· Firstly on betting exchanges you mostly have better odds than on a regular sports book.
Well, this is often only valid if you disregard the commission you will have to pay on your net profit. If we take a look at the Wolves-Liverpool game, you can back Liverpool for 1.70 at Betfair, which is only a 1.665 after you have paid your commission. Checking some odds comparison services, you can get 1.70 at Expekt or SBO, which are reliable bookmakers, and you don't have to pay any commission.
Same for over 2.5 goals. Back is available at 1.92 (which is 1,874 after commission), but you get 1.91 at Dafabet for example. Now with turning over lots of money, you can lower your commission, but in these mainstream markets with good volume, you will find better odds with bookmakers most of the time, if you put in the work to shop for odds.
The market where you would nearly always find better odds than at bookmakers though, is the correct score markets for example. This is because, the more outcomes, the more edge the bookmakers puts on those odds, to make it easier to balance their book.
· Secondly you do not play against a bookmaker but by having the opportunity to back and lay bets the odds are entirely determined by the punters themselves.
You don't play against the bookmaker when placing your bets with them
You always play against your fellow punters. A good bookmaker will balance his book, have his profit no matter the outcome and pay your winnings with the losses of the other punters and vice versa.
· But my main reason I prefer to bet on an exchange is that bookmakers do not limit winning accounts. On a regular sports book it happens
very often that your account gets locked or limited for some shady reasons but actually the real reason is because you are a winning
player and a bookmaker doesn't make money on winning players. This is different by betting on an exchange. Bookmakers that run a
betting exchange welcome winning and high roller players just because of the fact the 'house' takes a small % commission on all winning
bets. So for them it doesn't matter if there are winning players because a betting exchange offers p2p bets and the house takes a
commission. It is exactly the same as for example a crypto exchange where an exchange takes a small fee on your trades.
Technically they don't limit you, but they have some other tricks in place. Some years ago Betfair introduced the so called "premium charge". Betfair was and is still facing the problem, that there is a small percentage of users (the highrolling winners) that take a lot of money out of the system, but don't put anything in. This system only works as long as there is enough fresh money entering the market. So Betfair isn't too happy with people winning loads of money and cashing that out. If you are a very good punter/trader and fulfill some criteria, that are calculated with some sophisticated formula, you would be due some weekly "premium charge" on top of your winnings. This can be up to 60% of your winnings and this is quite a lot.
Most of the punters don't have to fear this premium charge though as only the best of the best match the criteria, but it's something worth to be mentioned or considered.
Unfortunately Betfair is not available in most countries anymore due to regulatory issues and it isn't available in my country as well, which is a pity. You can play at exchanges like Orbit for example, that just mirror the Betfair markets, but these are only available via agents. And they have no API to use trading software.