How to Bet on the NFL – Using Betting Exchanges to Maximize Value When Betting on NFL

What Are Betting Exchanges?

In the sports betting industry, there are a myriad of ways that interested individuals can place bets on their preferred teams, players and outcomes.

They can, for instance, go to a sportsbook and place a bet directly, or if they’re in certain states, they can utilize an app or an online platform in order to bet with specific sportsbooks. But another, somewhat lesser known way to place bets is through a betting exchange. 

If you haven’t used a betting exchange before, they exist to allow bettors to bet against each other directly, rather than the book or house. So rather than person A betting against the odds available at their nearest sportsbook, they’re betting against another individual who is taking the opposite result that they are.

In a way, it’s a bit similar to the stock market — two individuals engaged in a transaction, where one of them is selling a stock and the other is buying that stock to exchange shares in a company.

But rather than stocks and shares, it’s bets between individuals that are being brokered at the best possible prices by an organization like Prophet Exchange. 

Using Betting Exchanges to Maximize Value When Betting on the NFL

The big question for many people thus becomes, “Why would I use a betting exchange rather than just betting with a standard sports book?”

And the answer to that is multi-layered. For one, betting exchanges allow you to “lay bet,” also known as betting on a specific result to lose.

While many popular sports with one winner don’t necessarily need options like that for a straight bet, it’s particularly useful for futures bets and prop bets, as you can bet against expected outcomes rather than for them — as long as you can find someone to take the bet.

As an example, let’s look at the NFL and the myriad options of bets available to sports bettors every week and throughout the season.

Perhaps someone has an interest in betting on the MVP before the season starts. With a standard sportsbook, they’d be able to bet on Cooper Kupp or Patrick Mahomes, or another player with favorable odds to win the MVP at the end of the season.

But with a betting exchange, they could specifically bet against those players (choosing the field instead) and as long as someone is willing to place a bet that one of those players will in fact win the MVP, the bet can be placed.

This could apply to futures bets like the one mentioned above, particular prop bets on individual games, or any number of potential outcomes — and it doesn’t only need to be a bet that normal books won’t allow. Traditional bets can be made as well.

Finally, there’s another key aspect to platforms like Prophet Exchange that can make them highly desirable to bettors: they take a commission on bets rather than placing a  heavy vig on bets in order to profit.

While a traditional sports book may offer a bet at -110 odds, a betting exchange may instead offer it at -101. That’s a significantly better value for a bettor and ensures that winning bets maximize their profits while losing bets minimize their losses.

If someone were interested in betting on the result of a Commanders-Cowboys regular-season game in which the Cowboys are heavily favored, they’d be able to find more desirable odds at a betting exchange because the vig would be lower.

So if they took the Commanders and won, they’d expect a greater profit than if they bet at a sportsbook, and consequently, the loss for the person they bet against would be lower as well.

Since an exchange takes a commission, regardless of the winner, they’re able to thrive on small fractions of each bet placed, rather than needing to build a heavy vig into the odds.

While betting exchanges are not the traditional choice for sports betting that many bettors naturally think of, the value and ease of betting that they can offer makes them hard to beat.

In the modern sports betting market, they’re another excellent tool for educated bettors looking to make a profit.