Professional Betting Syndicates
In this article we will introduce you to the so-called. Syndicates. The topic is quite interesting, that’s why we have prepared more information, because every person who wants to earn from betting and does not take this activity as a joke, is obliged to know more about syndicates, just like he is obliged to know more about how bookmakers work, what are the odds, etc.
Syndicates are about world-class bettors with huge sums of money who are united in “rearranging” the odds and making money from bets.
1. Find out who you are betting against
Let’s start by saying that it is important to understand who you are betting against first, as very often people have the wrong impression that they are only betting against the bookmaker. This, according to some, is even the only and biggest key to success as a professional bettor and there is a lot of logic in such a statement. You need to be very clear about who you are betting against. You may be the second best poker player in the world, but if you are up against the best player in the world, you will lose in the long run.
You might be the 1000th best player, but if you’re playing against the 1500th best player, you’ll probably win in the long run. The same goes for sports betting. Some bookmakers are much sharper than others. Similarly, you can be brilliant at what you do, but if you’re up against huge betting syndicates, you need to be clear who has the edge and who’s stealing the value – you or them.
The good thing is that bookmakers now offer a huge number of sporting events and everyone has the opportunity to specialize in a particular market where the bookies don’t have as much information, but more importantly, other bettors do too. The idea is to get to the information before everyone else and catch the highest odds.
2. Syndicates
Now more specifically on syndicates. Simply put, a betting syndicate is a group of people who work together to quickly identify the value of odds, take advantage of line movement and make a living through sports betting.
These organizations come in different shapes and sizes, but they have the same mission. To take advantage of the mostly ignorant betting public.
The way betting syndicates approach betting is comparable to that of a trader or hedge fund manager. Members spend up to 70 hours a week analyzing the betting market and tracking the movement of odds on numerous sporting events.
When a line changes, the syndicate takes action by calculating the value of the movement and trying to make their bets at the most advantageous time.
Betting syndicates can have many different methods of operation, but the basic concept is to identify mispriced assets and exploit them. Bets can become mispriced due to an error on the bookmakers part or in response to an uneducated betting public.
You could say they are sort of professional odds buyers. They recognize these exploited odds by sophisticated analysis of past events and weighing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors.
They then wait for the odds to reach a point where the implied probability is less than the actual probability determined by their process, and then jump on any bet that brings positive value.
They don’t actually spend any time determining the winners of the games. No matter what fluctuations of outcomes occur during each small sample, as long as they stick to the math, they can expect to win in the long run.
3. What are the benefits of creating a betting syndicate?
Running a betting syndicate is exhausting and labour intensive work. They crunch numbers, look up lines and odds, or place bets.
As all-encompassing as this profession is for a team, it would be overwhelming for one person. There is strength in numbers, and setting up a betting syndicate offers many advantages over individual professional punters.
- Pooling resources
Having a group of bettors working together towards the same goal gives syndicates a significant head start in the sports betting world. The more members a company has, the more resources are available for investment capital. These organizations pool their resources and contribute funds to increase their bankroll.
The quicker they get a large bank account, the quicker they can start using those finances in the market. In most cases, having multiple sponsors to invest in the company is a huge advantage over individual sports bettors who have to build their own bankroll.
- Shared responsibilities
Thanks to their numbers and collaboration, these cohesive units are able to spread their responsibilities and tasks to cover more territory in an efficient manner. For example, one member might focus on a particular specialist bet, such as 2nd half goal bets.
While planning these bets, another member can monitor industry-wide odds. Then another can prepare their devices so that when the time comes to make their bets, everything is set up and ready to go.
Having multiple people to share responsibilities also allows members to focus on their strengths
Different people will have different skills and experience. Having diverse skill sets at their disposal allows people to focus on their specialties rather than overextending themselves and being forced to take on tasks outside their experience or comfort zone.
- Easier circumvention of betting limits
An intriguing aspect of these betting syndicates is their somewhat contentious relationship with many of the online betting sites. Some offshore gambling companies refuse to allow syndicates to place any bets. They may also impose limits on the amount of wager that can be made on an account, even for a single day.
These limits can be circumvented if many people place the maximum bet at the same time. Unless the online sportsbook sees that all the accounts are working together, it can’t do anything. This helps the syndicates to bet on poor odds with everything they have.
- Many bets at once
Betting the way these professional syndicates do has nothing to do with the way the average person bets. For these groups, the ability to make large volumes of bets quickly is the difference between winning and failing.
There are small windows of opportunity to make bets while they have positive value. Any temporary delay can cost them large sums of money.
Having a full team at their disposal makes placing bets in a quick manner more manageable. Syndicates usually divide their tasks by sport or bet type. For example, one member will focus strictly on betting on goals in the second halves of football matches. Another will focus on basketball betting for total points, etc., etc.
- Greater capacity for data collection and analytics
When all the bets for the day are made, it’s time for data collection and research. The more minds the group has at its disposal, the more events and sports it can cover.
As important as buying odds is to the success of the syndicate, there is no way to determine value without first being able to accurately determine the likelihood of a side winning.
Predictions are often made using statistical models and simulations. These models require constant cultivation of data, weighting some statistics over others, eliminating data that does not correlate with wins, and identifying new factors that can further improve the accuracy of team analyses.
Having a full complement of people to research and explore data means more information, which means faster improvements and ever-improving predictions.
- Specialists in different fields
As I briefly mentioned a moment ago, the best advantage that betting syndicates have is all the different specialisms and areas of expertise that come together. Prominent betting syndicates are known to employ staff with a variety of backgrounds.
They will have members who previously worked in the financial sector, some mathematicians, and perhaps even an athlete or former coach.
