The Cost of Uniformity: How Sportsbooks Are Losing Their Edge

It’s frustrating, right? You open multiple online sportsbooks (OSBs), ready to hunt down the best odds, and what do you find? The same numbers everywhere. It feels like you’re being herded into a betting pen, forced to accept whatever odds the industry decides on, with no real competition.

?

But are you looking at genuine market dynamics or something else? Is it an unavoidable consequence of hyper-sophisticated algorithms and AI predicting probable outcomes to within indivisible units of accuracy?? Or is it something more sinister?

Consider: how many other industries rely on lightning-fast feeds of the competition’s prices to prevent companies from offering unique value in their own product line? Financial markets may use automation and algorithms, but the key difference lies in supply and demand. Stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities are priced based on real-time market forces and liquidity, reflecting genuine shifts in demand and supply.

In contrast, once sportsbooks compute a team’s probabilities of winning, the influence of supply and demand on odds-adjustments are largely linked to action on external exchanges, like Betfair, and odds comparison feeds. While sharp bettors and large wagers can nudge lines, most sportsbooks depend on automated systems to align with the market average rather than considering in-house demand and existing liabilities.

In other industries, this kind of price-setting behaviour would trigger regulatory scrutiny. While it’s not suggested that sportsbooks are deliberately colluding (they certainly are not), but what is happening already looks and talks like a duck.

The truth is it that the dominant firms are operating in an environment of interdependence, have created barriers to market entry for old school bookmaking practices, and led to uniform pricing across the board.? There now exists an oligopolistic sportsbook ecosystem entirely designed to iron out pricing differences between the competition, and it has turned betting into nothing more than a sterile numbers game.

Why is this happening? How did we get here? And what does it mean for bettors and the industry as a whole?

While it’s not suggested that sportsbooks are deliberately colluding (they certainly are not), but what is happening already looks and talks like a duck.

To understand this phenomenon, we need to peek behind the curtain and explore how modern sportsbooks set their odds, and how those odds evolve over the lifecycle of a betting market.

Algorithms In An Echo Chamber

Sportsbooks today rely on sophisticated algorithms, pulling in data on league performance, team supremacy, player stats, injury reports, weather forecasts, historical odds, and more. All this feeds into quantitative models designed to estimate the probabilities of various outcomes in a game.

But here’s the catch: all sportsbooks are pulling data from the same sources. This is a key reason why online sportsbooks (OSBs) post nearly identical odds—they’re all analysing the same central data and reaching the same conclusions. If sportsbooks adjusted their pricing based on their own betting action, we’d see more variation, but almost none of them do.

The depressing fact is that in 2024 sportsbooks cannot deviate on pricing, because they don’t know what their position is on any given outcome.

The systems, originally intended to manage liabilities and balance risk, nowadays with all their modern computational power aren’t even designed to handle this simple function. ?The depressing fact is that in 2024 sportsbooks cannot deviate on pricing, because they don’t know what their position is on any given outcome.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Another major factor is copycat behaviour. Smaller sportsbooks often mimic the lines set by industry giants. They don’t want to be out of sync because offering different odds exposes them to arbitrage betting, where sharp bettors exploit discrepancies between books. Many smaller OSBs also lack the resources or expertise to build their own odds predictive models, so they simply follow the big players and rely on external odds providers.

Automation and market average odds feeds were a godsend to my small trading team with limited resources when we were tasked by senior leadership to out-manoeuvre the larger outfits.? ?I am guilty as anyone for taking some of these approaches.

But, combined with industry consolidation—where larger sportsbooks acquire smaller ones—further reduces competition and eliminates pricing disparities between the conglomerates and their newly acquired brands.?

?I’ve seen this firsthand when I ran the trading desk of a mid-sized sportsbook that was known for its unique lines on US sports. But when the company was acquired by an industry behemoth, our odds-setting process was decommissioned for "business reasons." An expert team of US sport traders was made redundant, and our custom price-setting methods were replaced by the same Odds API used by the twenty or so other brands in the group.? An achievement boasted about in the annual report to shareholders.

The Pricing Police

Professional B2B companies also play a significant role in standardizing odds. These companies offer services that alert sportsbooks when their pricing deviates from the norm, claiming it as a virtue that they can ensure odds remain within a "market average" by sending alerts quickly.? Online sportsbooks pay enormous fees for these services.

Instantaneous uniformity of odds, driven by an automated workflow that suppliers and operators audaciously refer to as "trading."

Many OSBs also invest heavily in automation to ensure that if their prices fall out of sync with the market average, they’re adjusted within microseconds. And since many sportsbooks share the same information and data feeds, once one book adjusts its odds, others fall in a chain reaction like dominoes, toppling in sync to minimize risk. The result? ?Instantaneous uniformity of odds, driven by an automated workflow that suppliers and operators audaciously refer to as "trading."

The Bet Ticker: Where Risk Management Meets Conformity

Most sportsbooks rely heavily on a system known as the "bet ticker".? It is often the backbone of their trading platforms. This tool displays all incoming bets in real-time to the trading team. A large team of traders then manually review each bet, factoring in its size, timing, and client profile. Typically, they compare the odds of each bet with competitors using odds comparison services like Oddschecker or Don Best. If the bet comes in at odds that deviate from the market average the trader will quickly adjust the event’s pricing to bring it back in line with the competition.

Moreover, clients who repeatedly bet on unique odds are swiftly limited, preventing them from betting on favourable prices in the future.? It is an adversarial approach towards customers that stifles innovation and damages the relationship between bettor and sportsbook.? Ultimately, it’s a lose-lose for anyone seeking an exciting, competitive sports betting market.

Stuck in the Middle: Uniformity is Diluting the Sportsbook Experience

What was once a dynamic industry with diverse players and differing approaches to odds-making has now become homogenized. As consolidation continues and fewer independent sportsbooks remain, creativity dwindles. There’s no room for individual opinion as sportsbooks shift their focus from providing unique experiences to simply mimicking the competition. A rote performance for bettors that is all about protecting bottom lines.

Ultimately, it’s a lose-lose for anyone seeking an exciting, competitive sports betting market.

Traders, forced to adhere to this homogenized model, work in large numbers to review every bet and limit players who display even a hint of skill or luck. ??Once valued for their expertise and intuition, traders are now funnelled into a monotonous workflow that prioritizes conformity over creativity. Their role has shifted from making informed, strategic decisions to merely enforcing rigid, market-aligned adjustments.

As sportsbooks continue to move in lockstep, they are alienating the very customers who fuel their business. The industry is crying out for diversity, innovation, and real competition—without it, sports betting risks becoming a soulless numbers game set against a backdrop of monotony and predictability.

But can we solve these issues?? Ever-finer levels of accuracy in predictive-modelling, automation, and cross-checking against the market odds will continue apace, but…

…there is a way to move the needle.