Build an arbitrage bot in Python with TickOdds

What we're building

A surebet scanner that:

1. Pulls live bet365 odds from TickOdds via WebSocket
2. Pulls Betfair Exchange lay prices for the same market
3. Computes whether there's a positive-expected-value surebet
4. Alerts you on Telegram when one appears

Full source at the end.

Step 1 — set up TickOdds

Sign up at tickodds.com/#pricing and grab a Live or Pro key. For a live in-play arb scanner, you want the Pro tier (2000 req/min, 100 concurrent WebSocket sessions).

pip install websockets requests aiohttp python-telegram-bot

Step 2 — connect to the TickOdds WebSocket

import asyncio, json, websockets

TICKODDS_KEY = "your_key_here"

async def stream_tickodds():
    uri = f"wss://api.tickodds.com/ws/live?apiKey={TICKODDS_KEY}"
    async with websockets.connect(uri) as ws:
        await ws.send(json.dumps({
            "action": "subscribe",
            "sports": ["soccer", "tennis"]
        }))
        async for msg in ws:
            yield json.loads(msg)

Step 3 — pair with Betfair Exchange

Betfair has its own Exchange Stream API. Open a second WebSocket, authenticate with your app key, subscribe to the same markets. Cache the latest lay price per market ID.

Step 4 — compute the arb

For a two-way market (tennis, no-draw soccer):

def surebet_pct(back_price: float, lay_price: float) -> float:
    # Positive if there's an arb
    if back_price <= 1 or lay_price <= 1:
        return 0.0
    implied = 1/back_price + 1/lay_price
    return (1 - implied) * 100

If surebet_pct > 1.0, you have an arb after fees. Anything below that is probably eaten by commissions.

Step 5 — alert

Wire the Telegram bot SDK to send a message when a surebet appears. Throttle to one alert per market ID per 60 seconds so you don't spam yourself.

Full source

See the companion GitHub repo for a complete, tested implementation including market matching (bet365's market names don't match Betfair's exactly — you'll need a fuzzy-matching table) and staking math.

Next steps

• Add a third book via another feed for three-way arbs
• Log every detected arb to a database for post-hoc analysis
• Graduate to live-only in-play arbs once your comfort grows

An arb bot is a great starter project because it forces you to get comfortable with real-time data, multi-source merging, and fast reaction loops — the same primitives that power any more-advanced sports trading model.