What an AI Betting Tip Actually Costs You in 2026
Available in USA “tip” sounds free. It rarely is. Every selection you see — sent by an app, posted on a feed, generated by a model — has to clear a hurdle the bookmaker has already set: the margin baked into the odds. Most punters never see that hurdle as a number, only as the slow leak in a bankroll that looked healthy on a Tuesday and is empty by Saturday. This guide is about that leak, how to measure it, and what AI tools genuinely add (and don’t) when the day ends.
Last verified: 27 October 2026 against the Gambling Commission’s public register.
How an AI Betting Tip Is Actually Built
An “AI tip” is a model output dressed as a prediction. Strip the dressing and it is a function with inputs and a probability attached to one of three things: a home win, a draw, an away win (the 1X2 market); over or under a total; or a price threshold on a player prop. The inputs vary by vendor — recent form, expected goals, shot volume, line-ups, weather, market movement, even the bookmaker’s own price — but the structure is the same: convert messy reality into a probability, then surface the games where that probability differs enough from the implied probability in the odds to look attractive.
That gap — the model’s probability versus the market’s — is what the betting world calls a “value bet.” It is the only thing a tip is worth chasing. Without a number on both sides, “the model likes this one” is a sentence that pays nothing at the bookmaker’s window.
The Ingredients Most Models Lean On
A serious model does not start with a name. It starts with a baseline — the league average goal rate, the average possession, the typical shots per game — and adjusts from there. Form, fixture density, travel, injuries, suspensions, weather, referee tendencies, expected goals versus actual goals, and a player’s recent minutes all nudge that baseline. The result is a probability the home side wins, draws, or loses; the price of each outcome is the bookmaker’s opposite view.
The variable a model cannot see is motivation. A team resting players for a cup, a side already safe from relegation, a manager one yellow card from a touchline ban — these shape the game in ways even the best data does not catch cleanly. No vendor markets this honestly. The honest vendors say so.
Why a Tip Is Never Certain
A probability of 60% is not a certainty. It means the model thinks the chance is 60%, which means a 40% chance it is wrong. Stake as if the 40% is real, because it is. The model that brags about its 80% accuracy on a closed back-test is usually measuring the wrong thing — hit rate without calibration, hit rate on a small sample, or hit rate on markets the model was quietly allowed to skip when uncertain. The right question is not “how often is the tip right?” but “when the tip says 60%, does it actually win 60 times out of 100?” Almost none do.
There is a deeper point. The bookmaker’s odds already reflect thousands of models, employed quants, and the weight of money on each side. To beat the price consistently, an AI tool has to know something the market doesn’t — or know the same thing faster. That is a tall order, and most “AI tipsters” on the open market are repackaging a long-shot bias or recency effect under a black-box wrapper.
The Landscape: Where AI Betting Sits in 2026
A few things have shifted in the past two years. Generative models have made natural-language previews trivial; any number of new apps now produce a paragraph of “analysis” alongside a tip. The skill is no longer writing the sentence — it is whether the model behind it has any edge at all. The more interesting vendors have moved up the stack: dynamic odds comparison, real-time line movement alerts, bankroll trackers, and personalised staking suggestions rather than raw picks.
The flipside is that “AI” has become the marketing word. Push notifications that say “AI-powered” usually mean a server pulling stats from an API and arranging them under a logo. The price the punter pays is not the subscription. It is the bankroll leak that comes from following tips that look precise but are not. That is the cost this guide keeps circling back to.
A short way to put it: the question is not “should I use an AI tipster?” but “what would an edge have to look like to pay for itself after the margin?”
Legality and the Statute That Frames the Market
The market in Great Britain is licensed under the Gambling Act 2005. The Gambling Commission — a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport — is the regulator, and since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 any operator taking remote bets from customers in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever the company itself is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. The Commission’s public register, searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, is the whole test of who holds one; if a brand is not on it, the brand is unlicensed for GB purposes.
Financial spread betting is the one obvious exception: that activity is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission, and losses on a spread bet can exceed the original deposit. Spread-betting firms still fall under the FCA’s conduct rules, and a punt on a footie total at a spread-betting firm is a different product from a fixed-odds single at a bookmaker — different margin, different stake, different treatment of a losing position.
