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Abstract—This research uses football online betting odds of even simple betting strategies can lead to a significant decrease
a broad variety of matches and bookmakers to identify known in expected losses, which indicates that betting markets are not
biases in odds pricing, namely the favorite-longshot bias and the necessarily efficient (Pope and Peel, 1989).
away-favorite bias. Furthermore, it tries to answer the question Using odds data on a wide variety of football matches for
whether a naive strategy of betting against these biases can be 17 major bookmakers, this research examines the existence
profitable. Our findings are consistent with previous research,
confirming the existence of the favorite-longshot bias, but turn out
of the favorite-longshot bias as well as the away-favorite bias
to be in contrast with regard to the away-favorite bias, for which and assesses its variation across bookmakers. Furthermore, it
there is little evidence in the data. Also, we find that a strategy evaluates whether a naive strategy of betting against these
of betting against the favorite-longshot bias can be marginally biases suffices to reap a profit.
profitable, whereas bets in favor of it result in large losses on This paper is divided into four parts. In the next section it
average. provides background information about bookmakers’ possible
Keywords—betting market, sports forecasting, bias analysis, price-setting strategies and about the types of biases that will
favorite-longshot bias, betting strategy. be analysed. Secondly, it describes the data under consider-
ation. The third part provides the results of the explorative
analysis of each of the two biases. Finally, the forth part sum-
I. I NTRODUCTION marizes the results, provides concluding remarks and suggests
Gambling is a game of odds and many studies have demon- areas for further research.
strated that even the mathematically inclined are often misled
by their intuition when dealing with probabilities (Fischhoff II. L ITERATURE R EVIEW
et al., 1982; Nisbett and Ross, 1980; Tversky and Kahneman,
The literature review is structured into two parts. The first
1975). Especially sports betting is filled with emotions and
part summarizes literature explaining that bookmakers can
prejudices that can interfere with bettors’ assessment of the
maximize their profit if they systematically exploit bettors’
probability of an event and therefore it is natural to assume
biases, instead of only balancing the total amount of staked
that even the ”wise crowd” (Galton, 1907; Surowiecki, 2005)
money. The second part reviews the two biases that are
can be biased in its decisions.1
examined in the empirical analysis.
For the sport of association football (soccer) there is evi-
dence for the existence of certain biases2 , such as the favorite-
longshot bias and the away-favorite bias, which can be ex- A. Why bookmakers care about biases
ploited by bookmakers in order to increase their profits (Levitt, Levitt (2004) provides a theoretical framework for the
2004; Vlastakis et al., 2009). However, if different bookmakers hypothesis that bookmakers can maximize their profit by
have different strategies of dealing with biases, then this might exploiting bettors’ biases. He states three alternative scenarios
lead to arbitrage opportunities for professional gamblers. of how bookmakers can make a profit. According to him
The majority of research on the informational efficiency they can either (1) balance the total amount of money bet
(Fama, 1970) in betting markets, argues that bookmakers’ odds across outcomes, such that they are guaranteed to reap their
reflect all available information, such that betting strategies commission. They can (2) provide accurate forecasts such that
are not profitable after considering commissions (Asch et al., they earn the profit margin in expectation. Alternatively, they
1984; Sauer, 1998; Williams, 2005; Woodland and Wood- can (3) exploit bettors’ biases in order to make a profit, or a
land, 1994). However, there exist recent individual studies combination of (2) and (3).
that report profitable betting strategies on out-of-sample data Using information about the size as well as the quantity
using more elaborate models, such as regression-based forecast of placed bets for a series of matches and by comparing it
encompassing across different bookmakers (Vlastakis et al., to historical odds, the author presents empirical evidence that
2009) or Bayesian networks that incorporate both objective and bookmakers indeed seem to strategically set their prices to
subjective variables (Constantinou et al., 2012).3 In any case, exploit biased betting behavior, instead of merely balancing
1 For examples see Simmons et al. (2011).
the total amount of staked money across outcomes.
