Inefficiencies in the football betting market
Is there an opportunity to systematically win in the NFL betting market? If there is, possible sources of this opportunity, "market inefficiency", or "pricing error" may include: Aggregate bettor bias Observable effects of the game being fixed Over compensation of the above by professional bettors Of course, this analysis isn't going to do itself, so I needed to step up to the plate. I found some research on the topic, mostly focusing on simple betting strategies and all of them severely limited in timeframe (citations at link below). My analysis includes all regular season game data from 1978 to 2009. So let's get to the fun part! Bet on the visitor 3603 wins 203 ties 3600 losses And then the obvious: Bet on the underdog 3735 wins 203 ties 3468 losses Ok... what about betting on a team when that team just lost to the opponent it is about to play within the past 21 days? Payback in 21 days (after losing previous game) 30 wins 1 ties 30 losse...