European Football Betting: Making a profit from natural drawn thrillers

European Leagues / Matthew Walton / 14 October 2009 / Leave a Comment

Jose Mourinho and Wesley Sneijder after Inter's recent drubbing of AC Milan. But with 33% of all Serie A matches this season ending in stalemates, Italy's top flight has the greatest percentage of draws from across the top European leagues.

"Many traders mistakenly believe that wins happen by design, draws occur by accident. Nothing could be further from the truth. The overwhelming conclusion to draw from this study is that even though the bulk of money tends to be traded on the winner, or loser, of each game, this approach often dismisses a very reliable area of profit. Namely, backing the draw."

Bookmakers are taking a hammering, so they like to tell us, on account of the low number of draws in the Premier League this season. And, statistically speaking, there is some substance to this claim as the 76 games played in the English top flight so far this season have resulted in a mere 9 draws.

But that figure, which equates to a bare 12% of the games played ending in stalemate, must be seen as the exception and not the norm. Compared to the other leading domestic top divisions across Europe, it is freakishly low.

Over in France the ratio of draws in Ligue 1 is 21%, as for the Primera Liga in Spain it's 22%, the German Bundesliga is 25% and Italy's best sides in Serie A have produced 33% draws so far in the 2009/10 campaign.

In other words, if any meaningful conclusion can be drawn from the above data it is that there are going to be an awful lot of draws coming up in the Premier League anytime soon as the seasonal pattern corrects itself after the period of untypical results which have just been experienced. After all, we've seen less than a quarter of the season played thus far.

English top flight football returns no less, no more stalemates than most of its continental neighbours and any study of the recent data will illustrate this point.

Looking back over recent seasons English top flight matches have generated 25% draws in 2008/09, and 26% in each of 2007/08 and 2006/07.

Compare that to the Bundesliga for the same period and the year-on-year findings are 24%, 25% and 26%. Spain has a slightly lower ratio with 22% and 23% (twice) whilst both Italy (25%, 29% and 30%) and France (29% and 30% twice) are appreciably higher.

This tells us a number of things about the respective leagues. It has clear implications for the strength of the various divisions - more evenly matched teams would surely give rise to a greater number of draws - as well as the playing style prefered in each country.

It's easy to stereotype on the grounds of these findings but the typically defensive nature of Italian football and the low number of goals found in French football (amongst the top Europe countries Ligue 1 traditionally sees the fewest goals scored each season) provide strong bases from which to argue why these particular nations are more prone to producing drawn matches.

But just to add some balance to that point go back, say, 10 years and the statistics will move you in another direction. For the 1999/2000 season it was England (24%) which produced the least number of draws and although Italy (31%) remained high in the standings the likes of France (26%) and Spain (29%) had switched places leaving only Germany (27%) more or less unchanged.

Taken as a whole, throughout the last decade, right across Europe, the average regularly falls somewhere between 25%-30% which, in Betfair terms, equates to prices of [4.0] down to [3.33]. As such they represent a rock solid set of figures from which to select bets and they must not be ignored.

Many traders mistakenly believe that wins happen by design, draws occur by accident. Nothing could be further from the truth. The overwhelming conclusion to draw from this study is that even though the bulk of money tends to be traded on the winner, or loser, of each game, this approach often dismisses a very reliable area of profit. Namely, backing the draw.

What the recent English example highlights, almost by default, is the value of studying this market, familiarising oneself with the available data and using it to make informed betting decisions on the Betfair markets.

A drawn match might seem to some like 'no result' but if it's making you money, isn't that the best result of all?