Back and Lay in Cricket Betting Explained

How to Lay a Cricket Bet?

An account with an exchange is needed to back and lay cricket bets. For this example, we will use the Fun88 betting exchange.

Backing a bet is just betting on an event - like a team to win their match in the Indian Premier League - to happen. Laying a bet is the opposite - betting against it happening. Back bets are shown in blue, with the options for laying a cricket bet shown in pink.

After picking a lay bet to make, it works the same way as backing a bet - with one difference. Instead of showing how much potential profit is available from a bet winning, the exchange will also show how much can be lost by a lay bet. This is because of the liability involved in these.

What is Liability in Laying a Cricket Bet?

One of the most important things to understand about laying cricket bets is the idea of liability.

Liability is a term that reflects the potential losses involved when laying a cricket bet. Lay bets have a potential profit as well, but the stake is not the amount of money that can be lost.

While the stake for a back bet in cricket is the only amount of money that can be lost, this is not the case when sports fans progress from the sportsbook to the exchange and try out lay bets.

This is because users are betting against an event happening, resulting in larger potential losses. This can be confusing, which is why it is important to take time to fully understand how both back and lay bets work before creating an exchange account and placing any bets at all.

Liability can be very high for some bets too, so sports fans should stick to the golden rule of online gambling and make sure that their lay bets are never risking more than they can afford.

An Example of Backing and Laying a Cricket Bet

Let's go into more detail about how backing and laying cricket bets works with a real example.

The T20 Cricket World Cup is coming up and India are among the favourites to lift the trophy. They are being offered at 5.0 on sportsbooks, meaning bets of 100 INR will return 500 INR if India wins.

But for those who do not fancy India's chances of going all the way in the tournament, it is possible to use a betting exchange to bet against them - by laying - becoming champions.

Let's say that the lay price for India to win the Cricket World Cup currently stands at 6.0. The stake, as with a back bet, affects how much potential profit there will be from the bet.

Staking 100 INR on a lay bet against India winning the Cricket World Cup at 6.0 would have a potential payout of 600 INR if the team did indeed fall short in their bid for glory at the event.

The liability, however, would be 500 INR. This is how much the lay bet would lose if India were actually the team to be celebrating success at the end of the Cricket World Cup.

As a result, laying cricket bets can feel much riskier than backing bets due to the liability figure. However, betting exchanges allow their customers to place both back and lay bets.

This means there is not necessarily any need to join several different betting apps for back bets, as the exchange account can be used for both backing and laying sports bets.