Lay betting as most of you are aware is a relatively new concept offered with the arrival of the betting exchanges and has completely transformed the way we look at betting on horses and events in general.

You can now play the role of the bookmaker with the added luxury of only having to lay one or more horses to lose. If the horse loses you win your fixed stake. If a horse wins then you have a liability to pay just like a bookmaker does. It sounds simple enough but to be successful you will need a decent strike rate at ideally lower odds. Finding value when backing a selection is not unlike that when laying a selection.

It has been noted that on many occasions and after looking at a considerable amount of lay betting services that many actually use the Industry sp to work out their profit/loss. The industry prices tend to be lower and is a fact that can make the profit appear more so than if using the correct Betfair starting price.

A service may show a regular 10 point profit every month using Industry starting prices but when you look at the true lay odds with 5% more here and 10% over the industry sp it doesn’t take much to start nibbling away at what initially looked like a good deal. Couple that with the fact that many have amnesia when it comes to deducting the 5% commission and not to mention of course your monthly subscription fees and all of a sudden you are hoping your new found lay betting service doesn’t hit that inevitable losing run.

Another trick is to display profits using a betting bank that most of us could only dream of having . The reality is that most people would not have anywhere near this type of funding available for betting purposes alone.

Sure you can start with a much smaller bank but would this cover the Betfair over Industry sp , 5% commission and not to mention the service subscription fees?

Always work out your potential returns based upon the betting bank that you personally have available and deduct all outgoing expenses to arrive at your potential profit & loss.

If you do come across a service that only shows Industry sp and want to do your conversions then CLICK HERE and follow the instructions below to obtain a full history of Betfair SP’s and results.

Click on the ‘Click for full results’ link.

The page will have a calendar on which you can click any date and scroll back and forth between the months/years.

Once you have clicked on the date for the results you are looking for you will see two boxes below.

The one on the left has Select Meeting and the other adjacent to it has Select Race.

Simply click on the meetings and races you want to view and it will give you the full result for all the runners including the Betfair sp, the industry sp and also the percentage differential of the two.

You will note that often the percentage price differentials can be quite substantial between the Industry sp and the Betfair sp and often more so for the longer priced horses. Taking some time to go through these sp comparisons will highlight the true profit potential of any lay service.

If you are looking at making money from lay betting it is important that you first obtain the right information. You would certainly not entertain the idea of buying a business without first looking at the accounts in detail so why should a lay betting service be any different.

If you do find a service that ticks all the boxes you should ideally trial it for a period of time in order to see whether the past results are typical of the new results before make any decision to join full time or even bet.

Sometimes you may get a free trial period but in any event you can always ask for one. You may find some of the more genuine sites will be happy to do this and this should be classed as a plus point. After all if they have nothing to hide and they want your repeat subscriptions then this would seem like a reasonable enough request to me.

Summary:

Be at least a little wary when looking at a lay service that offers only Industry sp’s especially if they have a tendency to lay horses at higher prices and bear in mind that the Betfair sp can often be as much as 50+% higher than its Industry counterpart.

It is worth taking the time out to do some research which can and will save you a whole load of money.