---
title: 'How I Built a Sports Betting Bot | Arbitrage Betting Explained'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=q-NKvlGHJD4'
video_id: 'q-NKvlGHJD4'
date: 2026-07-22
duration_sec: 546
channel: 'Victor Fang'
---

# How I Built a Sports Betting Bot | Arbitrage Betting Explained

> Source: [How I Built a Sports Betting Bot | Arbitrage Betting Explained](https://youtube.com/watch?v=q-NKvlGHJD4)

## Summary

The video explains arbitrage betting as a method to make risk-free profits by exploiting discrepancies in bookmaker odds. The creator built a Python-based tool using Selenium to scrape odds from multiple bookmakers, identify arbitrage opportunities, and send email notifications, all hosted on an AWS EC2 instance for 24/7 operation.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Arbitrage Betting** [00:03] — Arbitrage betting is a way to make risk-free profit by betting on all outcomes of an event across different bookmakers when the odds sum to less than 100%.
- **How Arbitrage Works** [00:29] — Example: If odds for Team A and Team B sum to less than 1 (e.g., 1.22 and 5.00), you can guarantee profit by betting proportional amounts on both sides.
- **Why Arbitrage Opportunities Exist** [01:52] — Bookmakers make mistakes, especially in obscure sports, and competition among bookies creates temporary discrepancies that arbitrage bettors exploit.
- **Building the Bot** [02:48] — The creator built a Python script using Selenium to scrape odds from multiple bookmakers, find the best odds, and identify arbitrage opportunities.
- **Notification System** [04:12] — The script sends an email whenever an arbitrage opportunity is detected, allowing the user to act quickly.
- **24/7 Operation with AWS** [04:40] — The script runs on an AWS EC2 instance to operate continuously without keeping a personal computer on.
- **Mistakes and Risks** [05:09] — The creator made mistakes like betting on the wrong match days. Risks include bets being cancelled or odds withdrawn, leaving an unbalanced position.
- **Bonus Bets** [05:38] — Sign-up bonuses from bookmakers can be converted into guaranteed profit by using them on underdogs with good odds.
- **Comparison to Existing Software** [07:31] — Existing arbitrage software is expensive and inflexible, so building a custom tool was more cost-effective and educational.

### Conclusion

Arbitrage betting offers a way to make low-risk profits, but it requires careful execution and awareness of risks like bet cancellation. Building a custom bot can be a fun and cost-effective alternative to commercial software.

