Draw Collusion

When a draw suits both teams in Italy, the game will end in a draw. It's all to do with the mentality of the Italian people. They see nothing wrong in such an arrangement. - Liam Brady

I have written several times before on the Draw in Serie B, and it is that time of year again with Future Greyhound calling me to task for my observation that the Draw can never be the Favourite in a football match: 

Enjoy your stuff Cassini. But as a pedant I must point out the Draw definitely can be Fav in football. Draw Collusion has been a studied topic (USA v Germany 14 WC & Uruguay v Mexico 10 WC) and think Draw was Fav in one of those from memory. Don’t get me started on Seria B!

Nothing wrong with being a pedant, and of course, the Draw can, and sometimes is, the market favourite, but my statement was intended to refer to matches expected to be played competitively.

Future Greyhound mentions Serie B (actually he references Seria B, but only a pedant would point out the mistake) and since Pinnacle's Closing Prices were added, i.e. the 2012-13 season, the Draw has been the favourite in 37 matches, including six this season already. 

Incidentally there were no prices available on another 25 matches, all of which were May games, 10 of which resulted in Home wins, while the other 15 were all Draws. Possibly other bookmakers were offering prices on these games, but I doubt that you would have been able to bet too much on them.

For those 37 matches where we have Pinnacle's prices, backing the Draw would have been profitable to the tune of 23.4%. 

In 489 other matches where the Draw was priced at 3.0 or shorter, backing the Draw would have lost you money, something that is not easy to do in this league.

Blindly backing the Draw in the Pinnacle era, and you'd be up 160.35 points from 3,070 matches, a decent ROI of 5.22%. My strategy of calculating the 'true' difference between the teams increases this to 7.59% across almost seven seasons.