TradeSports

[.Alex.]

I am relatively new to sports betting, and I'm curious about this site. Do a lot of people use it? What are its advantages and disadvantages compared to a regular sports book?

[tech]

It is great as long as you are only betting small amounts. It is sometimes hard to get a decent amount of money down at the price you want.

[JBB]

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I am relatively new to sports betting, and I'm curious about this site. Do a lot of people use it? What are its advantages and disadvantages compared to a regular sports book?

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Unless I'm making a mental math error (been known to happen) the vig is substantially smaller.

[Hornacek]

Yeah the vig is only .4%. It's great in this respect.

[jedi]

Is it possible to find profitable middles using this site, or do the lines follow the books pretty closely?

I took a look at it today and wasn't sure if the lines were just set by the book and the price set by the traders or what? I was mainly looking at the Canadian National Election to find over/unders that people were talking about in the other thread.

[silentbob]

As you may know, the lines don't change so much as the contract prices, but yeah I would say the Tradesports "lines" are pretty accurate.

I've been using them for nearly a year with much satisfaction. They pay out quickly, and the in-game action on high-profile games is great if you can bet (and stomach) the swings effectively.

[DeucesUp]

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Unless I'm making a mental math error (been known to happen) the vig is substantially smaller.

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Yeah the vig is only .4%. It's great in this respect.

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Tradesports fee structure is deceptive. It's $0.04 per contract, each contract worth $10, but it's much higher than 0.4%.

First, generally contracts when traded are at a value around $5, not $10 (fees are actually worse the further you move away from $5, I'll explain below) so the percentage is about 0.8%.

Second, you have to pay a fee both for the buy and the expiration (or sell) that doubles it again to 1.6%.

Third, you have to pay fees on both winners and losers whereas regular sportsbooks and the other exchanges (Mansion, Matchbook) only charge fees on winners. If you're picking 50% this doubles your fees again RELATIVE to other books. So for comparison purposes, either use 3.2% (or higher - see below) for Tradesports or halve the fees from whatever you are comparing to.


This makes Tradessports the most expensive of the exchanges and when you factor in the bid/ask spread it's not necessarily better than a standard book. That said, you can still sometimes find some great lines there and I use it occasionally. Also you can save half the fees if you're the price setter (i.e. you put out a bid and somebody accepts it later) you only get charged the expiration fee.



footnote:
Fees on contracts priced away from 50 - again because you pay fees at buy&sell and win-or-lose fees are worse for contracts away from 50. Look at an example:

Suppose you bet on a long shot by buying a contract at 8 (worth $0.80). Though you'll be fine if you win paying a small % of your winnings in fees, most of the time when you don't win you're paying $0.08 per $0.80 or 10% of your original bet.

Similarly if you bet on a heavy favorite by buying a contract at 92 (worth $9.20) you pay a small % of your original bet in fees, but it's a quite large 10% of what you hope to win.

[jedi]

DeucesUp, Thanks for the info, but I may have to ask you to repost it again in a more newbie friendly format.

I'm not even sure how this works exactly. Let me see if I understand it correctly. I was looking at the site myself, so this is my understanding.

Someone sets a line for an event. You can either Buy that event or Sell that event. To sell the event, do you actually have to buy it first, or is it like a short sell? The price for the event will be between 0 and 100. There is a fee to buy or sell, like a stock trading commission.

As the line is set for the event, it won't move, but the price of it could move, depending on how many buyers and sellers there are. While a normal sportsbook moves the line itself, this exchange book moves the price instead. This gives an opportunity for someone to buy and sell the same event before it actually occurs and make a profit.

Either way, the event will "expire" at some point in time. If the event occurs, then it is settled at 100. If you bought it, you'll basically trade it in at the price of 100. If you sold it, you have to "buy it back" at 100 to settle your account. If the event doesn't occur, then it goes off at 0, and the buyers lose, the sellers win. From the DeucesUp post, you get charged a fee for settling this as well, as if it were another stock trade.

Now, what is up with the way they do fees? I get that you're paying fees for every transaction (unless you're the price setter), but it's .4% on everything? So if you buy at 8, you're paying .4% at 8, but you'll settle at 100 if you win, and it's .4% of 100? If you lose, there's no fee?

How is my understanding of how this works?

And what are the other similar exchange sites? Do they all work in the same manner?

[calling all cars]

It's not a percentage. It's 4 cents per contract. You buy or sell a contract at 20, 50, or 75, it's 4 cents per contract to settle.

Each contract works in increments of 10 dollars. If you buy one contract at 40, you are risking $4.00 to win $6.00. The fees mean you are risking $4.04 to win $5.96.

If you set the price of the contract and someone else takes your price, you pay no other fees. If instead you agree to pay someone elses price, whether it's to buy or sell, you pay an extra 4 cents per contract (2 cents if the contract is trading in the range of 0-5 or 95-100).

Does that help?

[jedi]

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It's not a percentage. It's 4 cents per contract. You buy or sell a contract at 20, 50, or 75, it's 4 cents per contract to settle.

Each contract works in increments of 10 dollars. If you buy one contract at 40, you are risking $4.00 to win $6.00. The fees mean you are risking $4.04 to win $5.96.

If you set the price of the contract and someone else takes your price, you pay no other fees. If instead you agree to pay someone elses price, whether it's to buy or sell, you pay an extra 4 cents per contract (2 cents if the contract is trading in the range of 0-5 or 95-100).

Does that help?

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Yes I think that helps. So, if I wanted to wager several hundreds of dollars on one event, I'd need to buy up multiple contracts. They might not all have the same price, depending on who is willing to sell these contracts, right? But it's 4 cents per contract period.

What about other exchange sites? Are there any that you'd recommend?