Sharp And Soft Books

From Nikolai Livori - Sportsbook Soft or Sharp

The sports betting industry is fragmented into Sharp and Soft books, and of course a mix in between. But what does this mean? We use a more precise term by referring to them as Asian and European books respectively - with Asian books being sharper than European ones.

Soft bookmakers like the renowned Unibet, Betsson, William Hill etc. make use of a lot of traders within the company that use manual or semi-automatic odds movements to ultimately rely on gut feelings, knowledge and game statistics within the industry. They operate with high margins. They do not welcome sports traders and most of the time limit such customer accounts thus falling into the trap called a “false positive”. What if the person you just limited could have been one of your VIP Casino players? Soft bookmakers like these target mostly punters and gamblers and usually have other products to support their sports book such as Casinos, Poker, Bingo etc.

The Sharp bookmaker model is based mostly on mathematical and highly efficient automatic risk management tools. They do employ traders as well to compile odds, however balancing their book is sharper and done with the help of mathematical models. Most of the time they are able to offer better prices in the industry, due to being faster and sharper than Soft bookmakers. Most of them also do not limit bettors and accept large bet stakes, thus they welcome traders and punters alike. Examples of such books are Pinnacle Sports, ED3688, SBOBet etc. Their profit is derived on smaller margins due to a huge turnover.

Being a Soft bookmaker is becoming very challenging nowadays, considering that the Asian market is expanding at a very quick rate. Why would I place a bet on a Soft book for a much cheaper return (and also risk being erratically limited) when I could place a much larger bet at a much better price through an Asian book?