The Scenario
You are a sports betting analyst. You have 20 upcoming Premier League fixture IDs in an Excel workbook and you need pre-match odds from three bookmakers loaded into a comparison table before Saturday 12:30 PM kickoff. Your arbitrage model flags rows where the implied probability spread across bookmakers exceeds 3%. It is Friday at 7 PM.
The bad version:
- You try to build a Power Automate flow that calls the API-Sports odds endpoint for each fixture ID
- Power Automate's HTTP action can only be called within the 30-second per-call limit; calling it 20 times in sequence hits a flow timeout
- You try calling them in parallel with a "Parallel Branch" action but the 20 parallel HTTP calls exceed your Power Automate plan's concurrency limit
- You give up on Power Automate and script it in Python, get the data, discover Betway has no odds for two fixtures
- You handle the nulls, export to CSV, open in Excel, reformat the column order for your model
- It is 9:30 PM Friday and you have not run the model.
The faster version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads the fixture IDs in column A and calls the odds endpoint for each one.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each fixture ID in column A, fetch pre-match odds from bookmakers William Hill, Bet365, and Betway and write home odds, draw odds, and away odds for each bookmaker into columns B through J. If a bookmaker has no odds for a fixture, write 'N/A' into those cells.
SheetXAI iterates through the 20 fixture IDs, calls the odds endpoint for each, extracts the home/draw/away values for all three bookmakers, and writes the nine-column odds table with N/A for any missing bookmaker.
What You Get
A 20-row odds comparison table:
- Fixture ID (column A) — join key for your model
- William Hill home / draw / away (columns B–D)
- Bet365 home / draw / away (columns E–G)
- Betway home / draw / away (columns H–J)
N/A placeholders where a bookmaker has not yet published odds mean your implied probability formula does not divide by blank cells and return an error.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Arbitrage research needs more than a raw odds table. SheetXAI can add the probability layer and the flag logic inline.
When you want implied probability calculated per cell
You need implied probability (1 / decimal odds) for each outcome across all three bookmakers.
After writing the odds table, add nine implied probability columns (one per bookmaker per outcome) in columns K through S. Use the formula 1 divided by the decimal odds. Format as percentages rounded to one decimal place. Write 'N/A' for any cell where the odds were N/A.
When you want the spread flagged automatically
Your model flags rows where the maximum implied probability minus the minimum implied probability for the same outcome exceeds 3%.
For each fixture row, calculate the spread in implied probability for home, draw, and away outcomes separately. Add three flag columns (T, U, V) labelled 'Home Spread Flag', 'Draw Spread Flag', and 'Away Spread Flag'. Write TRUE if the spread exceeds 3%, FALSE otherwise. Highlight TRUE cells in orange.
When some fixture IDs have updated odds and you need a partial refresh
Odds shifted overnight. Three fixture IDs need refreshing without re-pulling all 20.
Re-fetch the odds from William Hill, Bet365, and Betway for fixture IDs 1028845, 1028853, and 1028871 only. Overwrite the existing values in those rows. Leave all other rows unchanged.
When you want the full arbitrage brief ready for Saturday morning in one pass
It is Friday evening and you want the raw odds table, implied probabilities, spread flags, a filtered 'Flagged Fixtures' tab, and a summary count of flagged fixtures.
For each fixture ID in column A, fetch pre-match odds from William Hill, Bet365, and Betway and write home/draw/away odds into columns B–J. Calculate implied probabilities in columns K–S. Flag rows where spread exceeds 3% for any outcome. Create a 'Flagged Fixtures' tab with only those rows. Write the total count of flagged fixtures into cell A1 of the main tab.
The pattern: instead of pulling the odds and running the spread model as separate tasks, you describe the full analysis and SheetXAI builds both the data table and the model output in one pass.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and ask it to pull pre-match odds for a list of fixture IDs directly into your Excel workbook. The API-Sports integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to pull a full Premier League fixture list and standings in Excel or the API-Sports in Excel overview.