There is no statutory cap on stakes. Operators set their own maximums, and a customer whose betting pattern looks unusual can be restricted. There is also no statutory list of permitted bets: an operator holds a licence for a category (remote general betting standard, real or virtual; remote pool betting; remote betting intermediary for exchanges) and offers markets under its own rules and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice.
The player pays no tax on winnings in Great Britain. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits — currently 15%, with a new 25% remote rate scheduled to apply from 1 April 2027 on remote bets outside UK horse racing, self-service betting terminals, pool betting and in-person betting. Whether the operator absorbs duty in tighter odds or passes it through is not established, so write it this way: the duty is the operator’s, the punter’s job is to look at the price.
The Statute on What an Operator Has to Do
A few practical obligations shape every interaction a punter has with a licensed bookmaker, and the AI-tipping market runs on top of them. These matter for the cost question.
Identity is checked before the first deposit. Name, address and date of birth are verified before a customer can gamble, including with a free bet or bonus, since 7 May 2019. There is no anonymous play at a licensed site, and source-of-funds questions at higher spend are routine under anti-money-laundering rules.
Credit cards are banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded e-wallet top-ups. Debit cards and bank transfers are not covered by the ban, but a credit card cannot fund a bet directly or by detour.
Bonuses are constrained. Since 19 January 2026 wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x. A £10 bonus that once needed £500 of qualifying bets at 50x rollover now needs no more than £100. Mixed-product promotions — “bet on football to get free spins” — are banned. The cap’s application to free bets with no wagering condition is not established, and there is no published cap on the headline value of a bonus, so the headline number on a promotion page is not the whole story.
Advertising follows the CAP Code (non-broadcast) and BCAP Code (broadcast), enforced by the ASA, alongside the LCCP’s marketing conditions. No one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling in an ad (with a narrow exception for placements where a bet can be placed directly). Whistle-to-whistle is an industry code rather than law: since 1 August 2019 betting ads are not broadcast in the five minutes before and after a live sporting event before the 9pm watershed, with horse and greyhound racing excluded. The Premier League’s withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts from the 2026/27 season is voluntary, not law.
Offshore is a different country for consumer purposes. A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption, and providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without it is a criminal offence aimed at the operator. The customer who simply places a bet on an unlicensed site is not committing a recorded offence, but loses the British consumer protections: no GAMSTOP, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, and no British redress if funds are withheld. The unlicensed site is also outside the 10x bonus cap and the financial vulnerability check. Honest framing: licensed means checks, limits, GAMSTOP and the bonus cap; unlicensed means none of that and a real risk that the money does not come back at all.
Responsible Gambling: The Safeguards That Are Real
This section is not a “play safe” footnote. The protections in force shape the cost of the activity directly: a customer who has self-excluded cannot lose; a customer who has set a deposit limit cannot exceed it; a customer who has activated a product block cannot place the bet.
GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. The minimum exclusion is six months, with options of one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops run a separate service.
A financial vulnerability check has applied since 30 August 2024 under LCCP condition 3.4.4, with a threshold in force since 28 February 2025: when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days at a licensed remote operator, the operator runs a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments, similar). It is not an income check and not a credit reference check, and the operator is not entitled to demand payslips on that trigger alone. Wider financial risk assessments — the “affordability checks” the press writes about — are announced in a staged plan, with no start date. Write it as “announced, staged, no start date” until the Commission publishes a date, not as “in force.”
Deposit limits under RTS 12 require operators to offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame. The first changes have applied since 31 October 2025; a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether it is now live is not established. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling. Limits are the customer’s choice and the operator’s duty to enforce.
Help is real and free. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and education. The NHS runs gambling clinics. Gamblers Anonymous runs meetings. None of these need a betting account to use.
The Mobile and App Layer
A serious chunk of AI-tipping activity lives on a phone, and the app layer is where the “cost” framing actually bites. Push notifications, in-app price boosts, and one-tap bet builders are designed to compress the time between tip and stake. The friction the app removes is the friction a punter’s bankroll benefits from.
