Football Unders and London Overs

Although the correlation between the Draw and the Under is well known, Joe posted the above question a week ago. 

The prices on the Under / Over markets are not sharp, with the overround on the average prices significantly higher than those for the closing match odds as provided by Pinnacle, courtesy of Joseph Buchdahl's Football Data site.

Nevertheless, I did take a look at the past four EPL seasons, which is 1520 matches and a decent sample size. 

The average overround was 105.4%, and Over 2.5 was the result in 805 matches (53%). 

In matches where the teams 'true' win probabilities were within 25% of each other, the average goals per game was 2.56, while in more one-sided games, the average was 2.79.

Backing the Under 2.5 goals in these 279 matches would have resulted in a loss of 16.01 points (ROI -5.74%), which is pretty much the overround, and where the threshold is 10%, the 109 matches resulted in a small profit of 2.95 points. These games averaged just 2.51 goals per game.

Switching sports for a moment, and I'll update June's numbers after the weekend, but the visit to London for MLB offered a great value bet on Overs.

London Stadium is smaller than your typical MLB ballpark. It’s only 385 to dead center field and 330 down the line to either foul pole. The distance to “deep” center is shorter than any current MLB ballpark and well below the league average of 402.6 feet.

The Overs showed up as a selection anyway, with a total of 11.5, but a little homework suggested 2.08 was huge value. I'm pretty sure I've never won a Totals bet after one inning before!