Betting has never been bigger in the US.

NerdWallet recently found that 1 in 5 Americans (20%) have bet on sports over the past year, while the American Gaming Association discovered 134 million Americans (53%) have visited a casino in the same time frame.

And within the gambling world, one of the major emerging trends is peer-to-peer betting, sometimes known as P2P betting or just peer betting.

It’s really started to pick up speed in an era where sports fans want better odds and a more personalized experience, so we’re going to break it all down for you right here.

Peer-to-Peer Betting Lets You Choose Your Own Odds Against Friends and Strangers

Let’s start by explaining what P2P sports betting actually is.

In a nutshell, you bet directly against other people, not the sportsbook itself.

When you typically place a Super Bowl bet, it’s against a site like FanDuel or DraftKings, right?

Well, this isn’t the case with P2P betting, where sports fans gather on bet exchanges and essentially create their own bets and odds for other people to accept.

In peer betting, you:

• Define the event
• Choose the odds
• Wait for someone to match your offer

For example, you might hop on an exchange and create a bet for the Kansas City Chiefs to win Super Bowl LX at +700 odds, significantly higher than what most actual sportsbooks are offering at the moment.

Remember, you can also accept other people’s bets and odds, too, if you see an opportunity you like on an exchange.

The great thing about most bet exchanges is that they let you do this against friends and total strangers.

So, if you know someone personally and want to make a formal bet against them, you could do it via a bet exchange.

All signs point to P2P betting becoming extremely popular over the next few years, as sports fans begin to realize they now have the power to set their own odds and experience much greater betting freedom.

P2P Bet Exchanges

If you’re a sports fan interested in trying out P2P betting, the best place to do this is a P2P bet exchange.

This isn’t a traditional sportsbook and is instead a type of platform that matches you with other users to create your own bets.

Some of the best P2P exchanges you can use are:

• Novig. Novig is the fastest growing P2P bet exchange on the market, with 90% of its trades now fully peer-to-peer. It also recently raised $18 million, so you’ll be seeing a lot more of this platform over the coming years as P2P betting continues to get popular. The name of the exchange is also a play on the fact users no longer have to pay commission (“vig”) like they usually do with most sportsbooks.
• Kutt. Next is Kutt, another popular P2P social betting platform where users can wager not just on sports, but politics, pop culture, finance, and other events. It’s a lot of fun, and is actually one of the best beginner exchanges out there for newbies to peer betting.
• Wagerlab. The perfectly named Wagerlab allows you to easily place and track bets against all your friends. You can also join betting pools and leagues, so it’s highly interactive and very user-friendly.
• ProphetX. ProphetX is booming with fans at the moment, where they’re making predictions among themselves rather than directly against the house. Whether you want to bet on the NFL, college football, or the UFC, all the major markets are covered on ProphetX and we expect it to be one of the big-name sports prediction sites over the next decade.
• BettorEdge. A trusted social betting platform with over 30,000 users, BettorEdge has certainly got an edge when it comes to peer betting. Designed so that you “Bet against others with no vig whilst seeing other users popular bets and market trends”, BettorEdge even has a premium subscription package for $20 a month that gains you access to smarter tools, instant order grades, and more peer-to-peer markets, so we recommend checking that out.

The truth is that any of these P2P bet exchanges and social betting platforms are good bang for your buck and set the perfect foundation for creating bets with friends and total strangers.

It can, of course, take a little getting used to if you’ve spent most of your life betting on sports using traditional sportsbooks, but you’ll quickly get the hang of this more “personalized” type of gambling.

Like traditional sportsbooks, though, you will need to verify your age and identity before using any P2P exchange, as it’s still classed as regular gambling.

P2P Improves Sports Betting and Widens Your Options

Peer-to-peer betting is on the cusp of becoming one of sports betting’s biggest ever trends.

For decades now, sports fanatics have been complaining about exploitative sportsbooks, poor odds, and slow payouts, so it finally looks as though P2P betting will be the solution they’ve been looking for.

On the surface alone, you get better odds, the ability to create your own specific bets, and a much more social and interactive gambling experience that you just don’t get from traditional bookmakers.

Your betting options automatically become much wider, as do the potential profit margins when you choose higher odds that get accepted by other users.

Forget parlays, P2P betting is where it’s at now — and we expect it to become huge in 2026.