This article will be the single most comprehensive guide to farming the Azuro airdrop on the internet, written by someone who actually knows about sports betting. Why did I write it so late, was it because I have been farming it myself and didn’t want diluted? No, it is because I am an idiot and have been working on building the first onchain sports betting aggregator. Will I be following my own advice and farming Azuro Points from now on? Also no, I will be working on building the first onchain sports betting aggregator.
(This article will use decimal aka European odds. If you are used to American odds, first off: stop; secondly: look up a calculator or something, I’m not dealing with that nonsense.)
Let’s dive into the meat of this quickly. Passive providing liquidity into the betting pool earns 1.05 points per dollar per week on Gnosis and 3.15 points per dollar per week on Polygon. Your funds here also earn yield (on average) as people lose bets. And with loads of people farming and deliberately losing money, this might be quite juicy, but it isn’t really why we’re here. You can get much higher turnover and points per week with betting.
For new bettors with a score under 100,000 (which is probably you if you are reading this), the earn rate is 10 points per (dollar staked x odds). This means risking more gets more per bet, and betting on bigger odds means more points. A good way to get a lot of points in one shot would be to bet a lot of money (say $1000) on an accumulator/parlay at huge odds (say 150.0), and you would earn 10 x 1000 x 150 = 1.5m points. This would put you in the top 500 and outside the top 100. But you would also almost certainly lose the $1000. If you were a bit smarter, the $1000 could be used over and over again to keep earning points and this is what will be explained in the rest of this article.
The key to avoiding losing your funds when betting is arbitrage opportunities (sometimes known as “sure bets”, aka arbs). These are situations where you can bet on all possible outcomes and guarantee profit, no matter which side wins. For example, betting on both teams in basketball where one venue offers 2.1 on the home side and another offers 2.1 on the away side — $100 on each would return $210 no matter who wins so you are certain of $10 profit. Since we aren’t actually looking to earn profit from the arb, we can look at what’s known as a narb (near-arb) where the odds don’t guarantee us profit, but just a small loss, for example, both sides being 1.99 so you stake $100 on each and get $199 back, losing $1.
You might be thinking “So I should just bet both sides of the coin and farm these points like a champ?”. And I am thinking “No”. Firstly, they can easily spot this and not reward you with the airdrop, even if you do it over 2 wallets. Secondly, the spread between the odds on Azuro can be quite large, meaning you are losing a lot more money than you should on each bet. Your funds will quickly disappear. For example, if you bet 1.99/1.99, you lose $1 per $100 stake. If you bet 1.9/1.9, you lose $10 per $100 stake. That’s 10x more, which means 10x fewer bets before your funds run out.
The best thing to do is to have a chunk of your funds ready to bet on Azuro and the rest ready at another venue. This means you will lose much less per bet and can manage a lot more bets before your funds run out. You have probably seen some threads and posts about the idea of backing on Azuro then laying your bet on Betfair or Smarket or something similar. However, these are traditional betting exchanges which means you need to KYC and be within the countries that are allowed to bet there. We can keep this entirely onchain so it is accessible for everyone, and more convenient. After all, Azuro isn’t the only onchain sports betting protocol, that’s why we are working on the first aggregator to pull the best odds together in one place. While you could use other onchain sport betting protocols directly, from here I will assume you are using Purebet for the non-Azuro side of your bet. We always have the best odds as we combine every onchain venue into one UI/API.
For betting at Azuro, you need to use one of their frontend partners, such as bookmaker.xyz. A full list can be found here. They are all identical in terms of Azuro Score earned, but some might be running special promotions such as giving away free bets, which means it is worth using them. You don’t need to be loyal to any given frontend because they are all Azuro on the backend.
Time for some maths. While most threads I have read suggested betting on one side then laying (a type of bet exclusive to exchanges, betting for it not to happen) that isn’t always the best method. There are many many bookmakers/sportsbooks but only a few exchanges so you are limiting your number of opportunities. For 2-way markets, such as basketball moneyline, over/under, or handicap/spread bets, you can bet on one side at Azuro then the other side at another place. When looking for narbs you want opportunities where the overround is as low as possible. The overround is calculated as:
overround = 1/sideAOdds + 1/sideBOdds (add more if there are more outcomes on the market.)
The overround is usually over 100%. The amount over 100% is the margin the bookmakers have and make from an even book. Margin is just the overround — 100%. Traditional bookmakers usually have an overround of 105%-110%. If you combine multiple venues, you can get around 102%. In some cases, the overround between multiple venues can be less than 100% which means it is a true arb opportunity and you can guarantee profit on either side.
If you stake the correct amount on each side, you will have your narb. When doing this, the correct stake for each side can be calculated as follows:
stakeRatioSideA = 1/oddsSideA; stakeRatioSideB = 1/oddsSideB
then either multiply these values by a set risk (e.g. $100) each time, or if your funds on one side are not enough to cover this amount, stake as much as possible there, and get the stake for the other side via:
stakeOtherSide = stakeRatioOtherSide * stakeOnLimitedSide / stakeRatioLimitedSide
Since football (soccer) is the most popular sport for betting worldwide, the odds on major leagues are usually very competitive and venues can have small differences between their odds which give rise to lots of generous narb opportunities. The main market in football is a 3-way market (home, draw, away). There are three different ways you can narb this. The first is using the main market for one side then the “double chance” market for the other side of your bet. The double chance market is where each option in the market covers 2 outcomes (home&draw, away&draw, home&away). For example, here could be a narb on backing the home side in the main market then away&draw on the double chance market. However, the double chance market can have large margins so it is not always the best option. The second way is betting on all 3 outcomes on the main market at 3 different venues. The maths for this is basically the same as described above but with 3 sides to split your risk between. The third way is backing a side on the main market, then laying it on an exchange.