Having a wide range of personality types and perspectives allows the syndicate to approach issues from different angles. Each person will have their own unique abilities to bring to the job, resulting in comprehensive solutions to problems and less redundancy.
If all members had the same strengths, the organization would be less flexible, with less capacity for change and adaptation.
- More look at the odds
As boring as it may sound, an important part of working in a betting syndicate is constantly monitoring all the odds on offer at all the sports houses, both at home and abroad. There are bookmakers that influence the rest of the industry; when they change a line, it’s not long before everyone else follows.
The main strategy of syndicates is to spot line changes as they happen and place bets with sportsbooks that haven’t changed yet before they do. More people in the syndicate means more event tracking.
4. What do the betting syndicates do?
We’ve already established that the primary mission of all betting syndicates is to detect mispriced odds and exploit them for financial gain.
Sounds easy enough, but it actually requires extensive knowledge, a lot of learning and a lot of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Here are some of the activities that betting syndicates engage in in order to make a profit:
- Market analysis
The main duty of syndicate members is to continuously analyse market movements so that they can react appropriately. These gambling experts know exactly what the value of each half point in each sporting event is and at what price the bet should be made.
In order for the syndicate to be successful, it must be able to predict upcoming market trends, react quickly to changes and understand the impact that each subtle variation will have.
- The odds market
Along with market analysis, syndicate members spend a lot of time making sure that when they place their bets, they are getting the best odds available. This is why they spend so much time looking at odds tables from all the different sportsbooks.
Shopping for the best lines has a bigger impact on the success of the group than pinpointing the quality of the competition. At this level, it’s all about the math without paying much attention to the sport.
- Time bets for maximum impact
Continuous market analysis and line demand work hand-in-hand with the timing of bets. For example, syndicates will gravitate more towards halftime bets than full-game odds.
The odds for the entire clash are published early in the week, allowing the market to react and even out. But bookmakers have to set the half-time odds on the fly.
This leads to more frequent cases of offering wrong odds during halftimes of sporting events that are in progress. Syndicates sit and wait for these opportunities at their monitors like vultures circling their next meal.
When the timing is right, they strike before the rest of the industry joins in and moves the line, at which point the window for positive value is closed.
- Analysing data and statistical models
Betting syndicates spend countless hours analyzing past performance, identifying contributing factors, and predicting which of those factors will influence future results. When the daily betting is over, the focus shifts to the data and statistical side of things.
- Teams are always adjusting their equations and models to increase the accuracy of their models
The better the statistical models become at accurately predicting the likely outcomes of a sporting event, the better the syndicate becomes at maximizing value. Cultivating data and continuously working on analytics and modeling are the foundation of any betting syndicate.
- Simulating duels to determine likely outcomes
Once the data is collected, prioritized and weighted, it’s time to put those models to good use. The syndicate will take into account all possible factors that could affect the outcome of a match. The next step is to run thousands if not millions of simulations of the competition.
Each simulation is conducted in a vacuum under the same circumstances. When the model is finished running, the team has a huge set of possible outcomes, including which outcomes happened most often.
From here, they know what percentage of the time each side wins, what the range of possibilities is, and where the parameters are for each extreme.
- Compare the predictions with the implied probability
After the simulations, the syndicate will have a decent idea of how this contest will play out most of the time. However, this does not mean that the match will go as planned.
In the real world, only one instance of the game is played and performance can vary in unpredictable ways. The model may be 99% certain of a certain outcome, but if they happen to bet on the day that 1% happens, they can’t do anything about it.
Nevertheless, after many simulations, the group will have probability percentages of each team winning and a basic idea of how things will turn out. They then take those numbers and compare them to the odds offered by the bookmakers.
Using the odds to calculate the implied probability is a simple equation. Once that’s done, all they have to do is compare the probability percentages created by their simulations with the implied probability from the odds. If the implied probability is lower than the possibility of their expected outcome, they make the bet.
- High volume bets
Betting syndicates make hundreds of bets a day worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sometimes they literally bet on every sporting event under the sun. As long as the line has value, they try to bet on it.
If the data preparation and modeling is good, the math will show up over time resulting in significant profits for the syndicate.
5. Summary
Syndicates play such a big role in the betting ecosystem that it’s really important to understand as much about them as we can.
There are many well-known betting syndicates, the most famous being Star Lizard, i.e. Tony Bloom’s one). There are many other football ones, including the one involving Matthew Benham, the owner of Brentford.
There are also huge horseracing syndicates, including Benter, Woods and Jelco. In sports like golf Mustardbet are huge. All in all there are too many syndicates to list and many of them specialise in different sports. What you need to appreciate is the size of these operations and who works for them.
These companies can afford to hire the best quant mathematicians from Oxbridge. Generally these people are absolute geniuses when it comes to modelling. The companies have huge overheads and therefore have to really make the game pay.
In recent times, these companies are having similar problems to everyone else in the industry in terms of getting bets. The Asian markets in football, for example, have dried up a bit and as a result they are looking at different options to remain sustainable.
What we are seeing is that these syndicates are now often the people setting the odds for the bookmakers. For them, it is a way of tapping into the mass audience, i.e. the losing punters that they cannot reach themselves as it gives them a platform.
For the buckeyes, essentially, odds making is outsourced. It is extremely important to remember this when looking at what advantage you may or may not have in a given market. It will be hard to outbid these syndicates in the major markets.
You should also realize that many of these syndicates receive very favorable terms for their business, whether in the form of discounts/low commissions, etc. They are the largest liquidity providers. This is not a level playing field.
If we missed something, add it in the comments