## Transcript

arbitrage betting two million views i thought to myself wow this is a super science degree why don't i try combine the two and so
here we are today if you don't know what arbitrage wedding is it's a way to make risk-free with little asterisks match let me give you a short explanation
game team one is playing team two and there are two outcomes win or lose this is what it might look like on a sports betting site bet 100 on either of these teams and
this is the expected payout the probability of a team winning is the probability of a team winning is given by 1 divided by the odds so in the above case 1 over 1.22 means that our favorite the cabs have a supposed 82
percent chance of winning whilst the pistons have a 24 chance of winning unlike a coin toss which you can pretty confidently assign a 1.5 odds to each outcome determining the odds for real sports matches with unknown factors and
variables is much more difficult looking at our previous example the total probability for our match on lab brokes sums up to 106 percent more than 100 this means that you're guaranteed to lose money if you bet on both sides
but when the odds provided by the bookmakers differ enough to favor us that is when they sum up to less than one an arbitrage opportunity arises in this example we've guaranteed
ourselves three percent profit by betting on both sides here we divvy up the bet according to our odds so regardless of the outcome we get the same payout now it might not seem like much but over
numerous bets it does add up now you might be thinking hmm this sounds too good to be true how do arbitrage opportunities even that's a good question and well there are a combination of reasons the main
one being that bookmakers just aren't perfect determining odds is difficult people make mistakes and bookies want to stay competitive with other bookies with that being said there are usually more frequent and larger arbitrage
opportunities in smaller and more obscure tournaments sports because it's harder to predict who might win plus there are less people betting to sort of balance the scale and iron out any inaccuracies well the presence
of arbitrage better sort of brings the odds across the bookmakers to some equilibrium because well if there was a life discrepancy then people would jump in to close that gap and make profit well i guess the other way around like
make profit and close that gap as a as a byproduct okay so now that we know what arbitrage betting is let's get on to what i built it's quite simple in fact it's not really a bot since i still have to
manually bet but it does make life easier and for a better youtube title so what i need first well to find an arbitrage opportunity union have the best odds there are no shortage of bookies but these were the main ones i
looked at and really it was only the ones highlighted in green which i found so let's go ahead and collect all the odds from the different bookmakers now to do this manually would be an absolute nightmare i'd have to continually switch
between tabs wait for the odds to load and then manually record and figure out what the best bookies are so the first step is obviously just automate and scrape the data i can't directly scrape the site since
it's not static and actually takes time to load instead i use selenium which is a tool that automates web browsers i got selenium to mock open this site load and then look through rows and elements to get the relevant data i use
the headless version which does the exact same thing without the gui or graphical user interface so it's a bit more lightweight when running continuously after scraping and finding the best odds
tabulate great hmm well not really it's not that helpful to always be watching instead
why don't i notify myself when an art opportunity does show up sent an email whenever an app opportunity appeared awesome over here you can see a massive 14
arbitrage opportunity now that's quite rare and more often than not you'll find that the rbops are more or less between one to three percent i also wanted to run this 24 7 but didn't want to keep my laptop on
permanently ah thank you cloud computing i set up an aws ec2 instance to run the script 24 7. essentially printing or borrowing a server computer that's always on
now we just sit back and let the money flow in fact i made a ton of mistakes along the way like when early on when i thought i
opportunity except that it was because the same two teams were playing two matches on different days and i bet it on opposing days i don't know how i did that yeah a bunch of free money i made was from bonus fits
will often give you an initial promotion or they'll match your first deposit up to 250 bucks if you sign up to a lot of bookies that could easily mean over 1 000 in bonus bets if you have good odds and use your
bonus bet on the other dog then you can easily guarantee that 1k in bonus bets turns into at least 600 in cold hard dollar dues nothing like hard earned money in fact i was super surprised when
ladbrokes kept contacting me offering me bonus bit promotions long after i had forgotten about it and you know i won't say no to free money something i could have done was to automate the complete betting process so
that's actually betting on the games and depositing money but i thought that this was a bit risky especially since the bot would sometimes screw up the odds because of again like i said different days and the other risk
bets could potentially be cancelled in fact this happened once when i had great odds i bet it on two different matches and then on one of the bookies it actually prevented me from from getting those same odds because i think
it was a system error because the bets the odds provided were just too good to be true um so i bet on you know one side already and bookkee um it was attracted to them i have this sort of
exposed side on one bookie and so yeah that isn't great the other thing that's difficult is if the odds are extremely skewed let's say like you know one to ten um on one of the sides i'd have to bet like an insane amount to
i'd have to bet like an insane amount to counteract uh the other odds and being able to deposit that much money automatically um i thought was a bit too risky and something i didn't want to do now if you're familiar with sports
sports betting software out there already so why bother what's the point of all this and well you're right there is sports arbitrage software out there that collates odds
bet on but it costs money you know it's not cheap it's pretty damn ugly and well you can't just add and remove what you want slash don't want plus i thought making this would be quite fun
which it was and oh yeah arbitrage betting is risk-free with an asterisk because there is risk and you can get screwed over um like i mentioned before if your bet is either cancelled by bookie or attracted then you're left
on the other bookkee which is better i'm usually concerned just a bit on the opposing side with odds that aren't great so you're not losing the entire bet you just might be you know down a couple bucks or
depending on how much you've been so it's not horrible it just means that you taken advantage of the app opportunity because it's disappeared oops by the way the arb software is currently
local and only with me but if you're interested and want to use it do let me know and i will try and spend some time uploading and deploying it it's currently only showing three
two player sports just because they were the easiest to scrape hope you enjoyed it's not something i usually make and if you want to see more of this let me know you want to see more of this let me know down below