What’s Exchange Betting and How Does it Work?

Posted by Peter Brennan on Wednesday,March 23, 2016 5:16, EDT in

Over the recent years, betting exchanges have increasingly popular in sportsbooks, offering ardent bettors a variety of betting alternatives to the usual bookies with the promise of big rewards to the bettors. In this article, we explain betting exchanges, highlighting how they work and explaining the costs related to the betting exchanges, courtesy of MyBookie online sportsbook.

What’s Exchange Betting and How do Betting Exchanges Work?

What is Betting Exchange?

Simply put, betting exchanges are sportsbetting sites that offer sports bettors an opportunity to bet against their peers. Also known as lay betting, betting exchanges generally work by allowing punters to sell odds to fellow punters rather than the traditional odds offered by bookmakers where punters back a bet.

Sites that have betting exchanges offer odds on almost all major sports across the world, including American Football, Soccer, Baseball, Tennis, Horse Racing and Motorsports, among many others. These sites usually accept deposits and process withdrawals in the same way online sportsbooks do it, such as through credit cards, Moneybookers, Paypal, Neteller, and many more viable options.

How Does Betting Exchange Work?

On face value, betting exchanges sound complicated, but once you get the hang of the process, you’ll realize that it is a rather simple process.

For example, if a bettor wants to back the New England Patriots in the NFL odds to cover the spread (at -7.5) and to win 500 (at -107) against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at home, he/she can place that ‘Back Bet’ order in a betting exchange site and wait for someone else to take the bet. The punter who takes the bet is called a ‘layer’ because they ‘lay’ the bet in identical fashion to a bookmaker. Mind you, if the bet is accepted or matched by the layer, it becomes binding and cannot be reversed or cancelled, as your wager is tied to the layer’s money. But if the bet is not accepted or remains unmatched by the time the event has started, the money will be refunded back into the bettor’s account.

Owing to ease in accessibility to betting sites over online platforms, peer to peer network betting is a big part of today’s betting world, a key reason why betting exchanges take place across the world. Not to mention, online betting exchange forums allow bettors to view multiple odds and spreads, which allows the bettor to make better decisions and get the highest edge for potentially bigger profits.

Besides betting in game outcomes prior to the start of the events, betting exchanges also allow bettors to place wagers on in-running or in-play bets. This feature is, however, mostly meant for the most popular sporting events that have live television coverage.

Costs Implications on Betting Exchanges

Given that betting exchanges provide the service for punters to match bets with each other, each of the exchange sites will charge you a particular commission on the wagers you place and take in the betting market. The commission percent on the bet is usually around .5% to 1% of the wager. Most exchange betting sites will only charge commissions to winners of the bets. Others, however, charge commissions on both sides of the bet, meaning both the loser and winner pay some percentage.

Conclusion on Betting Exchanges

Interesting and profitable as it is to make exchange bets, back betting and lay betting are equal parts of one another, so you can’t have one without the other. You therefore have to be ready to sell what others want to buy, or be able to scope for good bets to lay against if you want to succeed or profit from exchange betting.