From a distance, it looks like sports betting is a scheme that takes away your money. But it isn’t so. In fact, sports betting pays, and it is one of my means. I’m into data and software, but two things I really enjoy are betting on sports and using software to help me bet on sports and outsmart the sportsbooks. For those who know me in person, most of my talks are usually about betting, and that’s because there is money in it. It is business. This begs the question: Can you make money on sports betting? Yes, you can. I do, and a lot of people do.
I’ve always been drawn to sports betting because, unlike other gambling forms like slots or roulette, sports betting accommodates a mathematical edge over the sportsbook. if you do your math, then the chance is that you will have long-term wins. Aside from answering the question, in this post, we will talk about how to be a more data-focused, mathematical, and, most importantly, profitable sports bettor.
I hope you’ll stick around till the end of this post because we’ll look into strategies for making money through sports betting. Personally, I’ve earned over 330k from regulated sports betting in the United States since 2018. I didn’t even have to do it full-time or consider it a full-time job. Let’s be clear about one thing. Sports betting isn’t easy at all. You’ll dedicate thousands of hours to developing models to spot profitable betting opportunities and discrepancies in the lines. Sports betting isn’t also for those looking for quick riches, the impatient, or the slow. You must be quick, disciplined, and mathematical. And that’s what we’re going to talk about.
Can You Make Money on Sports Betting?
Maybe you have heard this somewhere, but you are hearing it again now. You can make a living from sports betting—say this loudly. Now, you are going to experience both wins and losses because you can’t win all the time. You just have to look for situations where the odds are in your favor, so over time, you come out ahead. This is similar to investing; you’re not going to see wins every single day on every single bet. However, over the long term, you’ll end up making a lot of money. For me, it’s an amazing feeling knowing that there’s a mathematical profit margin for every bet placed. Just sitting back, watching the games, and letting the math do its thing to earn me money is kind of incredible, really.
While you can make a living from sports betting, I wouldn’t necessarily advise everyone to follow this path, and I’ll explain why it might be tougher than you think to leave your regular job behind. As a full-time career, the size of your bankroll can be a problem. Meanwhile, I wrote an article specifically for winning football bets with strategies – I also talked about bankroll management in the article.
After college, I started betting while working a full-time job because my bankroll was just a few thousand dollars. Imagine you are able to achieve a 30% return on investment (ROI) as a sports bettor, which is impressive monthly. Assuming you know the strategies to hit that 30% ROI, if your bankroll is $10,000, you’d be making $3,000 a month in profit, enough to bet on sports full-time. However, if your bankroll is only $100, earning $30 a month won’t be enough.
The maximum wagering limits set by sportsbooks are a major issue with sports betting. For example, when I was trying to place an arbitrage bet on Barstool, they capped my bet at $178. It shows that the market isn’t very liquid. You can’t just hop onto a sportsbook and place bets of thousands of dollars on a whim. Most bookmakers set their limits around a few hundred dollars. Perhaps this fuss about limits is a bit much. You could use a tool that lists over 200 sportsbooks, but not every one of them will be accessible, but many will be, including big names like DraftKings, Caesars, FanDuel, and WinBet, each with its own limits. Some, like Caesars Sportsbook, allow for higher bets up to $5,000 or $7,000. So, while Barstool might restrict you to $178 for a bet, Caesars lets you place much larger bets.
What Are Those Two Hurdles in Sports Betting?
Honestly, the main hurdle for most people wanting to bet on sports full-time isn’t about the strategies or the limits; it’s about the work ethic. I’m straight with you; making money from sports betting isn’t easy, and it’s definitely not a quick path to riches.
If you think you can turn a dollar into a million overnight, that is unrealistic. You are better off buying a lottery ticket if that’s your plan. I started with a small bankroll myself, worked a full-time job, and still managed to make more than 200k dollars on DraftKings over a few years. I reinvested some of my savings into betting to grow my bankroll and eventually bet on sports full-time. Sure, a limitation on how much you can bet is something to consider, but even with those limits, you can still up over $50,000 in one year. So, when it comes down to it, the real challenge for most isn’t the bankroll or the betting limits; it’s the lack of effort.
How Do You Make a Lot of Money in Sports Betting?