A few structural points are worth holding onto. Live streaming on an app usually needs a funded account or a recent bet — William Hill’s WHTV, for example, needs a funded account or a bet in the last 24 hours, with live racing requiring a bet of £1 or more on a qualifying race. Bet365’s app layers in-play betting on top of live streaming of events worldwide, plus Bet Track, Match Live and a Live Golf Tracker. bet365 and betfair-style coverage is the upper bound of what mobile in-play looks like at the time of writing.
A bet builder is a same-game multi: legs from one match combined into one price. The legs multiply into one decimal price, and the margin is compounded by the leg. A bet builder on three selections is rarely a value bet even when the legs look reasonable; the price is rounded against the punter at every step.
Cash out locks in a return before the event finishes. The cash-out price is a function of the current state of the market and the operator’s own margin, and it is almost always worse than letting the bet run. A cash out at 80% of theoretical maximum is a real number, not a kindness.
The right comparison across the app stores is not which app has more markets — they all do, at this point — but which one respects a deposit limit, surfaces a self-exclusion button, and does not push notifications at 2am.
How the Bookmaker’s Margin Works in the Odds
The margin is the cut the bookmaker takes from every market, expressed as a percentage of the total amount staked. It is the reason two firms quoting the same match can have different prices, and the reason a “value bet” is harder to find than a tipster’s feed suggests.
Take an illustrative two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 / 1.90 — an example, not a quoted price. The implied probability of each outcome is 1 ÷ 1.90, which is 52.63%. Two outcomes at that probability sum to 105.26%. The excess over 100% is the overround, 5.26% in this case. The margin — the cut the bookmaker takes — is 5.0%. The punter’s “payout share” — the fraction of every pound bet that comes back on a perfectly fair market — is 1 ÷ 1.0526, roughly 95%. The bookmaker keeps 5p in the pound on this market.
That 5.26% is a band, not a single figure. Different markets carry different margins. A 1X2 market on a Premier League fixture at a major firm tends to run between 3% and 7% depending on the match and the side of the bet. Asian handicap markets often run tighter; player prop markets and long-shot outrights run wider. The same fixture at a softer bookmaker with a thinner trading desk can carry 8% or more, and that is before the punter’s AI tip is even counted.
What this means in practice: if a model’s “value bet” needs the price to be 5% above the true probability just to beat the margin, the model is not finding value — it is finding prices that have not yet been ground down by the market. A 5% edge in a 5% market is break-even before subscription fees, before the model’s own calibration error, and before the variance of staking.
A Worked Margin
Two prices, 1.90 and 1.90. Implied probability per side: 1 ÷ 1.90 = 52.63%. Sum of implied probabilities: 105.26%. The excess over 100% is the overround, 5.26% in this case; the margin is 5.0%. The payout share to the punter on a fair-priced market at this margin is about 95%, meaning the bookmaker keeps around 5p in every pound staked across the market as a whole. The exact figure is 1 − (1 ÷ 1.0526) ≈ 0.0500, so the band a punter should expect from a clean two-way market at symmetric prices is 4% to 6%, with 1.90 / 1.90 landing in the middle.
The Operator Set: How Each Platform Treats the Subject
What follows is the operator set as the Gambling Commission’s public register lists it for the relevant period. A place here is not a recommendation. It is a description of the brand and what its own published material says about how it handles the markets an AI-driven punter is most likely to use.
1. William Hill — Best Odds Guaranteed, the Long-Running Standard
William Hill has held a Gambling Commission remote licence (account 39225) through WHG (International) Limited for many years, and the firm is one of the more recognisable high-street-to-online brands in the British market. Its app carries an in-play product, a bet builder, and Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing from 8am on the day of the race, applying to single and multiple bets but not to ante-post, tote or pari-mutuel bets. WHTV is the streaming service, and a funded account or a bet in the last 24 hours is the standard gate, with live racing needing a qualifying £1 bet on the race in question. Betting TV carries selected UK and US racing and UK greyhounds free.
For a punter leaning on AI-generated horse-racing selections, BOG is the feature that matters most: if the starting price is bigger than the price taken, the bigger price is paid. That is a real edge, and a model that prices up a horse at 5/1 that drifts to 7/1 on the off gets paid at 7/1.
