Best Betting Exchange Sites in the UK: an Overview
If you’re willing to invest time into learning how to make betting exchanges work for you, then they can be a powerful tool to take your sports betting to a whole new level. Throughout this online betting guide, we’ve explained that betting exchanges offer a unique and flexible approach compared to traditional sportsbooks. It’s important to understand what betting exchanges are and how they work before diving in, including understanding how both sides of the market work as well as how to use them to your benefit. This is because although the markets go up early, there’s a lack of liquidity on most betting exchanges until much closer to the start of the event.
Some years on in 2016, Betfair and Paddy Power merged and now both sit under Flutter Entertainment who also own many other brands including Sky Bet. It completely revolutionised the gambling industry with its new offering of a betting exchange where customers could act as the bookmaker. Betfair is the longest running and largest betting exchange in the world and considered by most to be the market leader by some distance.
If you have decided to try a new format of sports betting, choosing a reliable betting exchange is one of the key considerations. Despite the advantages, betting exchanges also have a few disadvantages to consider. Sports exchange platforms provide new opportunities for those who want to get the most out of their knowledge and use different strategies without restrictions. As punters are playing against each other, those who prepared better win noticeably more often. The growth of the US betting exchange market is also driving the analytical approach to placing bets.
On the contrary, the lay bettor assumes betting sites uk the role of the sportsbook and does precisely the opposite of what a back bettor does. The winner wins money from the opposing player minus the betting exchange’s cut. You can assume two roles on the platform—a back bettor and a lay bettor, as explained below. It’s a willing buyer, willing seller kind of scenario where punters connect. I like to call betting exchanges the “eBay of betting”. This question is best explained by outlining the main characteristics of a betting exchange.
We also collect all Top 10s to compare which bookies score highest, most often, and it’s this that populates the list that you can see on our main betting sites page. To help understand these rates more completely before deciding to open a new betting exchange account, and who with, we offer fuller explanations on betting exchange commission rates in the next sections. You can see from the table below the lowest commission rates of the UK betting exchanges listed however, each commission rate works slightly differently from others.
And thanks to market liquidity, bettors can potentially place quite large bets if they choose on betting exchanges. The key thing about betting exchanges and what makes them so popular is that they allow both back and lay bets, so as a bettor, you have more freedom with the type of bet you’d like to place. But with betting exchanges, bettors can either place a back bet (betting for an outcome to happen) or a lay bet (betting against an outcome). We’ll also provide some tips and strategies on how to use these platforms to your advantage, as well as highlight the potential risks. This peer-to-peer model offers great flexibility, better odds, and the opportunity to both back and lay bets.
That’s the main four main betting exchanges but what do each of them offer? Customers will place either a back bet or a lay bet and should the outcome be a winning bet, the exchange will take their share in commission which is usually between 2% and 5%. However, if you wanted to place a lay bet of £20 there isn’t quite enough money in the market to cover the full lay bet. So using this example, if you decide to lay £10 on Cinnodin at odds of 3.7, you will be fine and the bet will be fully matched and done as the liquidity available is £17.
One additional feature that Betfair offers is a dedicated Each Way market on Horse and greyhound races. The increased liquidity means better available back and lay odds which is essential for Betfair Trading, Matched betting and other betting strategies. Another big advantage to Betfair is that they have so many customers, the liquidity (money in the market) is more often than not, much higher than their rivals.
