Europa League Final

The odds on the Europa Cup Final ended up not being a three-way tie, but the price movements were interesting to watch. 

While I was matched at 3.05 on Tuesday, the Draw price shortened to as low as 2.5 (and favourite) with William Hill, although I've not been a welcome guest there since around 1990, so the price was of academic interest only. 

The 'official' prices I use are the Average Odds from Odds Portal and these ended up being: 

I was also on the Under 2.5, matched at 1.53, while Odds Portal ended up with a Highest price of 1.39, an Average of 1.36 and Pinnacle at 1.35. Clearly someone was reading this blog:

all six matches went Under 2.5 with three ending as Draws. Under is currently around 1.53.

Short prices don't necessarily mean poor value though, and with a fair probability of 34.9%, the Draw was the shortest in the 1,899 European matches in my spreadsheet. The next shortest? Another AS Roma game all the way back in March when they played Real Sociedad and were a fair-priced 2.94. 

These are the only two matches where the Draw has been sub 3.0, something that has never been the case in the Domestic spreadsheet although in International Knockout matches, the Draw has been favourite three times: 

Almost ten years ago, I wrote a post about the Draw explaining why it is (almost) never favourite: 

Although the markets have changed a lot since I wrote that article, I remain convinced that in certain types of match, there's still some value to be had backing the Draw, and it's a strategy that has served me rather well over the years, although some might say it's a little sad to have spent over a decade getting excited about 0:0 Draws. 

Here are the Europa League Finals since 2004 with the fair Draw prices:

Also, Sevilla's record in this competition is nuts!