Verdict: William Hill suits a punter whose AI tool produces horse-racing prices. The BOG window from 8am is generous, the streaming gate is low, and the licence is long-established. It is less useful for a model built around player props, where the market depth is thinner and the margin wider.
2. Betfair — Exchange Mechanics on Top of a Sportsbook
Betfair runs both a sportsbook and an exchange. The sportsbook is licensed to PPB Counterparty Services Limited under Commission account 39439. The app carries in-play betting, a Bet Builder, free live streaming of events such as UK and Irish horse racing and football, and a 90 Minute Payout market on selected football fixtures. The exchange runs on a betting intermediary licence, which is a different category of Commission permission; back and lay bets sit on a different margin profile from a fixed-odds single.
The 90 Minute Payout market is a flat structure: if the backed team goes two goals ahead, the bet pays out as a win regardless of the final score. It is a closed-end product with a known edge for the operator, and an AI model that picks “two-goal leads” is picking a market with a known margin, not an open one.
Verdict: Betfair suits a punter who treats the exchange as a price source. The sportsbook is competent and the streaming is strong; the exchange is the part that an AI pricing model can actually use, because the prices are market-clearing rather than bookmaker-set.
3. Fitzdares — Premium Positioning, Narrow Markets
Fitzdares (Commission account 400, Fitzdares Limited) sits in a higher-end niche. The app offers cash out, accumulators, Lucky 15s, specials and antepost markets on horse racing, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf and American football, with in-play live odds. The market coverage is narrower than the major firms’ but the specials and antepost depth on racing is meaningful, and the cash-out and Lucky 15s product mix is what a traditional racing punter expects.
For an AI model that produces a wide range of football and racing prices, the antepost and specials layer is the part that distinguishes Fitzdares from the mass-market brands.
Verdict: Fitzdares suits a racing-led punter with a model that prices up antepost markets and specials, not a model that needs breadth across forty football leagues.
4. London Bet — Compact Sportsbook with Pragmatic Casino
London Bet (Commission account 66162, Thistle Bet Limited) is the smaller of the two London-themed brands in the set. The app combines sports betting on football, tennis, horse racing, greyhounds, darts, golf, cricket, NFL, NBA, MLB and snooker with Pragmatic Play casino slots and live in-play betting. The sportsbook is the core product; the casino is a secondary line.
For an AI tool that produces a wide spread of football and US-sports prices, the coverage is enough. The model is not aimed at the volume of markets a major firm carries, but the licence is in place and the markets listed are the ones most punter models price.
Verdict: London Bet suits a casual punter whose AI tool covers mainstream UK and US sports and who wants a single account for sports and slots, not a punter looking for the deepest market on the exchange.
5. Betmaster — Maltese Operations, GB Licence
Betmaster (Commission account 65699, BM Solutions GB Ltd, registered in Malta) is a brand whose operator is registered outside Great Britain but holds a Commission remote licence. The licence is the relevant test, not the place of registration, and Betmaster is on the Commission’s public register against the relevant categories.
For a punter, what matters is that the licence is in place, the deposit and withdrawal route is published, and the brand is not in the offshore category. The rest of the offering has to be checked on the brand’s own terms.
Verdict: Betmaster suits a punter who is satisfied that a GB-licensed operator does not have to be UK-domiciled and who reads the brand’s terms before staking. It is not a value judgement on the price depth.
6. Betfred — Bet Builder, Extra Places, Racing Post Data
Betfred (Commission account 39544, Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited) has been a fixture of the UK high street for decades and the app carries the core sportsbook plus a casino and bingo product. The app features Bet Builder, Sub Switch (substitution-aware bet builder on football), Racing Post data inside the app, Extra Places on selected racing markets, and live casino and bingo. The Racing Post data integration is the meaningful differentiator for racing-led AI tools.
For a model that prices up football and horse racing, Sub Switch and the Racing Post feed are useful inputs — the latter because it gives a punt access to form data the bookmaker itself uses, which compresses one of the information edges the model might otherwise have.
