Analysing sports betting is the basis for good results when betting on football or any other sport, but analysis is a very broad and unspecific word that can cover a multitude of terms. But analysis is a very broad and unspecific word that can cover a multitude of terms.

Information is power. And many times we already analyse and study before and after betting, but rarely do we do it with numbers and coldness. And this may be the reason why sports betting does not give us the results we expect: we lack to analyse sports betting in a cold, statistical and objective way.

Very well, but… What are the parameters and how should sports betting be analysed? Broadly speaking, we can divide them into a pre- and post analysis. The former would mix two aspects, the statistics for the event and the amounts and odds to bet on. In other words, the purely sporting analysis and the betting market analysis. The second, on the other hand, is a post-event review of the decisions taken.

Reconstructing the path and ex-post analysis

Let’s start at the end, for a very simple reason. This ex-post analysis of sports betting is the one that is least often done. It would consist of a record of amounts won and lost, and wrong and right bets according to different variables, such as the type of market, competition, teams, athletes, etc… Probably, unconsciously, you have a reference, but you don’t want to give up having reliable data.

If you knew that you were making money betting on La Liga, but losing on the Premier League and Serie A… would your budget be divided equally, or would you bet more where you have better results? These are some of the variables to consider:

• By sport: football picks, tennis picks or all the sports you bet on.
• By competition: Within football, for example, Champions League, $pa League and so on. Here you can divide (in this and other sports) between regular leagues and one-off events.
• By market: You can analyse whether handicap bets, for example, give you better results than exacta and winner-loser bets.
• There are no limits: Your imagination will allow you to find the best betting niches, you can find variables in your history and cross-reference them with each other.

Obviously, the bigger your history, the better you will know how to analyse sports betting and the more raw data you will have. It is important to look not only at how many times you win or lose, but also how much. You may win more times on moneyline bets, but exact score bets will be much more profitable… or you may not be worth the risk. In any case, more data will always be better results.

How to analyse sports betting forecasts?

While it is normal (though not positive) that the previous point is new to you, pre-analysis in betting should not be new to you. When you see an odds on a certain sporting event, there are a few things you should look for almost instantly to see if the bet is right for you:

• Level: If we’re talking about football or basketball, it could be the ranking in the competition, and in tennis the ATP ranking, for example. There are other variables, but there are teams or sportsmen and women in which these factors are important.
• Moment of form: Look at the dynamics of both participants, fundamental for your predictions. Sometimes it is better to be 4th but have climbed 4 positions in two weeks than vice versa.
• Head to head: Look at their last meetings. There may be a team that is very good against another team, even if they are at a lower level.
• Scenario: Playing away or at home, the type of court in tennis, a certain competition, can affect performance or motivation.
• Sensations and breaking news: It is less objectifiable, but no one is unaware that an injury to Messi, for example, would have a brutal effect on a prognosis.

Obviously, in these points above (and more that you can detect) you should not limit yourself only to winner/loser. Number and difference of goals/points and even parts of the event in which more goals have been scored (first half, last 30 minutes) can give you a brutal competitive edge.

Odds to analyse bets

Here you must have two key elements. The betting stake and the odds formula. Both will give you valuable clues about the suitability (or not) of a certain market. The stake will give you (based on a subjective but statistical perception) the amount you should bet on a certain event, while the formulas will help you to know what the probability of a certain odds is.

• Odds 1 – 100% probability
• Odds 1.4 – 75% approx (71%)
• Odds 2 – 50%
• Odds 4 – 25%

If you are 70% convinced that Betis will beat Sevilla (based on the above points) and the odds are above 1.4 (1.8) for example, it is a great market. If a prediction has a probability of 25% we would reject it, for example, but if the odds are more than $5 it would be a good idea to bet with a small budget (that amount would be determined by the stake). And then, the importance would lie in analysing whether these decisions have been good (with the ex-post sports betting analysis).

Too complex? If you really like sports betting and want to have good results in it, this should be the way to go, always looking for a balance. But the more information you have, the better your results will be.