2 The mentioned biases are described and attributed in the literature review. However, Forrest and Simmons (2008) challenge Levitt’s
3 Other examples include Goddard and Asimakopoulos (2004) and Dixon proposition that more popular bets are priced unfavorably, ar-
and Coles (1997). guing that the theoretical model fails to incorporate a sentiment
2
III. DATA
The dataset consists of opening and closing odds of 17
different bookmakers over a period of three months, ranging
from February to May 2017. There is a wide variety of matches
including all games from the European Professional Football
Leagues (EPFL), but also including leagues in small countries
as well as regional leagues. In total there are 12084 league
matches that were played during this time for which there are
available the match results and the respective odds per outcome
and bookmaker.5 Fig. 1. Kernel-smoothing density of the distribution of opening and closing
Table I provides an overview over the bookmakers contained odds, zoomed in on the range [1, 8). Fat lines: all odds. Dashed lines: home
in the data and for each lists the number of matches, average wins. Dash-dot lines: away wins. Dotted lines: draws.
odds per outcome and average profit margin. Notably, the
average profit margin, also known as ”the vig”, ranges from
4.1 to 11.5 percent and for a single match is computed as confidence level of 90 percent (t = −2.034, p = 0.059). On
average, the profit margin decreases by 0.73% from open to
1 1 1 close for individual matches.
m= + + −1
ohome oaway odraw Figure 1 displays the distribution of odds, broken down by
outcome. On average, odds for home wins are lower (mean
where ox stands for the odds of the respective outcome
= 2.50) than those for away wins (mean = 3.97). Draws have
x ∈ {home, away, draw}. A two-tailed t-test for related
mean odds of 3.7 and we never observe odds for draws that are
samples shows a significant difference for the average profit
smaller than 1.86. Interestingly, across all outcomes opening
margin between opening and closing odds, as it rejects the
odds are more centered than closing odds while the latter seem
null hypothesis of identical average profit margins given a
to partly dissolve into the tails. It is possible that this is due
4 See the discussion in Snowberg and Wolfers (2010), which finds evidence to additional information entering the market in the course of
for the latter reason. time, whereas initial odds are closer to historical values based
5 Data and code are available upon request to the authors. on experience. On average, from open to close, odds increase
3
Fig. 2. Average returns for different bins of closing odds. Boxplots represent
A. Favorite-Longshot Bias the variation of returns across bookmakers for the respective bin. Each bin
To compare the average returns for different ranges of odds, contains approximately 10% of all odds (equal-depth).
the odds are divided into ten bins of equal depth with respect
to the closing odds. Table II lists the average returns per bin
and it gives a first impression that bets with smaller odds have
figure 2 where each boxplot describes the distribution of odds
a higher average return than those with larger odds. Although
between bookmakers for the respective bin. Although there are
there are a few exceptions in the middle ranges, the general
no bins that have a meaningful positive average return for any
pattern shows that for bets with high odds the average return
bookmaker (e.g. if we were to consider taxes), there seems
is especially bad.
to exist a rather high variation, which might possibly indicate
The chosen equal-depth binning provides a rough idea, yet
different pricing strategies in the market. Still, for individual
it is possible that it distorts the returns that are found for
bookmakers we see a positive average return of up to 3%,
different ranges of odds. For example, the bin (5.65, 81] covers
using such a naive betting strategy, however this hypothesis
a very wide range, such that possible subets probably are not
should be tested more carefully, as the visualization does not
as uneconomical as the bin’s average. With this in mind, a
clarify how many bets are considered for a single bookmaker
more detailed inspection is provided in section IV-C.
in each bin, such that those outliers may be due to chance.
