How to Build a Sports Betting Arbitrage Scanner in Python

In my previous post, I walked through how I built SharpAPI — a real-time sports betting odds API using SSE streaming. Now let's flip to the other side: using that API to build something useful. We're going to build a sports betting arbitrage scanner in Python. When two sportsbooks disagree on a game's outcome enough, you can bet both sides and lock in a guaranteed profit. The math is simple. The hard part is getting live odds from multiple books fast enough to catch these windows before they close. By the end of this post, you'll have a working scanner (~200 lines of Python) that finds arb opportunities and pings you the moment one appears. What Is Sports Betting Arbitrage? Arbitrage exploits pricing differences between sportsbooks. Here's the simplest case — a two-way moneyline: DraftKings has the Celtics at +150 (decimal 2.50) FanDuel has the Heat at -130 (decimal 1.769) Convert to implied probabilities and sum them: 1/2.50 + 1/1.769 = 0.400 + 0.565 = 0.965 When the sum is less than