The Best Lay Betting Sites in 2024

It’s fair to say that there are two sides to every bet, although as a punter you’re usually only concerned with the outcome that you’ve backed to happen with your hard-earned cash.

What Is Lay Betting and How Does It Work?

In a typical sports betting transaction where you’re placing a back bet, it’s the bookmakers who represent the lay side. As a result, they offer relevant odds that they’re willing to lay in relation to the event in question, with your job as a punter being to identify and create value where possible.

But on a betting exchange, you’re free to both back and lay yourself, by matching wagers with fellow punters rather than sportsbooks directly. When you lay, you’re effectively betting that an outcome won’t happen and offering the odds to potential backers.

The question that remains, of course, is how exactly does this work in practical terms?

Well, we all know the format of a classic back bet; where you may wager on a particular football team to beat another in a one-off game. However, if you lay the same team in a bet, you’re effectively wagering that they’ll lose or the match in question will end as a draw.

There’s an immediately interesting takeaway here, as in this instance, lay betting creates two outcomes that are playing in your favour as opposed to one. This is advantageous in football due to the commonality of draws.

In fact, the figures suggest that 25.5% of all Premier League fixtures between 2015/16 and 2019/2020 ended in draws, and lay betting certainly enables you to capitalise on this without having to select the tie as a single outcome. This turns what is a less than even-money bet into one that’s considerably more likely to come in (depending on your selection and their opponents, of course).

The potential advantages of lay betting are arguably even more pronounced in the field of horse racing. More specifically, when you lay a horse, you’ll win if any other runner in the race comes in first, while you’ll have to pay the backer his winnings if your selection actually prevails.

This scenario highlights flip-side of lay betting, as the amount that you have to pay to a backer could significantly exceed your initial stake. While the chance to win increases, so does the potential for greater losses.

Calculating Liability and Why it’s Important

The latter concept is referred to as ‘liability’. This describes the exact amount that you stand to lose in the worst-case scenario when lay betting, depending on the odds and the value of the backer’s stake. There’s a generic formula used to calculate this too, and it goes as follows:

Liability = (Backer’s Stake Lay odds – 1)

This instantly highlights the role that the lay odds play in determining your liability. After all, this is a key element of the wager that you control, which is why experienced lay betters tend to opt for odds-on wagering or back short-price favourites in any given scenario.

For example, you could lay a sports bet for €10 at the relatively short price of 1.5 (or 1/2). In this case, and using the formula above, you’ll be liable to pay €5 if you lose and will win €10 (minus commissions) if the wager comes in.

Now, let’s say that you make a similar €10 lay bet on an outcome with extended odds of 3.5 (5/2). Suddenly, you’re in line to bank the same maximum return of €10 if you’re successful, but will be liable for €25 if the market turns against you.

As you can see, the only element that changed in these equations was the lay odds, and there’s no doubt that selecting extended prices or heavy underdogs actively increases your liability without necessarily inflating your potential returns to the same degree (or at all).

Addressing the Pros and Cons of Lay Betting

Now that we’ve explored the broader concepts of how this works, the next step is to determine the potential pros and cons of this practice.

We’ve outlined three of each below, which should help to shape your lay betting strategy in several different ways.

The Advantages of Lay Betting

We’ll start with this practice’s main advantages, which have helped to cement lay betting as an increasingly popular iteration of sports wagering in the digital age. These include:

1. Increase Your Chances of Winning: As we’ve already touched on, lay betting enables you to execute wagers that increase the number of potential outcomes in your favour. This is particularly prevalent in sports such as horse racing, even if selecting a runner to lose isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds. So, lay bettors should definitely give careful consideration to the sports and outcomes that they back, while also falling back on the importance of wagering on sports that they understand.
2. Access Better Odds: When lay betting on an exchange, you’ll effectively be able to create your own odds that encourage back bettors to get on board and match. This definitely affords you the flexibility to cultivate competitive and superior odds, especially when compared with standard sportsbooks and remote betting platforms. Just remember to adopt a balanced outlook, as you can’t lay a bet if you’re unable to find an agreeable backer.
3. Cut Out the ‘Middle-Man’: On a betting exchange, you’re able to effectively cut out the the bookmaker and interact directly with backers and like-minded punters. One of the main benefits of this is that it removes the margins which typically favour sportsbooks. It enables them to achieve a viable profit. Through this advantage, evident in every single lay bet that you place.

