Whether it is possible to earn money from gambling and make a living from betting are questions which seem to bother many punters.
To give the short answer…
Yes, it is absolutely possible to make money with sports betting.
Image: Gualtiero Boffi (Shutterstock)Bookmakers make money; sports analysts make a living from gambling by compiling odds for bookies; some of my own income derives from sports bettors using this website. Programmers earn a living from gambling by developing various betting applications. Manufacturers of gaming machines make money from people’s gambling habits.
I could certainly continue this list as the betting business is a big industry providing many, many people with jobs.
But this is probably not a satisfactory response for sports fans who bet themselves and pursue the dream of supplementing their income, or becoming rich from gambling one day.
However, for these hopeful punters, the answer is also clearly positive…
- Yes: it is possible to develop long-term profitable betting strategies.
- Yes: it is possible to find betting odds which hold value and provide a mathematical edge.
Nothing is Impossible!
The big question is whether you will manage to join the minority, the tiny crowd of betting enthusiasts who finally become successful.
Another question is whether you have the patience (and time) for acquiring the necessary knowledge to win more than you lose, because only knowledge is power; without knowledge there is no chance.
Reliance on luck is not a foundation for lasting success. With luck alone nobody can build a house – only a handful of lottery millionaires can claim the opposite.
Successful Sports Bettors – Examples
In September 2005, in “Expert Betting Advice” forum, a young woman named Maria Santonix started publishing horse racing lay bets. I followed her thread at the time, and I must say that it came across as very authentic. She published daily picks (except Saturdays) and in only 303 days, her initial bank of £3,000 increased to £100,603.78.
The thread has since been taken offline by the operators of the forum, but if you google “Maria Laying System” you will find a plethora of articles referring to her experiment. Naturally, doubt breeds skepticism and most of the responses are quite critical.
It is difficult to find really credible information about betting success on the Internet. In the majority of threads you will read statements such as “I know someone who knows someone who makes his living from betting”.
The only website I am currently aware of which has published quarterly betting results for several years is Alan Seymour’s Sports Arbitrage Review. Alan writes about his experiences as a professional arbitrage trader and has been arbing since 2002.
Famous Last Words
If you have anything substantial to contribute to this topic please leave your comment below. It will warm our hearts and be absolutely great!
As I continue to develop betting courses and tutorials, I would be very keen to learn which specific content you are interested in most.
I thank you in advance for you valuable contribution! Every thought helps to develop this website into a sparkling source of knowledge in the often far too confusing worldwide web. 😛
About the Author
Rod,I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions having read your reply and also Right Wingers extremely knowledgable reply.I will quite understand if you don’t answer for any reason.
I should confess that because of my experiences on gambling forums ( I don’t here as this isn’t really a forum) I have in fact become more intrigued by gamblers and why they gamble than in gambling itself.Indeed I think if I was young and at uni Id try to make it the subject of my thesis.
Anyway here goes,
1) You mention that you have spent a lot of time on this.I keep reading on forums that ” making money form betting( on soccer) takes a lot of hard work.How many hours do you think you’ve spent on this?
2)Given that anyone who is able to figure out a profitable system from scratch is probably skilled enough to have made money if they had concentrated on something else ( could be poker or could be learning a skill which could enhance your job prospects) why choose football?
This really is a question I’m increasingly fascinated to know the answer to( from gamblers).
I mean why choose something that every ‘ expert’ on every forum it seems to believe is ‘hard work’?
Do you believe that it is easier to make money betting on football than a) any other sport b) tournament poker c ) doing something completely different including just working behind a bar
3) I have tried to make it clear on here that the best way to profit from betting on soccer is to trade outright markets and bet in multiple yet it’s velar to me that you have not the slightest intention of even trying this out for yourself.
Why?
4) How much do you think your system is worth?
Finally,I was mightily intrigued by you comment at the end re achieving great things through embracing risk.
It seems to me that gambling forums are full of people who are singularly trying to bet on football while being very risk averse.
