My Football Model - Have I Made A Mistake?

[rolf]

I've been playing around with some data from football-data and finally getting to grips with it, using a bit of VBA in Excel and plotting some different scenarios of strike rate and yield depending on factors that I tweak. Anyway, while simulating different scenarios, I just worked out that according to my model, if you always bet on the favourite premiership team to win (last season) then at the end of the year, you had a yield of about 2%. This happened if I used the average odds, or even just other bookies' odds on their own such as VC, Bet365 or Ladbrokes. Haven't checked the others yet. Now, can this really be true? I've double checked my model twice but I don't see any errors of my ways, yet. Just wanted to check if this sounds right. btw this is an aggregate result for the entire season with an equal stake each time I bet for the favourite team to win. Now of course, if you are ultra conservative and bet only on the dead cert favourites e.g. Chelsea vs Derby, then your strike rate goes up but your yield dives. But I was still amazed to see that you are still a winner (this 2% yield) even if you bet on every match where there is a clear favourite, even if only by a narrow margin. The strike rate comes out to around 58% for last season. What do you reckon, is this normal? I know that 2% is less than inflation but hey it's still up!

[rolf]

Re: My Football Model - Have I Made A Mistake? OK, I think my model is probably OK. I decided to retest my "simulator" for a completely different league. I took Serie A from last season and if you always bet on the favourite then you will yield about -3%. Of course, I am going to tweak various variables but you could even make such a basic system like "always bet on the favourite" just by testing different leagues alone. Now I need to compare year on year data and find the leagues that are the most promising in terms of least volatility....