Tag: football

Bad Bookies

Bookie bashing has become a common theme of this blog. I do have other gambling stuff I’d like to talk about, but like a hack 1980’s comic talking about a stupid Irish mother-in-law eating bad plane food, I just can’t help myself.

The scumbaggery of the gambling industry is my personal low hanging fruit.

I apologise if it’s getting boring – I will change the subject soon. Just not today. So take my hand as we sink our teeth into another bitter but reachable peach.

The trouble with unripe stone fruits is that they’re just not that juicy. Which is apt, because neither is this blog’s subject matter. I’m just going to take a cursory dive (note to middle managers trying to sound important, not all dives are deep) into bad betting value.

I’ve picked out a couple of popular big name online brands and crunched the numbers on two different popular football markets, so that you can see how much commission they’re making.

I could’ve picked out household-name high street bookies, whose odds will be every bit as bad, but if you’re reading this then you probably gamble on the more contemporary sites, so I figured I’d cater to my audience.

But it’s worth noting that whether you go to work in a suit and bet on your phone whilst a-poop, or prefer to shuffle into an actual shop smelling rakishly lagerish, you are being ripped off. 

First up, PaddyPower’s outright odds for Euro 24. Bear in mind I grabbed these a few hours before the tournament kicked off, so they’re an accurate reflection of the market before any results came in. Here are the figures:

The ‘Odds’ are decimals as it makes calculations a little easier. The ‘Bet’ is how much you’d have to wager to get back £100 including your stake. I presume you can crack the ‘Team’ column for yourselves. 

Total outlay to ensure a three-figure win, is £117 (full disclosure, that’s rounding up a penny for effect). That means PP is keeping an average of 17% of everything you bet on that market.

EDIT: While the market is 17 percentage points above a completely fair book, it actually translates to a 14% house edge. My thanks to a reader for pointing out the lazy maths in the comments.

Maybe that doesn’t sound too bad, but that figure is typically closer to 10% in a competitive book, so it’s on the high side. But let’s re-frame it.

If you were told the bank was going to charge you 17% interest on your deposits, you’d be swift to take your custom elsewhere. And they do things yearly. Paddy wants to keep a sixth (edit: a seventh) of your money after just one month!

Excuse my tmesis, but that’s out-blimmin-rageous. Let’s see if their competition does any better.

Next, it’s Bet365 and their final score odds for Scotland Vs Switzerland tonight. I’ll spare you the table, as it’s even less interesting than the last one. But out of interest, if you think it’ll be a barnstormer you can get 500-1 on a four all draw.

This information was a little harder to come by as Bet365 don’t just list the possible results – they require you to select the number of goals each team will score and then just show the odds for that outcome. 

To be fair, that’s a nice innovation for usability, but it has the handy side-benefit (for them) of obscuring all the other results, making it harder to work out their edge. But I managed it anyway thanks to a bit of data entry.

If you want to secure a £100 win on that market then you’ll have to bet £122. This time an even juicier 22% commission for the Coates family (edit: it’s an 18% house edge). And that doesn’t take into account all the outcomes. It’s only for results of up to four goals per team.

It doesn’t change things very much statistically, because the vast majority of the time teams don’t score that many goals. Although Scotland did lose 5-1 in their last game, so if you’d bet all of the default available options to win £100, you’d have just lost all £122. 

I think I’ve landed my point, and for once, I won’t labour it. Betting with the big name bookies is expensive. Know that the more complex the market (i.e. the more outcomes a bet has) the harder it is to calculate their edge, and the more they will rig it to their benefit. 

Do yourself a favour, bet sparingly and only when it really matters to you. If you can’t find a friend to bet against instead (more ideas on this in the coming weeks) when there is 0% commission, then use an exchange where you’ll pay just a few percent.

You have to vote with your feet, or the bookies will take advantage of you. Don’t let them get away with their greed.

Euro Tip

Fresh from correctly calling the Premier League winner, I’m feeling confident. There’s nothing like a small easy win to convince yourself you’re great at something. Of course you didn’t need to be a rocket doctor to predict Man City’s triumph, but I went a step further by justifying it as an excellent value pick.

If you’d put your quid on pre-season (when the great Nostra Dixmus read the tea leaves) you’d now be wondering how to spend your 80 pence of profit. Well I have some good news for you, because Euro ’24 starts today and I’ve dusted off my Crystal Ball of Positive Expected Value.

First and foremost, do not bet on England. If the bookies are to be believed, they have at least a 20% chance of winning the tournament. I’m sorry Gareth, but that’s madness.

The odds are short because we’re a nation of gamblers and footballing optimists/delusionals, so a lot of money has poured into football coming home. Bookies also know that people will take those odds even though they’re rubbish. They’re just offering the lowest price they know they can get away with.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that we actually have some brilliant players, so there is genuine cause for a soupçon of optimism. But it’s worth pointing out how little individual player quality seems to matter at the Euros.

For example, Belgium have barely made a dent in the event despite a generation of footballing Rolls Royces in their squad-garage. The same could be said for England’s last golden age of Gerrards and Lampards. Meanwhile Denmark, Greece and Portugal have all won this championship with a forecourt full of hoofing Fiat Multiplas.

In reality, the difference between teams in Europe isn’t really that big, and the tournament is short, so luck plays a big part. One bad day for you (or a brilliant day for your opponent) and you can be on the plane home.

Crucially, for all their talent on the pitch, England are burdened with lovely-but-ordinary manager. I think Southgate has grown into the role, and has made some good tough choices in selection this time around, but he’s still tactically weak and very poor at managing his resources.

It’s telling that the FA recently confirmed that they have had no approaches for Southgate’s services. The market for good managers is red hot, and yet nobody wants the England boss.

In summary, 4 to 1 on England represents abysmal value and should be avoided at all costs. But there is a positive corollary from an overhyped England; it means just about everyone else is slightly better value than they should be.

NOTE: That is if you’re betting with an exchange such as Betfair (yuck, part of Flutter) or Betdaq (glitchy but serviceable). They offer an open market, so you can be confident you’re getting close to a fair price. If you’re betting with any of the big name bookies (which most of you are), then you’ll probably be scalped for at least a 20% margin.

So who are the alternatives? The recent BBC pundit predictions were unanimously in favour of France, and the bookies have them slightly less fancied than England, which is clearly back to front. Their squad is every bit as good as England’s, and they were unlucky to lose the last World Cup final. They are proven winners though, having won both major tournaments in recent history.

The problem, of course, is that you are then stuck cheering for France. If it helps, I’m currently writing this from the Le Mans 24 Hour race, and it really is a wonderful country. That is a genuine, heartfelt view, but I still want to see them lose.

That leaves the other capable in-form nations – Portugal, Spain, and just because they’re the home team, Germany. They probably represent the sweetspot between probability of winning and return on investment. They are all somewhere between 7 and 10 to 1. Again, all have won major titles in living memory.

If you prefer a juicier return then Italy or the Netherlands are less fashionable teams that seem only slightly less likely to win. Belgium and Croatia would also fit in this category, but as they bottled it as younger, stronger and better teams, it seems very unlikely they’ll be up to the task now.

That just leaves the long shot basket cases. Oh and Denmark. Make it interesting for yourself and stick a quid on one of them. Miracles have happened before in this tournament, and they will happen again. The winnings won’t be life changing, but the smugness value would be incalculable.

Just don’t bet on England and you can’t really go wrong.