Recently we wrote about a large study done on American sports and European football regarding how people bet and what they bet on. It found that punters prefer to bet on Overs in sports matches. The reason being that people who are watching a football match are hopeful that they’re going to watch an entertaining football match with loads of goals.

This means that as kickoff approaches for a football match the odds on Over 2.5 goals can drop because more and more casual bettors are looking forward to watching a certain match and they’re all hoping that they’ll see tons of goals. This can erode any value, if there was any to begin with on the Overs side and it may be the case that all the value lies on the opposite side of the market, Under 2.5 goals. Of course this doesn’t mean that we should always beat on Under 2.5 goals we need to pay attention to recent form, head to head results, teams news and of course, value too. Let’s have a look at an example of how the market moves from this weekend’s Premier League match between Manchester United and Leicester City.

We’re picked Pinnacle as they have the lowest commission on the market for this match, you can see that figure of 97.8%, so in this match they’re only making 2.2% commission on bets, this means they’re presenting the ‘fairest’ odds. Anyway, we’ll speak about that in a later article. We can see that the price for Over 2.5 goals is currently 1.87. But if you hover above the price we can see the Opening odds were 1.89, so the odds have fallen two ticks. As more and more people bet on this side of the market the price will fall and any value that was there will be eroded.

Over 2.5 Goals Value Betting Tips

There are two ways to look at value, one is to compare the probability of an event occurring compared to the odds, as we do on the Bet Dynamo software and the other is to compare opening odds with closing odds. By comparing opening and closing odds in this example, we can see that betting on Over 2.5 goals is not a value bet as the odds have fallen, if the price rises above to 1.90 or above then we’re back in value.

Because the market is favouring Over 2.5 and the odds are dropping, Pinnacle have adjusted the odds on Under 2.5. If opened at 2.01 and is now at 2.05, meaning we have 4 ticks of value here. As more and more people pile money into the Overs side of the market the Unders side will continue to rise. This happens quite a lot with the larger teams with huge followings like Man United, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich etc.

Finding Value in Over 2.5 Goals market

Now this doesn’t mean that we need to bet all the time on the side of the event where odds are rising. They could be rising because something has happened causing the Overs side to fall. For example, let’s say Arsenal are playing Wolves this weekend, Over 2.5 opened at 1.90. Both Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette have been sidelined for Arsenal lately but two days before the match, Arsenal manager Unai Emery announces that both are fit again and will play.

The price on Overs now drops to 1.80 and Unders rises. Does this mean there’s value on the Unders side? There may be value in price comparison, however, the probability of Overs now happening is far higher thanks to Arsenal having both of their star attackers starting. So you can see now that knowing about percentage probabilities and comparing opening and current/closing odds is the best way to understand where value is in the market.

With the season being so young we don’t yet have Premier League data on our site, we will soon though, so let’s take an example from an upcoming match where we have plenty of data. This Sunday Malmo take on Norrkoping in the Swedish Allsvenskan. Malmo can close the gap on league leaders Djurgarden and AIK, while Norrkoping have won the last four matches and are in great goalscoring form. You’d expect Overs then just on that alone. Let’s check out the

Again we’re looking at the bookie with the lowest commission. We can see that Overs is priced at 2.02 having opened at 1.98 so there’s a little bit of value there. Now though, let’s look at what the Bet Dynamo software says.

We can see that in matches involving Malmo and Norrkoping our software predicts a probability of the match ending with Over 2.5 goals to be at 50%. For a probability of 50% you should expect odds to be 2.0. However we need to factor in the bookie’s cut too. In this example they are getting a commission of 2.6%, so the odds of 2.0 minus 2.6% (2.0 - 0.052 = 1.948) would mean that odds of greater than 1.948 (1.95) would represent a fair price, if you can get higher than that we’re looking at a value bet.

Should we lump the house on Over 2.5 goals then in Malmo vs Norrkoping? Well, not yet anyway, you need to look at recent results, home/away results, head to head results and injury/suspension news too. Combine all these factors and you’ll be able to make a more well-informed betting decision. It’s a good bit of work for every match, but the more you do it easier and faster it will be.