We have talked a lot and even said you can make a living from sports betting. Now, I will walk you through the strategies that you can use to make this into a full-time job.
1. Take Advantage of the Highest Lines by Different Sportbooks
This is going to be our first concept. you should redirect your perspective this way to be able to see winnings the way pros do. Sports betting is a financial market, and it’s similar to any other market out there. If you don’t grasp, you won’t win. It is mathematics. Unlike other markets, though, the sports betting market is really inefficient. We have hundreds of bookmakers worldwide, and each sets their odds on their own, using different algorithms to try and balance the buying and selling. They also have to constantly update their odds, which creates a bunch of interesting inefficiencies that we can go into.
For example, the Twins could be listed at +180 on Bet MGM, but then you see them at +215 on Fox Bet. It’s wild to think about placing a bet at +180 odds on Bet MGM when you could get +215 on Fox Bet, right? If you think the gap between odds like +200 and +215 is minor, then you are missing the bigger picture. Sports betting is all about going after profit margins between 1% and 7% daily and then watching those gains grow exponentially over time. Consider the stock market, where people build wealth with an average return of about eight percent annually. Imagine achieving a 3% return daily through sports betting. This is the aim—earning a consistent 3% return on your capital every day in sports betting. You will only watch your investments multiply over and over.
Let’s talk about this again. Let’s say you always bet on plus 180 or plus 200 odds, and there’s a sportsbook nearby offering plus 215. You are missing out. The small differences here may not seem much at first, but over time, they really add up to a lot of money. This is how sports betting markets operate independently. They set their own lines. In the stock market, you don’t see such variation in prices for the same stock across different platforms. For example, the price for Apple stock is going to be the same on Robin Hood as it is on E-Trade. But in sports betting, just switching tabs from Barstool to BetMGM can make a big difference in your potential payout.
2. Pay Attention to Line Shopping
The discussion above stretches a bit in here. Now, sportsbooks don’t just use the same odds because they want to stand out. DraftKings doesn’t want to offer the same odds as FanDuel, BadMGM, or Pinnacle. If every sportsbook had identical odds, there wouldn’t be a need for so many of them in the global sports betting ecosystem, would there?
If you want to make money from sports betting, you need multiple sportsbook accounts – they will each work to your advantage. This is a strategy known as line shopping, which means you compare odds across different bookmakers to bet at the best possible odds.
You don’t want to lose out because you didn’t get the best odds available. For example, you shouldn’t place a bet on BadMGM at plus 145 odds if you can easily switch tabs and get plus 160 odds on DraftKings. So, pay attention to line shopping in sports betting and be diligent about it to save money over time. Make sure you don’t settle for less; always look for the sportsbooks that give you the best odds. In the US and Canada, there are more than 50 regulated and offshore bookmakers. Open as many accounts as you can manage. It should only take just a couple of minutes. You never know when you’ll find the best odds on a specific book. So, the more accounts you have, the more chances you have to find profitable betting opportunities.
Let’s walk through a simple example of line shopping to see how it works. Let’s say it’s late at night, and we notice that only three books have listed odds for players to hit a home run in tomorrow’s Reds Marlins game. If you want to be ahead, your goal should be to find where FanDuel gives you the best odds. For instance, why go for Alex Jackson to hit over 0.5 home runs at +300 with FanDuel when Pinnacle Sportsbook offers +359? The +300 offer isn’t the best deal. What you need to do is identify opportunities like this.
Let’s say FanDuel has the top odds for Joey Votto at +230 due to his performance. You want to go for it since the odds are better than at Betfair or Pinnacle. Or consider Sanchez at +440, or maybe Kyle Farmer at +550 with FanDuel, compared to lower odds at Betfair and Pinnacle. So, ths method is a powerful strategy because the best lines from FanDuel for this specific promotion could earn you over $2,500.
3. Look Out for Sign-up Bonus Opportunities
DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars have sign-up bonuses when you create an account with them. Your thought could be that you can’t afford to give away a thousand dollars just for signing up. Well, these sportsbooks compete with each other, all looking for your attention. They try to outdo each other by offering sign-up bonuses, sometimes up to an attractive thousand or two thousand dollars in free credits or promotions. You can take advantage of these sign-up bonuses and make a good amount of money.
