Do you love sports and want to make some extra money? Sports betting is an option. This article is a simple guide to help you get started with your sports betting profit.
Whilst for some lucky ones, sports betting has had a great ROI, you can also lose it all very quickly. Only wager what you can afford to lose. Sports betting is not a career. Gamble responsibly.
Punters who got rich from sports betting are the exception. You can certainly make some extra money here and there if you do everything correctly and also get lucky. To become a smart punter, you need to do your research and follow some essential principles to earn a profit.
Getting Rich with Sports Betting
On paper, sports betting has very high potential, if not unlimited. Though in reality, bookmakers and online sportsbooks always have the odds on their side in the long run. This is why most punters lost over time.
In order to hopefully increase your bankroll, follow some key principles.
Money Management
Money management and staking size (i.e., betting units) are all habits and can be practiced by anybody. If you only bet a small percentage, the odds of going broke are dramatically reduced.
Value Betting
Value betting requires you to be good at betting. You only place bets where the value has been identified. Thus, you have to spot value when you analyze a matchup. The advantage of sports betting when compared to casino games is that you have more information at your disposal. Professional bettors get rich by finding wagers that have a significant return with moderate risks.
Bankroll Readjustment
Important factors include the Rate of Investment (ROI) of your sports wagers and the initial size of your bankroll. Thus, readjusting your bankroll would also mean adjusting your staking size.
Profitable Sports Betting Tips to Make You Rich (Hopefully)
Let's be real. Very very very few people get rich with gambling, sports betting included. And many of them thought they were the exception, and that they would make it, somehow. Nearly all of them were wrong. Those who get rich from sports wagers are betting to win instead of betting to risk.
Take the following tips with a pinch of salt as these are good ground rules but do not guarantee to win.
Be Familiar with a Bet's Expected Value
Positive Expected Values (+EV) refer to your profit over time, and Negative Expected Values (-EV) imply your loss.
Betting odds are subjective, and if you accurately predict an outcome compared to the bookmaker or another bettor on the exchange, you are likely to make a profit.
Based on this understanding, we cannot say that a value bet is fool-proof or risk-free, but having a betting strategy will help you make long-term profits.
So if you want to be a profitable bettor, you need to make the most of your value bets. Researching value bets will be beneficial to you in the long run. However, betting exchanges use the commission to get a higher profit while bookmakers build a margin into their odds. Still, knowing the EV of the wagers allow you to make money from betting exchanges and sportsbook sites.
It would be best to keep up to date with new information about the competition, the teams playing, and the sets of players. Remember that bankroll management will help you identify how much you can and your sports betting profit.
Look For Strong Underdogs
Assuming what you are betting on is a moneyline sport. You have two options to bet on. Either the favorite or the underdog. The favorite pertains to the team expected to win, and the underdog is the opposite.
Betting on the favorite will give you less profit if it wins than underdog bet, which, in most cases, returns more than what you have wagered.
People commonly like to bet on favorites and profit or capitalize on the public bias. So betting on favorites makes your sports betting profit payout small as a result.
And in the case that you lose, you lose more money than you hoped because of the high unit rates ranging from around -180 to -200 or more.
Thus, you can take advantage of underdogs since the only money you lose is the amount you risked. However, if you win the bet, you get to enjoy plus-money payouts.
Check on Injury Reports and Sports News
Another tip that would help you predict the outcome of a game for Sports Betting would be looking for injuries among key players or other factors that can significantly change the odds of a team.
A few examples could include:
- An ace player's retirement because of an injury
- A newly hired coach
- A player switching teams
- A change in strategy
- A coach's retirement
- Benching a player
- A change of players in the roster
- Switching player roles
- Many other possibilities
Doing some research on these kinds of information would allow you to predict how the game will turn out one way or another and lessen the odds of you losing the bet. As long as you do your homework, you will have a higher chance of winning.
Focus on One Sports or League
On top of doing some research on the news, this tip would help you be more familiar with the teams, managers, coaches, and other key factors that would affect the game's output.
So even if you are new to Sports Betting, focusing on one sport would be the safest thing to do because you get to stick to one sport you are most familiar with.
Focusing on one would give you a huge advantage while only depending on your pre-existing knowledge about the sport. In this case, you already know who the good players are, what plays would lead to your chosen team's victory, which aches provide the best advice to the team, or what strategy would help them win.
Top 4 Richest Sports Bettors
Compiling such lists is difficult as most punters stay very private. So we had to look at public sports bettors and find the most successful ones.
Bill Benter
One of only a few masters in the world of Horse Racing, Bill Benter, produced an algorithm to dominate the sport in the mid-1980s and has accumulated nearly one billion US dollars for more than thirty years.
His success in Hong Kong Horse Racing is phenomenal with the help of the software he developed, which can take into account extreme details like a horse's diet or jockeys falling off.
was a mathematician and spent a lot of his time in casinos. And after quitting university, he moved to Vegas and applied for a job as a night cleaner. Soon after, he was approached by Alan Woods, who convinced Bill to join his team.
Jim 'Mattress Mack' McIngvale
is known as a rich football bettor and the CEO of Gallery Furniture. While having suffered multiple losses, he has a reported asset of $300 million.
He is famed for his erratic betting sprees, spending millions of dollars across the US, making his marketing strategy questionable.
Matthew 'Moneyball' Benham
Owner of current English Premier League side, Brentford FC, and Danish club FC Midtjylland, mathematical approach to football was most evident.
Because of the amount of randomness in a competition, he believed that competition tables are largely inaccurate.
Billy "The Great White Shark" Walters
Mr. Walters was crowned as The Great White Shark because he is described as the most dangerous and feared sports gambler in the world. He is also one of several rich Football bettors and Basketball bettors who amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in sports betting profits.
Sports betting profit majorly involves risking what you bet in hopes your prediction is right based on how the game turns out. But keep in mind that learning the principles are ways to get better at it.
This article was published on March 4, 2022, and last updated on October 24, 2022.