Among our internal projects that helped us advance technically and as a team is the development of the Surebets application – a system for finding betting arbitrage opportunities (so-called "surebets") based on data from sports betting companies.
What is arbitrage betting?
Arbitrage betting is a strategy where a bettor uses different odds from various betting companies to bet on all possible outcomes of a sporting event and still have guaranteed profit – regardless of the match result.
Imagine a tennis match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Normally both betting companies would have similar odds, but sometimes it happens that they differ so much that you can take advantage of it.
For example:
- Betting company A offers odds 2.10 on Djokovic's victory
- Betting company B offers odds 2 on Nadal's victory
When you split your money correctly – for example, with a total bet of 10,000 CZK, you bet 4,878 CZK on Djokovic and 5,122 CZK on Nadal – you always win more than you bet - 10,244 CZK, regardless of who wins.
The Challenge
Our goal was to automatically collect data from various betting companies, analyze it in real time and search for arbitrage opportunities. This required data scraping, thorough data processing and unifying different formats into our single database.
Our Solution
We created a system that regularly scrapes data from various betting companies, stores it in a database, analyzes available odds and detects profitable bets based on mathematical calculations.
- Modern TypeScript backend for efficient processing of large amounts of data
- Advanced algorithms for connecting data from different sources
- Discord notifications with overview of current opportunities
What the project brought us
Thanks to Surebets, we improved not only technically but also as a team – we learned to better collaborate on rapidly changing data and test complex logic in an environment where there's no room for errors.
Bet examples
During testing, we found and recorded a number of interesting bets. Here are a few examples:
Total bet: 10,000 CZK
Winnings: 10,279 CZK
Profit: 279 CZK (2.79%)
Total bet: 12,800 CZK
Winnings: 13,000 CZK
Profit: 200 CZK (1.56%)
Summary
The Surebets project is a beautiful example of how an internal company idea can bring valuable technical insights and real results. Besides the experience gained, it helped us improve processes and prepared us for further challenges – whether in real-time applications or data analysis.