Lay Bet Calculator

How To Use Our Lay Betting Calculator

The Betting.com lay bet calculator is designed with you in mind, so it’s a piece of cake to use, and in no time, it’ll become part of your lay betting arsenal. 

1. Enter the stake you are preparing to put down on your bet
2. In the cell below, enter the odds of the lay bet, while also remembering to ensure you’re betting with the best possible odds thanks to our live odds comparison tool.
3. If the betting exchange charges a set commission percentage, place this in the “commission” cell.
4. With this data, we will tell you exactly how much liability is required to place the bet, as well as the profit you stand to make if your bet is a success.

Lay Betting Explained

While more traditional bets are placed on a specific outcome *happening*, a lay bet is a wager on that outcome *not happening*. These types of bets only take place on what we call “betting exchanges” rather than your traditional sportsbooks. 

Let’s use a classic three-outcome example from Major League Soccer. If you think Sporting Kansas City will beat Seattle Sounders, then what normally happen is that you would place a stake on them winning the game. 

However, with a lay bet, you are betting that Sporting Kansas City *won’t* beat Seattle Sounders. This essentially means you are betting on either Seattle to win the game or the game ending in a tie. 

Another way of putting it is that by placing lay bets you are playing the role of the sportsbook. On a betting exchange you are wagering against other players, so if you are laying the prospect of something happening, there needs to be someone at the other end backing the opposite outcome for your lay bet to become live. 

This is where liability comes into it. Let’s say you are laying a bet at odds of 10/1 with a $10 stake. This means that you need enough money in your account (in this case $100) to cover $10 worth of bets on your lay bet being a loser. 

In the case of lay bets, your “stake” is the amount of profit you wish to make from any given bet.

Lay Betting Examples

Going back to our soccer example, let’s say that Sporting Kansas City are lay odds of +300 against Seattle Sounders. 

You would like to make $50 profit from this bet, which means you need to have enough liability to cover $50 worth of successful bets on the other side of the market at +300, meaning your overall stake on the bet is $150. 

If SKC doesn’t win, you pocket $50, while the players who bet on SKC at +300 lose their bets, up to your winning value. 

We understand that this may be difficult to wrap your head around in the first instance, but once you get a full understanding of both the market and the mechanics of the lay betting calculator, you’ll be ready to jump right in. 

What Are The Benefits Of Using Our Lay Betting Calculator

Lay betting is one of the more difficult betting concepts to master, but we like to think that our calculator goes a long way to clearing up a lot of misconceptions. 

Here are just a few advantages of the lay betting calculator: 

1. It takes away a lot of the manual calculations that are required to execute a lay bet on an exchange. All of our forecasts are generated instantly, meaning you can focus on the important stuff.
2. Everybody can use the lay betting calculator FREE OF CHARGE. You can also use the tool as often as you like, so if you are an avid exchange user, this could well end up being your right-hand man
3. Our lay betting calculator can be used on a range of difference devices. You don’t need to be sitting at your computer and you can calculate the cost of your lay bets while you’re on the go.