trading on events such as football/tennis/golf tournaments and antipost bets. I find this approach more profitable.
Other people i know prefer the quick ‘in and out’ approach making trades on specific football matches. For example a popular approach is backing and laying the ‘draw’ market on betfair. Trading the correct scores market is also a popular too on the exchanges.
Sports trading doesn’t necessarily have to be confined to sport either i placed a successful trade on X Factor (im ashamed to say) for a group called JLS last year at the beginning…the odds of them winning halved as they reached the final weeks. The same trading principals can also be applied to numerous other events such as politics and trading currency pairs.