Verdict: Betfred suits a racing-led punter with an AI tool that benefits from Racing Post data, and a football punter who likes the Sub Switch product on a bet builder. The licence is established and the product mix is mainstream.
7. Sky Bet — Free-Bet-Heavy Welcome
Sky Bet (Commission account 67370, SBG Sports Limited) is the sports arm of the Sky betting business. The welcome offer for new customers is £30 in free bets, credited as three £10 free bet tokens after a deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at odds of 1/1 or greater. The 5p minimum stake is unusually low and the 1/1 minimum odds is the standard qualifying threshold.
A free bet’s stake is not paid back with a win, and that is the cost the punter pays. Three £10 free bets at average decimal odds of 4.00, in a market with a margin of around 6%, are worth about £10 × (4.00 − 1) ÷ 4.00 × 0.94 = £6.58 across the three tokens. That is the headline £30 minus the standard free-bet haircut, in plain numbers. The punter’s job is to compare that to the headline number, not to be impressed by it.
Verdict: Sky Bet suits a punter who reads free-bet terms as a calculation rather than a marketing line. The 5p minimum qualifying stake is generous, the 1/1 minimum odds is standard, and the haircut on the free-bet value is the real cost.
8. Star Sports — Independent Bookmaker Positioning
Star Sports (Commission account 9177, Star Racing Limited) describes itself as the UK’s leading independent bookmaker, and the app combines the sportsbook with virtual sports, casino and live casino. The independent positioning is the meaningful differentiator in a market dominated by the big groups; the product mix is the standard one for a smaller firm.
For an AI tool, the relevant question is whether the price depth on the markets the model targets is enough at Star Sports to make the bet worth placing. That varies by market and the punter’s own research.
Verdict: Star Sports suits a punter who wants a smaller, independent bookmaker on the panel for price comparison rather than a single-account home. The licence is in place; the price depth is the part the punter checks.
9. BetUK — Free-Bet Exclusions and Minimum Odds
BetUK (Commission account 39198, LeoVegas Gaming PLC) is part of the LeoVegas group. The brand’s free bets exclude virtual sports, esports and non-UK/IE horse racing, and minimum odds apply. The exclusions are the meaningful terms: a free bet cannot be used on a virtual football price, an esports outright, or a US racing market, and the minimum odds rule stops the punter from placing the qualifying bet on a heavy favourite and walking away.
For an AI tool that produces prices on virtuals, esports or US racing, BetUK is a closed door for free-bet play. For mainstream UK football and racing, the brand is in scope.
Verdict: BetUK suits a punter whose AI tool focuses on UK and Irish football and racing, not a punter whose model leans on virtuals or esports. The exclusions are the cost of using the free-bet layer.
10. Fafabet — Best Odds Guaranteed, Tighter Window
Fafabet (Commission account 57385, Taichi Tech Limited) pays Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing win and each-way bets from 9am on race days, with the bigger of the original price and the starting price paid if SP is bigger. The 9am window is later than William Hill’s 8am, and that hour is the meaningful difference: a punter whose model produces prices at 7.30am and wants the BOG to apply will get the better of the two on William Hill.
The free-bet and ongoing-promotion terms on the brand are separate and need to be checked at the brand, not inferred.
Verdict: Fafabet suits a punter whose AI tool produces prices close to the off and who can live with a 9am BOG window, not a punter pricing up at dawn.
What the Landscape Looks Like Side by Side
The brands above are presented the way a reader should compare them — by the licence and by what each operator’s own terms say on the markets the AI tipping market uses most. The order in the table follows the order of the operator set above.
