Advantages of spread betting

A greater all round betting experience, more variety, more markets, more in-play.

With spread betting, not only do you get a wider choice of markets than with fixed odds betting, you also get more in-play options. During a live match you have the option to close bets (to take a profit or limit losses) as well as open new bets. At all times you have the option to back a team or individual to perform well or badly.

Greater potential reward for your sporting knowledge
With a fixed odds bet you either win or lose. Even if a result goes heavily in your favour, you still get the same return as if it wins by a narrow margin.

Take a corners bet.

• With a fixed odd bet you may be able to back over 11 corners at even money. A £20 stake will risk £20 and could win you £20. If there are 12 corners you would win £20, if there are 20 corners you would still win £20 and if there were only 10 corners you lose £20.
• However with a spread bet, a £5 buy at 11 has a maximum risk of £55 (in the unlikely event of no corners). If there are 12 corners in the match you would win £5 but if there were 20 corners you would win £45. If there were only 10 corners you would lose only £5.

So you see with spread betting, the more right you are the more you win. Conversely, if a result were to go heavily against you, it’s possible you could lose more.

It’s not as risky as you might think.

Spread betting, like all forms of betting, is only as risky as you want it to be. By controlling the size of your stake, you are controlling how much risk you are willing to take on. It’s exactly like having a £2,000 fixed-odds bet on a team to win versus having £20 – it’s all down to what you feel comfortable with.

A Stop Loss account is a good way of controlling the perceived risk of spread betting. With this type of account, every bet you place has a maximum win and loss limit applied but again, it correlates directly with the stake you choose. That’s the important thing to remember, it all comes back to the stake size and as Sporting Index accepts stakes as low as £0.05 on some markets, we cater for all sizes of bet.

Learning without risk

Additionally, our Demo account is a great way of learning without the risk. It will give you an idea of how volatile the markets you are interested in could be; then when you open an account for real you will have a better idea of how to manage your stake size.