Furthermore, there seems to be a small difference between
opening and closing odds, as the former exhibit a stronger skew Finally, only matches are examined for which there is a
in favor of bets on favorites and against longshots. However, clear favorite-longshot relation as described earlier. Figure 3
the patterns are similar and since betting strategies for closing provides further evidence for the existence of a favorite-
odds are more realistic, the analysis only considers closing longshot bias in the data, as it displays the average returns
odds in the following steps to reduce redundancy. for clear favorites versus the respective longshots. Favorites
Next, each bin is further broken down by bookmakers to have an average return of −3.64% while longshots return
illustrate the variation between them. The result is displayed in −26.08% on average. Although there is a large variation across
bookmakers for the return on the longshots, the comparison
6 Each bin holds approximately the same number of odds. clearly exhibits the disadvantage for bets placed on underdogs.
4
Fig. 3. Average returns for clear favorites (closing odds smaller or equal
to 1.5) and the respective longshots. Boxplots describe the variation across
bookmakers.
B. Away-Favorite Bias
To identify the away-favorite bias the data are filtered such
that only odds for away matches are considered. Using the
same procedure as before, the explorative analysis involves
a table of equal-depth bins (table III), its extension for the
variation across bookmakers (figure 4) as well as the focus on
clear favorites.
The table of average returns paints a similar picture as
before, showing that there exists a disadvantage for bets
on longshots for both opening and closing odds. Also, the
variation across bookmakers is comparable to the previous
Fig. 4. Similar to figure 2, but only in terms of away outcomes.
result, however one needs to be careful when comparing bins
directly, as their range has changed according to the new
binning on the filtered subset of data. carefully, as the category of home-longshots has relatively few
Focussing on clear favorites, the analysis now distinguishes observations.9
between away-favorites, home-favorites, away-longshots and
home-longshots, where one type implies another on the other
side of the bet.7 Figure 5 shows the average returns across C. Optimal bins
bookmakers for each of the four classes. Contrary to Vlastakis Since the equal-depth binning is a relatively crude way to
et al. (2009), there is little evidence for an away-favorite bias, segment the data, this part of the analysis uses a more detailed
because the overall average return for this category (−4.41%) approach by iteratively checking all possible bins. For each bin
is comparable to what was observed for the whole set of the cumulated profit is computed as the product of the number
favorites previously. There is, however, a rather large average of odds that fall into the range of the bin, times the average
return for home-longshots (−4.76%) which, for three of the profit margin of that bin. To limit noise, the search ignores
17 bookmakers, even turns out to be positive. Again, this bins that have a range larger than one or that contain fewer
stands in contrast to the results by Vlastakis et al. (2009), who than five percent of all ovservations. Figure 6 displays all bins
found that home-longshots have an average return of less than that satisfy these conditions as horizontal lines, where the bin
−30% for each of the four bookmakers that they studied.8 range is coded as the length of the line and the cumulated
The high returns for single bookmakers must be interpreted return as its position on the y-axis.
7 For example, a home-favorite with odds smaller or equal to 1.5 implies The resulting visualization illustrates that such naive betting
that the other team is an away-longshot. strategies are not sufficient to beat the market, as all of the
8 Note that we defined favorites different than Vlastakis et al. (2009), who bins result in a negative cumulated profit. However, it also
defined them as the team with the larger odds. However, using their definition
we even find an average return of −8.3% on away-favorites, much lower 9 On average, 5.16% of all matches fall into the category of home-longshots
than the average return of −5.1% over all favorites. The authors instead and for some bookmakers even less than 3%. A complete overview over the
observed an average return of 0.39% on away-favorites and of −3.98% over average returns and numbers of observations per category and bookmakers
all favorites. can be found in table IV in the appendix.
5
rare, which questions the validity of the finding and also limits
its application as a possible betting strategy. Further research
might look deeper into this finding, for example by using
a larger dataset and varying thresholds for classifying clear
favorites, which here were subjectively defined as teams with
odds smaller or equal to 1.5.
In summary, this research confirms the common knowledge
that naive betting strategies, even though marginally profitable
in some cases, do not suffice to beat the market, which in
the light of this research indicates informational efficiency,
especially if we consider taxes on profits. Yet, this research has
also demonstrated that betting against biases can limit bettors’
losses significantly.
R EFERENCES
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V. C ONCLUSION Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., Galak, J., and Frederick, S. (2011).
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