| Brand | Gambling Commission remote licence and holder | What the operator’s own terms state on the key’s subject |
|---|---|---|
| William Hill | Account 39225, WHG (International) Limited | Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing from 8am on race day, on single and multiple bets; not on ante-post, tote or pari-mutuel |
| Betfair | Account 39439, PPB Counterparty Services Limited | In-play, Bet Builder, free live streaming of UK and Irish racing and football, plus a 90 Minute Payout market on selected football |
| Fitzdares | Account 400, Fitzdares Limited | Cash out, accumulators, Lucky 15s, specials, antepost on racing, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf, American football; in-play live odds |
| London Bet | Account 66162, Thistle Bet Limited | Sports betting on football, tennis, horse racing, greyhounds, darts, golf, cricket, NFL, NBA, MLB, snooker; Pragmatic Play casino slots; live in-play |
| Betmaster | Account 65699, BM Solutions GB Ltd (Malta) | Brand holds a Commission remote licence; product and price depth to be checked at the brand |
| Betfred | Account 39544, Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited | Bet Builder, Sub Switch, Racing Post data in-app, Extra Places, live casino and bingo |
| Sky Bet | Account 67370, SBG Sports Limited | £30 in free bets credited as three £10 tokens on deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at 1/1 or greater |
| Star Sports | Account 9177, Star Racing Limited | Sportsbook plus virtual sports, casino and live casino; positioned as an independent UK bookmaker |
| BetUK | Account 39198, LeoVegas Gaming PLC | Free bets exclude virtual sports, esports and non-UK/IE horse racing; minimum odds apply |
| Fafabet | Account 57385, Taichi Tech Limited | Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing win and each-way from 9am on race day |
A licence on the Commission’s public register means the brand is checked, the brand is on GAMSTOP, the brand is bound by the 10x bonus cap, and the brand runs the financial vulnerability check. The depth and the price are the part the punter verifies at the brand.
The Reading List for a Punter Who Wants the Edge
Three things stay useful long after the specific tip is forgotten. First, the Commission’s public register, checked directly rather than via a marketing page. The licence number, the licensee, the licence categories and the trading names are the four things worth a look. Second, the operator’s own terms page for the market being priced — not the headline promotion, the underlying terms for the bet type. Third, a working bankroll tracker, however crude, that records every stake, the price taken, the result and the running total. The tracker’s job is to surface the margin over time, because a 5% margin does not feel like a 5% margin on any single bet; it is a 5% haircut across a hundred bets, and the only way to see that is to log the hundred bets.
The AI tool is then layered on top of those three. If the tool’s record over a year of staking shows a return after the margin, the tool is doing something. If the record shows a loss in line with the margin, the tool is repackaging free information. The tracker’s verdict is the one that matters.
FAQ
Can AI help with betting?
It can speed up the routine: pulling form, comparing prices across a dozen bookmakers, flagging line moves, and running a bankroll tracker. It cannot tell you who will win a football match, because the inputs are the ones every model has and the result is the one no model can see. The honest framing is that AI is a tool for the plumbing, not a substitute for the judgement.
Can AI help with sports betting?
Yes, in the same limited way. Where it helps is where the human is slowest: comparing prices across many bookmakers in seconds, surfacing team news the moment it breaks, and tracking staking discipline. Where it does not help is the part a tipster would have you believe is solved — predicting outcomes. A model is a probability engine, not a crystal ball.
Can AI predict sports betting?
It can produce a probability for each outcome, calibrated against historical data. It cannot predict the next match in the way a tipster means when they sell a “lock.” A 60% probability is still a 40% chance of being wrong, and the bookmaker’s margin sits on top of whatever the model produces. Prediction is a number; certainty is a marketing word.
What is a value bet and why is no tip ever certain?
A value bet is a price that is higher than the true probability of the outcome, once the bookmaker’s margin is taken out. A tip is never certain because every probability is less than 100% and the bookmaker’s margin means a small edge on paper is a small edge after fees. A 5% edge in a 5%-margin market is break-even before subscription cost and staking variance.
What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?
The margin is the cut the bookmaker keeps of every market, expressed as a percentage. It shows up in the odds as the gap between the implied probabilities and 100%. A market at 1.90 / 1.90 has implied probabilities of 52.63% each, summing to 105.26% — the excess over 100% is the overround, 5.26% in this case; the margin is 5.0%. The punter’s payout share is 1 minus the margin, around 95% on a clean two-way market at symmetric prices.
How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?
Return is stake multiplied by the decimal odds. Profit is stake multiplied by the odds minus one. A £10 single at 3.50 returns £35, a profit of £25. A combination bet’s odds are the legs multiplied together, and the profit is stake times the combined odds minus one.
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