4. Try to Bypass Betting Limits
We have complained about how limits can hinder your success story in sports betting. This is the reason you need multiple sportsbook accounts. Limits are something we are not fond of, but it’s a common question for people. People often ask if you are making money from betting, why not just bet more? For example, if you bet $1,000 with a 3% edge, that’s an expected return of $30. So why not increase your bets? The answer is limits set by sportsbooks in the US and Canada.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but you are not going to make a million dollars from a regulated sportsbook in these countries because of these limits. This is why sports betting doesn’t scale well, and honestly, becoming a professional sports bettor isn’t as profitable as it seems. Most people who claim to be professional bettors are often trying to sell you something.
In the world of sports betting, there’s a common misconception that the possibilities are endless, but that’s not quite true due to the restrictions set by bookmakers. Let me explain what I mean by limit. Take my experience with FanDuel as an example. Initially, I could place bets up to $5,000 on almost anything. However, if FanDuel notices you are consistently winning and making a profit, they’ll gradually reduce how much you can bet. Now, you’d find yourself restricted to bets of no more than $50 on that FanDuel. However, if you tend to lose bets, they’ll increase your betting limit. So, for a start, you can wager more money, but as you become a savvy, profitable bettor, your betting limit will slowly shrink.
This dynamic is a big reason why you rarely meet anyone who’s both smart and a professional sports bettor. The industry doesn’t really draw in technically skilled individuals, primarily because of these betting limits. Regulated sportsbooks aren’t keen on losing money to clever bettors. Instead, they focus on restricting successful bettors and encouraging those who lose more often. That’s just the nature of the business. So, if you come across someone who claims to be an excellent bettor yet faces no betting restrictions, they are probably not as profitable as they think.
5. Spread Out Your Bets Into Different Accounts
It sounds wild, but there are nearly 20 bookmakers who have limited me. But then again, it’s part of the process and how the industry works. Sportsbooks limit those who win frequently and prefer to keep those who don’t win as much. This isn’t to discourage anyone from betting on sports. In fact, sports betting can be a lot of fun, especially when you are winning, and it can still be profitable. It’s just to point out that you may not win hundreds of thousands from a single sportsbook. You’ll probably be limited before hitting big numbers.
So, the way forward? Try to win something like $20,000 from multiple sportsbooks, it could be 5, 10, or 20 of them. That’s where your focus should be. With the ongoing wave of regulation and legalization in places, there are plenty of bookmakers out there. Take advantage of their signup bonuses, make as much as you can, but be prepared to lose access to some accounts.
6. Travel Between States to Open New Sportbooks
One interesting thing to note, especially in the US, is that different states have access to different sportsbooks. For instance, being in Virginia allows me to place certain bets that I wouldn’t be able to if I were in Pennsylvania. The key takeaway here is that you don’t need to physically reside in a state to bet on sportsbooks available in that state.
You don’t have to live there to place your bets. So, you can spend some time traveling, like in Nashville and Tennessee, and create sportsbook accounts and take advantage of the signup promotions, or even in Vegas. I really recommend checking if you are in a place where it’s regulated, and if so, you can bet on sports. Try to leverage the sign-up bonuses and enjoy some sports betting while there. Alternatively, you can use a VPN to open sportsbook accounts in different states. I have talked about the possibility of using a VPN for sports betting; do read this article for insights.
Conclusion
Fortunately, you can make a living from sports betting, but not without beating the limits set by sportsbooks. In this post, we have discussed how earning a living from sports betting requires multiple sportsbooks. You also have to diligently compare odds or line shop. You should be looking at small, consistent returns, like 2 or 3% daily, and then watch those gains pick up over time. It’s fascinating if you consider the sheer number of odds available across different sportsbooks and offshore sites like Bovada and Bet US. When you tally up the odds, you should be talking about millions of odds.
These odds change all the time. Also, it’s difficult to manually find worthy bets due to these ever-shifting odds. Good betting lines don’t stick around forever. Anyone who has made money from sports betting will tell you to also consider investing in affordable software to find odds. There are a ton out there. Just find one that works for you where you can conveniently fetch the odds to bring home the money.
