The question of what is the easiest sport to predict is a tough one to answer. Each sport has certain markets and match-ups which can make it easy to predict the outcome.
It is also perhaps more pertinent to ask: “what sport can deliver the best return on investment (ROI)?” as that is more important than simply whether you can guess the result. For example, anyone could guess that Manchester City are likely to beat Watford at home at odds of 1.10, but would that make you any profit in the long run?
What we should be interested in are issues such as: what sport tends to have the best over-rounds (or value for the punter), the best liquidity and the most opportunities to profit.
We’ll have a look at these questions below.
Are Any Sports More “Predictable” Than Others?
In essence it shouldn’t be the case that any sport is inherently more “predictable” than others. Betting markets are essentially very efficient so if you are betting at odds of 2.0, then regardless of the sport, the outcome will happen 50% of the time over the long run, or if the odds are 3.0 it will happen 33% of the time and so on.
Some sports may have more instances – and markets – that throw up very short favourites however. Football often has odds-on favourites, such as teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City playing at home against lower-table teams. Or markets like over 1.5 goals where odds are often in the 1.10-1.20 range.
Tennis also has lots of odds-on favourites, such as Djokovic and Nadal in the early rounds of grand slams, when their odds can often be as low as 1.01 or 1.02.
So in simple terms, these sports may be “easier to predict” than sports like horse racing and golf, where the favourite is usually odds-against and in the case of golf, often over 10/1.
If your aim then is simply to find the sport that gives you a high number of wins, then football and tennis would be a good way to go.
This might not necessarily provide you with what really matters though: profit.
We’ll take a look now at the other factors you should be looking at when choosing what sport to bet on.
Which Sports Offer the Best Return on Investment?
Having reviewed hundreds of betting services here at Honest Betting Review across a range of different sports, we have developed a good idea of which sports offer a good return on investment.
Return on investment (ROI) – in case you aren’t familiar with the term – means how much you would receive back for a certain amount invested. So for example a tipster with a 20% ROI would mean they had produced a $20 profit for every $100 invested.
Interestingly, when we look at those sports with the best ROI, it tends to be ones that aren’t always the easiest to predict – such as horse racing and golf.
Some of the best horse racing tipsters can achieve returns on investment of over 20%. For example, tipsters such as Hanbury Racing and Loves Racing have achieved long-term ROIs of over 25%, which is extremely impressive.
At the same time, some golf tipsters like the Golf Insider and Bookie Insiders have achieved even more impressive returns of over 30% ROI.
On the other hand, finding a football or tennis tipster with a long-term ROI of over 10% can be quite challenging. It is normally considered a good performance to have achieved an ROI of above 5% in these sports.
This shows it is important not to overlook sports that on the face of it are harder to predict, because they can offer better returns than those that are easy to predict.
What Sports Offer the Best Value for Punters?
Another way to look at it is in terms of which sports offer the best value for punters. This can be seen by looking at the “over-round” – or in other words, the edge that the bookies give themselves over a punter in a betting market.
The over-round is in effect how much profit a bookie can expect to make on a market. It is worked out by adding together the percentage chance implied by the odds. So if the over-round is 105% for example, the bookie would expect to make 5% profit from the market. If the over-round is 110%, they would expect to make 10% profit and so on.
Typically, the higher the number of outcomes in a market, the bigger the bookies’ over-round tends to be.
Once again, this isn’t good news for sports like horse racing and golf. An analysis by the website Golf Forecast found that the average bookies’ margin in golf outright markets is a huge 42.5%! That is obviously terrible value for the punter.
Horse racing can be equally bad at times, with big races like the Grand National having over-rounds of 150% or 160%! More normal races typically have over-rounds of 20-30%, which aren’t good value either from the punter’s point of view.
Sports like football and tennis, with just two or three outcomes, tend to have much lower over-rounds. A typical football match might have an over-round of 110%, whilst markets with only two outcomes like Asian handicaps and over/under 2.5 goals tend to have over-rounds of around 105%.
Tennis matches can often have even lower over-rounds of 102-103%, as can American sports in markets such as points bets and handicaps.
On the basis of over-rounds it would be better therefore to stick to sports like football, tennis and American sports. The bookies over-round in these sports is lower, meaning their advantage over you is smaller.
Explaining the High Over-round Paradox
Given the above, you may be wondering why it is that tipsters in sports like golf and horse racing can achieve much better returns on investment when they face these much worse over-rounds than in other sports. They have to overcome a seemingly huge disadvantage against the bookies.
The reason for this is whilst the bookies overall advantage in a betting market may be large, they can still mis-price individual selections within that market. A horse might be priced at 20/1 for example when its odds should actually be 12/1. It is finding these “errors” that allows tipsters to make such a substantial return.
It also means that with prices in golf and horse racing being so much bigger – with prices going over 100/1 for some selections, the potential difference between the bookies’ odds and what the true odds should be can be much greater than in sports like football and tennis.
If a tennis player is priced at 1.50 by the bookies for example but their price should actually be 1.45, that only represents a 0.05 tick difference.
In a golf market though a player that was priced 81.0 that should be priced at 67.0, would mean a 14-point tick difference – or a much bigger return in other words.
To put it simply then, there is much more scope in sports like golf and horse racing to make a big profit from bookie errors, versus sports where you are betting at low odds in two- or three-way markets.
How Exchanges Change the Picture
All of this discussion so far has focused on how bookmakers price up betting markets, but with the addition of exchanges to the mix, the picture changes considerably.
With most exchange markets, the over-round is reduced considerably. For football and tennis, it will normally be as low as 100.6%, presuming there is a decent liquidity.
Even for horse racing and golf, the over-rounds tend to be much lower. As race time approaches, the over-round on horse races on Betfair will normally reduce to less than 101%, meaning much better value than with the bookies.
In golf markets the over-rounds tend to range from 105-110%, which whilst not quite as low as on horse racing still represents a huge improvement over the bookies. The over-rounds don’t tend to get quite as low on golf as there will sometimes be a gap in the spread between the back and lay odds of higher-priced selections, e.g. those at 500+ in odds.
What all this means is that sports like golf and horse racing become much better value for the punter on the exchanges, with the over-round problem being largely eliminated.
On the downside, you don’t get the extra places with the exchanges when betting each-way that the bookies often offer these days. You also have to factor in commission on your winnings, which on Betfair these days can be as low as 2%.
Overall though, the exchanges have made betting on sports like golf and horse racing more attractive for the punter and in turn forced bookies to be more competitive by offering extra places and other incentives.
Conclusion – The Easiest Sport to Predict Isn’t Necessarily the Best to Bet on
If you are looking for the easiest sports to predict, then it is probably best to focus on those with markets containing short-odds favourites like football and tennis. You will be able to find plenty of selections at very low odds, which will give you a high number of winners and the bookmakers’ advantage over you (the over-round) will be small.
However, it is important not to confuse “easy to predict” with “profitable.” You can find sports that are easy to predict in terms of being able to pick lots of winners, but you could still be losing money overall if the bets you are making don’t represent value.
The tipsters with the highest returns on investment are generally found in golf and horse racing. This is because there is more scope in these sports to find big differences between the bookies’ odds and the “true odds,” meaning larger profits.
With the advent of betting exchanges, in these sports the over-round is greatly reduced, meaning there is also better value in the market now. In turn this has forced bookies to offer extra places and other perks for punters.
So it’s worth weighing up other factors such as return on investment and profitability when choosing which sport to bet on, rather than just which is easiest to predict.
