One qualifier here, is that the prices I use in the analysis are the 'Average' prices from the excellent Football Data web site (no affiliation). When laying, it may well not always be possible to get this average price, since one might reasonably expect exchange prices to be higher than bookmakers. A quick comparison of the prices I was matched at compared with the Average Price in Football Data shows an average difference of 0.04, i.e. if the 'official' average price is 1.82, laying at 1.86 is usually possible. There is also no commission included in these numbers.
So with those not insignificant qualifiers in mind, the Bundeslayga strategy (home lays in the 1.34 to 2.0 range) returned 13.11 points from 90 selections, a decent ROI of 14.6%. Once again this league was the best for this strategy.
Laying EVERY home Bundesliga team would have returned 32.80 points, which from 306 selections is an ROI of 10.7%, lower than the Bundeslayga range, but as we all know by now, Return on Investment is for show, Rate of Bank Growth is for dough. £s, not %.
Unfortunately when the 0.04 deduction is factored in, the returns on laying every team in the Bundesliga drop to 25.76 points.
I have previously commented that laying at ~1.3 and below is not a profitable strategy, but last season would have produced 3.61 points.
Looking at other leagues, the 1.34 to 2.0 range is profitable across the board, but it becomes even more profitable to expand the range.
Most interesting for me is that the 1.68 to 2.22 range (45% to 60%) returned 63.96 points from 604 selections (ROI 10.6%) across all five leagues. For a part-timer looking to churn but entering bets manually, this number isn't too unmanageable spread across a season.
What are you talking about with these average prices? What is it an average price of exactly? Not much good using an average of bookmakers is it?
ReplyDeleteAnd what timeframe are we using?Why don't you simply use the Betfair closing price? Sounds like Cassini economics at work again here.