The Disadvantages of Lay Betting?

Now for the potential disadvantages, which offer further insight into lay betting and can inform your strategy even further.

1. You Can Lose Serious Money Through Lay Betting: On the subject of odds, we’ve already referenced how this form of betting on long or extended prices can increase your liability and the amount you’ll have to pay the backer if you’re unsuccessful. This is why odds-on or even money outcomes are commonly favoured by lay bettors, whose first move is often to minimise potential losses and ensure that their liability to proportionate to their potential returns.
2. Backing Losing is Harder Than it Seems: While lay betting increases the number of potential outcomes in your favour, its nature and the importance of prioritising short-price outcomes makes it hard to select losers (even in multi-competitor events such as horse racing). After all, the shortest-price runners are the most likely to win, so you’ll need to be selective when choosing lay betting outcomes and use factors such as form or conditions to inform your decision further.
3. Beware Commission on Winning Bets: We've previously discussed that exchanges may charge a commission on winning lay bets, which can reduce the overall gains. Specifically, Ladbrokes applies a standard 5% fee on such wagers. It's crucial to incorporate this into your bankroll management and calculations to understand the actual value of your returns.

Are There Are Any Other Lay Betting Tips or Considerations?

Before we take a look at some of the best lay betting sites and exchange platforms, there are a few more tips and considerations to keep in mind when placing this type of wager. For example:

• Always Use a Lay Betting Calculator: We’ve already spoken about how your liability is impacted directly by the backer’s stake and the odds of your lay bet, while there’s a clear formula to help you calculate how much you’ll have to pay if your wager fails. However, the best and most fool-proof way of working out your liability for each wager is to use a lay betting calculator, which provides instant and accurate figures and should be available on most betting exchanges.
• Leverage Pre-Bet Markets: Given the importance of largely targeting short-price outcomes through lay betting, it’s important to avoid markets at a time when they’re experiencing significant levels of activity. After all, prices are likely to fluctuate wildly during this time, particularly in the immediate period before the race or match starts. So, it may also be worth lay betting on genuine pre-match or ante post markets that remain stable and help you to minimise your risk.
• Avoid Laying Heavy Underdogs: Despite the deceptively challenging nature of laying odds-on favourites, the one thing you should avoid with this type of wagering is betting on heavy underdogs. While this bet may be likely to come in, the risk of incurring a big loss is huge and this could cost you much of your starting bankroll. In general terms, outcomes that are priced at an average of 7/1 deliver a profit approximately 83% of the time through lay betting, creating a broad target for informed and well-researched punters to aim for.

The Best Lay Betting Sites

When looking for the best lay betting sites, you’re effectively looking for high quality betting exchanges.

There’s a growing number of such platforms in the market, although not all of these have been created equal in terms of their offerings or standing in the sector. So, here’s our breakdown of the top three lay betting sites:

Ladbrokes Exchange

Ladbrokes is one of the most recognized sportsbooks in the UK and Ireland, offering a robust exchange platform. Lay bets placed at Ladbrokes are processed through BetDaq’s exchange channel, where a standard 5% commission is charged on winning bets. However, Ladbrokes offers a reduced commission rate of 2% for bettors who accumulate 12,000 commission points through frequent and active wagering. It’s important to note that these commission rates are specific to Ladbrokes and may not apply elsewhere.

Betfair Exchange

We’ll start with the platform most synonymous with lay betting, and one that’s most synonymous with backing and laying in the UK market. This is also one of the best exchanges from the perspective of back betting, while the native iOS and Android exchange apps are among the most accessible from a punter’s perspective. As we’ve already touched on, you’ll have pay a Commission rate of 5% of all winning bets, but this is a fairly standard practice that’s prevalent across most exchanges in the UK.

BetDaq Exchange

Perhaps the biggest independent betting exchange in the UK market, BetDaq is widely trusted by punters and offers some significant advantages over its competitors. For example, the commission rate on winning bets here is markedly lower at 2%, while it’s removed entirely on certain markets and in relation to certain promotional terms. As we’ve already touched on with Ladbrokes, the platform also offers a public API (Application Programming Interface), which is Cloud-based and allows for far greater functionality and responsiveness.

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