From everything I’ve read on football betting it seems that embracing risk is not the way to do it.So be careful.
Thanks for reading this.I want to reiterate that I am sincerely intrigued by gamblers motivation and I think that not enough bettors take their own motivation into account before embarking on a lot of apparently hard work.
(If Rob does not answer these questions perhaps others could answer any question that applies to their experiences.Cheers)
Thank you very much for your reply.
At first I thought about doing this myself, but building a big bank takes a lot of time. I have struggled to save enough to invest in my portfolio for the previous seasons, it has taken time to build up, but still its little money (10,000 USD aprox as of now).
I know about the liquidity issue with some leagues… this is why I only bet on the 1×2 market.
I only bet on those two bookmakers because they offer an API, this helps for me to build an automated software that helps me place the bets at the proper times (odds movement is a parameter for my calculation).
You are right about the match betting and building a war chest with the bonuses and free bets. I have not used that option, so that will help me increase a little more my current bank.
I am also looking into my portfolio’s betting strategies all the time, constantly comparing them to past results and worst trends. I do not fear the odds because only a handful are made 100% of public information, the rest I make use of a personal way of rating the teams plus the odds movement, which makes my approach very unlikely to be copied by anyone. I have seen that some of my betting strategies have increased their profitability, and I am aware that everything changes. This has happened in the past, and this is how I have been refining my portfolio.
I appreciate your comments and suggestions, like I said before, you have been an inspiration and your articles came at the right time when I was developing my idea, helping me know more about the concepts I thought about but did not know their names. Still, I enjoy so much your quotes articles and I think that in order to achieve great things, you need to embrace risk.
I will continue to develop my portfolio, maybe I will incorporate other betting markets or even derivatives from my current betting strategies…. Maybe you are right, I should continue using only the money I currently have and take more risks with developing a more aggressive portfolio than looking for external capital.
Thanks again 😉
Hi Rod,
My advice is not to get out of your depth too quickly. Any form of financing should be avoided as a means of raising capital. Whoever has the money to inject has the control of any business enterprise.
With credit you of course have interest payments to make, which will skim off the top line of your betting system yield.
Venture capital is not an option. Not only do I think you will struggle to interest anyone, but you will also have to surrender a significant portion of the profits to get investors to buy in to your operation.
Selling the system nullifies its effectiveness and ruins your own betting revenue stream.
It sounds like you are quite keen to take advantage as soon as possible although I would urge caution.
Take it very slowly and on your own at the moment. Things have a habit of changing very quickly and perhaps you have not seen the full cycle of results if you have been betting for less than two seasons.
And if you have not grown your bank to the stage where you can bet with larger stakes, then you will not fully understand the extent of liquidity in the market just yet.
As you are only using two bookmakers, I would suggest opening accounts with many more – those which have free bet offers – undertake some ‘matched betting’ exercises to win as much ‘free money’ as you can to build up your war chest. You can easily make GBP 2000-3000 in this fashion with a month’s worth of hard work.
And please build up your system gradually – the tendency to want to make immediate returns is the mistake that most gamblers make. Patience is the key.
Our own system is constantly under surveillance, the staking plan is always monitored, even the average and highest odds come under scrutiny to spot trends early enough to decide whether a system still has potential (if the odds start dropping, for example.).
We had a wonderful system betting on the 0-0 half-time score in the Icelandic league four or five seasons ago, because at the level of odds available betting on every match to be 0-0 at half-time brought a nice nest egg, purely because the odds were there. At the start of the following season, it seemed like the bookies had cottoned on to the statistical trend and the odds shortened making the whole thing unviable ever since.
As far as being limited by bookmakers, we have only had one account cancellation around five years ago – Stan James – a firm which offered a nice free bet offer but didn’t like people taking advantage of it, even if they made money. To be honest, I made one slip and did a matched bet involving an obscure South American league game and my stakes were limited for the next two bets, with account cancellation following thereafter.
