AFL line betting

Previously we looked at how the Sportpunter AFL model had gone betting head to head. In this article we will look a little more in depth about how it goes betting on the line or with a handicap.

Traditionally, unlike Americans, Australians had always bet on any sport on the head. It makes perfect sense too; punters want to bet on whom they think is going to win as opposed to who is going to win by a certain margin. But more recently line betting has become more in vogue. This is because many of the head to head betting matchups are already almost over before they begin, with two many one sided matches making the betting uninteresting.

So line betting has made its way into Australian betting culture, and there are other advantages with it as well. Returns can be less varied as most odds are set to around 1.85 to 2.00, so wide fluctuations are less likely to occur. AFL is primed for line betting because the distribution of points throughout a game is relatively normally distributed.

Since 2005, we have been recording all the line bet odds, which isn’t as long as head to head betting, of which we had a lot more years of odds for. Throughout this time, head to head betting had made $5,330.07 profit at 5.3% ROI, whilst betting on the handicap has made twice as much: $10,716 profit for 8.2% ROI.  Many would say that this is a great sign that handicap betting is the way to go as not only is it more profitable but also more consistent.

So let’s have a look at how well the model had gone on line betting. The total results below differ slightly to that above as some matches in the database were added to the results post match, but are for obvious reasons not included in the betting history, but included in the analysis. As shown below, results have been very good. Not much can be talked about with regards to probabilities and odds with the exception that probabilities of over 75% didn’t do too well. Similarly, and interestingly, overlays greater than 50% lost. Sure there were only 8 bets, but this is strange. It may be more interesting to look at the actual lines to see if we can find a pattern that could possibly explain this.

Shown below is the home team handicap for betting on the home team and the away team. Home team betting has done very well, and those in the know will know that home ground advantage is much underrated in AFL, so there are no surprises here.

What is interesting however is that the model has failed to make a profit when betting on the line on the away team when they are favourite. In other words, when the line is zero or lower, 64 bets have been made for a loss of 24.9% ROI. This is interesting, and although the sample size is small, could well once again have something to do with the fact of the biased home ground advantage in the sport.

If this pattern continues to exist, then there could be a case for not betting on the line for teams that are favourites when away. Using this information could well enhance your betting profits even greater than the %ROI as shown above.

Either way, it goes to show that betting on AFL is a seriously profitable sport to bet on.

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