When using traditional exchanges, you need to be careful when placing lay bets as the method for describing your stake and odds are counterintuitive for those not used to it. The odds you input are the odds given to the person on the other side of your bet, not your payout ratio like back odds normally are. If you give odds of 3.0 on a lay bet and your side wins, you profit 0.5x your initial risk. The way to convert between these odds are:
otherSideOdds = thisSideOdds/(thisSideOdds-1)
In all these examples, if using traditional exchange, you must account for the exchange commission/fees. These are usually 2–5%. The equation for getting the effective odds for a bet is:
effectiveBackOdds = (screenBackOdds — 1) * (1 — fee) + 1
effectiveLayOdds = (screenLayOdds — fee) / (1 — fee)
Additionally, you need to be careful what stake you enter. In traditional exchanges, this is the backer’s stake, not your risk. A lay bet with stake $10 and odds 3.0 actually risks $20 and pays out $10 if your bet wins. At Purebet, we know this can be confusing for new users so we added a toggle to let users choose between inputting the traditional way with the backer’s stake or swapping to inputting their risk. Additionally, we show effective odds, potential return, risk, and potential profit clearly in the bet slip. When looking for back/lay narbs, the lay odds will always be higher than the back odds but you want the lay odds to be very close to the back odds. The maths for the overround is as follows:
overround = 1/backOdds + (layOdds — 1)/layOdds (be sure to use the odds after fees)
Again, this will usually be over 100% unless it is a true arb opportunity.
It is worth building your own calculator file in Excel or a coding language of your choice, but arbcruncher is a free, simple online calculator with multiback and back/lay calculators.
Now for the practical side. You want to be taking narbs with an overround no more than 102%, 103% if you are really dedicated to grinding out points with a big bankroll. There are plenty of these opportunities each week that it isn’t worth taking more than that. How do you find narbs with such overrounds? If you are reading this, I will assume you aren’t a shadowy super coder who already has a program running to farm points so will skip the whole using APIs thing. In the Purebet Discord server and in this Telegram channel, true arbs entirely within Purebet are posted as soon as they are detected. That means you could bet both sides on Purebet and have your bet routed to 2 different venues and be guaranteed profit. But that isn’t why you are here. When these alerts trigger, it’s usually because one side of the arb has odds significantly different from the market. You could use these alerts to alert you that there could be a narb on the market between Azuro and the side on Purebet which is different from the market. Other narb opportunities are likely to occur when something causes the odds on an event to change. This could be a key player being reported injured in basketball, or team sheets being released on football. Keep an eye on markets around these times. Usually football team sheets are announced 1 hour before kick off. In major football leagues on the day of the game, the overrounds on Purebet are usually around 102% so there are plenty of chances to find where Azuro are offering generous odds on one side compared to that and take advantage. Since Azuro Score is based on stake and odds, for a given stake, taking bigger odds on Azuro is more effective, however this means that larger stakes are required on the other side of you bet so more funds need to be ready at that venue.
Additionally, each week Azuro usually offers one or two leagues with a special low margin. Keep an eye on these leagues as they will provide the best chances to catch the best narbs (and true arbs). Right now, we are in the process of a major redesign of the Purebet backend but we remain committed to offering the best odds across every league, and will be making a special effort with the Azuro low margin leagues of the week so you have the best opportunities. The Azuro low margin league of the week will be announced in the Purebet Discord server.
As a bonus, when betting with Purebet, you earn Monaco Points if your bet is routed through the Monaco Protocol into BetDEX markets, you earn Purebet Season 1 Points (Season 1 ends once we launch Purebet V2), and by bridging funds between Solana and Polygon or Gnosis, using any number of the tokenless bridge protocols, you will expose both Solana and EVM wallets to potentially farming those airdrops.
A full list of venues we currently aggregate from:
- Azuro (Gnosis and Polygon)
- Overtime (Arbitrum and Optimism)
- Monaco/BetDEX (Solana)
- Aver (Solana)
- SX Bet (SX Network) — only major leagues and Azuro low margin league of the week
(For the record, any bets at Purebet which are routed through Azuro do NOT earn points to your wallet. Make sure to be placing one bet at Azuro directly then use Purebet to ensure you get the best odds from every other onchain sports betting protocol for the other side of the narb.)
Get out there and earn more points across a whole variety of protocols. Good luck with any unhedged bets you make. Feel free to join the Purebet Discord server and ask any questions out have about sports betting, Purebet, Azuro, farming, other onchain protocols, or anything else we can help with — we really are the most open and knowledgeable people in this niche sector.
About Purebet
Purebet is the first onchain sports betting aggregator. It aggregates odds and liquidity from 8 protocols across 6 blockchains ensuring Purebet users always get the best odds for their bet, and best execution for their size. Bets on placed at Purebet are settled seamlessly on Solana through our onchain exchange architecture and winnings are paid direct to wallets automatically.
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Purebet_io
Join our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/22tr2FYAh9
Our website: https://www.purebet.io