So why have we had no trouble since? Because we never withdraw money from the bookmakers. We always match it out using an exchange and withdraw money only from the latter. It’s more time consuming but a nailed on certainty not to upset your bookie. He knows you’re doing it but he’s not going to give you up if you are always throwing money at him in lost bets which are covered in your exchange. Besides, we are usually also able to make a small arbitrage profit on the process, which pays for the extra work needed.
If you, like us, have something which works in the long run, then the bookies are gold dust and to be treated like royalty. You really don’t want to screw the system by being limited or cancelled.
I hope this helps and many thanks for your question.
Hey Right Winger,
you say ‘So why have we had no trouble since [the single account cancellation]? Because we never withdraw money from the bookmakers. We always match it out using an exchange and withdraw money only from the latter. It’s more time consuming but a nailed on certainty not to upset your bookie. He knows you’re doing it but he’s not going to give you up if you are always throwing money at him in lost bets which are covered in your exchange. Besides, we are usually also able to make a small arbitrage profit on the process, which pays for the extra work needed.’
Can you please explain this process in more detail? Perhaps with a hypothetical example?
And if this process is feasible, would it not suggest that a savvy bettor need never worry unduly about having any of his (or her) accounts limited or cancelled?
Is this the same thing as betting with betting exchanges which, according to another article, charge expensive premiums?
Hello… Thank you soccerwidow, your website has given me the refinement I needed for my betting portfolio. When I purchased one of your league 1×2 tables I was sure I was on the right direction. I’ve been betting since I was a 10 year old boy (I live in Mexico, back then a kid could walk into a shop with his dad without problems, I am 30 now), the last 4 years I started to develop a database, similar to your HDA tables. Two years ago I made a portfolio inspired by your articles and started my journey into professional betting.
My approach is much different than yours, but it has given me results. I learned a lot from you regarding bank management and I have to say thanks to this website I developed the patience and knowledge to refine my concepts to the point of winning.
I used data from the 2012-2013 season to start my betting on the 2013-2014 season, mostly top european leagues and some second divisions. Then I developed a new mindset for the 2014-2015 season, and so far my theory has been profitable.
I aquired the 2010-2011, 2011-2012 data and made a back test to see if my theory hold the winnings and discover that most of my betting strategies would have given me profits since 2010.
To make this post shorter, I have a betting portfolio that wins money. Marathon bet limited my stakes, so now I am betting only with pinnacle and betfair. But the question I have for you is this…. What do you recommend I should do if I have a winning portfolio, but I do not have the capital to exploit this advantage? Should I take a credit from my bank? Sell the system? Go to a venture capital firm?
Thank you so much again 🙂
Very interesting topic and a good read. I can’t say I make money from soccer nor will I state that you can’t however I have been investing in sports for 10 years and the most profitable sports I find by far are college basketball, baseball and American football.
I average around the 60% mark every year and are profiting. Don’t get me wrong I have lost a lot of money along the way and to be profitable it does take patience and the ability to stomach losses if you can do this backed with a winning strategy you could well be profitable.
I am now betting on soccer for about 5 years. And I think that its possible to make a living witht betting. I have a fulltime job and I am often making more money out of betting on soccer than my salary is. I always wanted to have a passive income. I like soccer to watch, its my hobby. I have managed to earn a good amount of money out of it. The more money I bet the more exiting I am. I tried a lots of strategys….eventually I found one good strategy. THen started with a small amount tot test my strategy…it worked.
There are rules to the strategy…the most important thing is to stick to the rules!!!
You have to make a lot of mistakes to finally make a good income out of betting.
Alan
Hi Alan,
Would I be right in saying that you are trading rather than straight betting seeing as you mention strategy and rules?
If you are betting 90 minute markets I very much doubt that a strategy can help you win so much money but if I’m wrong you are probably a genius.
So I’m going to ask you the obvious question.
What do you think of my way of betting and may I presume you will be giving it a try?
Cheers
Hi Tony,
I know you mentioned in previous posts you were thinking of sharing your football betting strategy by means of an ebook. Can I ask is it available to buy or do you offer 1 on 1 training?
What!?
Did I say that?
If I did,I apologise to Soccerwidow.It wouldn’t be appropriate at all for me to ever use a site such as this to effectively spam.
What I object to is having to read under The Golden Rules of Gambling and probably elsewhere I dare say,that you should NEVER bet in multiples when that is how I make my living!
As for my strategy,all you need to know is that yes you need to bet in multiples BUT you do not bet ALL of your bank on multiples.You have to leave a certain percentage til the last month or so in Oder to hedge your multiple bets.
The rest is up to you.It may well be the case that other people are better at this than I am once they understand why it works.As I say,you are effectively trading the long term markets (and then leveraging those trades as it were.)
I’ve just given you more information than I ever had.
By the way,interestingly enough,originally I was betting each- way all the time because up until 2010 there was incredible value in the place part of outright markets …..and that is how I discovered that what I now do actually works.
Good luck.
Hey Tony Morris,
I am a former professional financial markets-trader (traded for nearly 10 years) who is now looking into sports-betting… is there a way to contact you directly? Sorry if this seems a stupid question but did not find a way on this website…
cheers rich
Hello,
I am quite new to the exciting but challenging world of betting. I have lost quite a fortune trying to make some side cash through betting until I discovered this website! Please I would like a volunteer that is ready to be supplying me good games everyday so as to make some cool cash from betting. Please any volunteer should contact me on teninteni @ yahoo. com. Thank you
In the past I’ve always been hit and miss with my betting. Anyway I came back and had a tip from a friend basically bet on teams that are at least 2-0 up in football place about 4 or 5 in one lot so say a 4 fold with odds like 4.1/1 with them combined so for £5 it’s over 20 in return I did this a few times and actually managed to turn over 300 in a day then 2 days later made 560
could you explain that strategy in more detail? Thanks.
Please how do I get to contact you directly?
It’s well known that you can make a living from horseracing as there are numerous well known pro gamblers who bet solely on horses. But there not many well known sports betting professional gamblers. And even I can only name a couple of pro soccer bettors.
In theory horseracing, though much more complex, is easier to beat since there is a great deal of ‘hidden’ information which nonetheless can be gleaned by a determined, a very determined, bettor.
Whereas in soccer pretty much ALL the available information is easily accessed by ANYONE thus in theory it’s much harder to gain an edge over the market.
Having said that I should point out that the information I use to make a living from betting on football is right under everyone’s noses and yet they ignore it…..not realising how valuable it is one presumes!
Hi Tony,
I would really like to know more about your method. Is your book currently for sale? If not are there any other resources you would recommend in the meantime.
Many thanks
Adam
You can successfully make a living from betting – I do from backing horses (never laying) and I aim to make a 100pt profit per year and usually do (the lowest was 82pt in the last 10 years back in 2008). I bet to 1000 pound per point now with stakes between 1-3 pts and have on average only 7 bets a month. It requires patience and the knowledge that you will win over a year. Do not chase losing runs and you have to keep your nerve. I had a big payday yesterday as I back Silviniaco Conti in the King George back in October – 1000 e.w at 5/1…romped in yesterday at 15/8. Three months I waited for the return…! Getting on with the bookmakers is my biggest hassle and I am starting to accept clients to help me with that now.
Hi Jordan,
You mention ‘the nature of the strategy’ so I assume you have analysed the situation and expect to take big hits every seventh day or so.
If you’ve found something which seems to work, then figuring out the optimum staking plan is the next step. Applying your staking plan retrospectively to the data you have analysed using historical odds will help you see if the strategy is sustainable. The longest winning and losing streaks are also important to identify to help you set the staking plan.
Yes, we all lose bets and there is simply no avoiding this. Taking the emotion out of betting is key to becoming a better bettor. We try to keep things as simple as possible by relying purely on numbers. Check out our flagship Probability and Value Calculator.