Build a Sports Betting Model

Did you know that many professional sports gamblers win approximately 58%-59% of the time?

While barring these bettors from your bookie business is a good idea, it’s important that you prepare for the possibility of contending with knowledgeable players. Creating and implementing a stats-based sports betting model is the only way to maintain your house edge and continue to make a steady profit.

But what is a sports betting model? How can you set one? Read on to answer these questions and learn how to make accurate projections.

What Is a Sportsbook Model?

A sports betting model is a method of forecasting the probability of a specific outcome of a sporting event.

You will create a quantified list of all possible outcomes that showcase which are more likely to take place and which are less likely. A sports betting model aims to understand various sports betting possibilities and statistically understand which are most likely to result in a payout. It’s metrics-based and far more accurate than simply guessing based on previous individual scores.

The Purpose of Gathering Sports Gambling Statistics

Players often use a sports betting model to identify profitable opportunities in sports betting. As a bookmaker, understanding this model will help you to find where you should limit betting. If a bet has a high probability of winning, you can limit the amount that players might put down on this team or player.

Sports betting lines also can help bookies like you to determine the favorite vs the underdog in any given match. This means that you can give players that work with your sportsbook more accurate information prior to placing bets. Players will feel more confident working with you rather than competitors since you’ve done your research and have more data-backed information available to them.

Define Objectives for Your Sports Betting Model

Setting limits and betting lines are great endgames for setting a sports betting model, but you will need to determine other short-term objectives as well. Some possible goals might include:

  • Gauging the potential of all sporting event participants.
  • Comparing this potential with that of opposing teams to determine a data-backed probable outcome.
  • Find the average outcome of all given games and events for a team or player.
  • Create a point of reference that you can compare all teams against.
  • Understand how much value a team or player has in the betting market.
  • Project how much money you’ll make from bettors during a given event or season.
  • Identify opportunities that most players wouldn’t consider so that you heighten your house edge.

Clearly define your specific goals on paper or in a digital document. This will give you something concrete to work toward. You won’t stumble blindly through the betting model generation process with no intended outcome.

Understand Probability Theory

Before setting a betting model, it’s also important that you understand the fundamentals of probability theory. It treats the idea of probability as a mathematical equation and expresses these probabilities via axioms. These hypotheses are simply propositional statements that are self-evidently true based on numeric data.

While you can probably develop a decent predictive model with basic math, it’s going to be no match for seasoned bettors. To become a true sportsbook behemoth, you’ll need to learn as much as you can about probability theory and develop betting models with its principles. This lets you manipulate numbers in new and interesting ways so that you can take unique chances on your sportsbook website.

Collect Quantifiable Data

At this point, you have all of the knowledge that you need to create multiple sports betting models. It’s time to put this knowledge into practice and collect numeric information about teams, players, events, and plays.

Think about what you’re looking to quantify so that you can meet your predetermined objectives. Go to the websites of those teams as well as to common sports score-tracking sites. Collect any information that you see on these teams from reputable sources and jot them all down into a digital document (like an Excel spreadsheet).

Make sure that sports betting data are recent and accurate. This means looking at dates and confirming information by looking at multiple sources. You also want to make sure that you use data that you have a full understanding of- if you can’t interpret data, you can’t use it to create a sports betting model.

Tracking Statistics 

One underrated thing to the casual observer is how important statistics are to a successful sports betting model. This is because you need facts to base your model on, and numbers do not normally lie. 

Once you track enough statistics and takedown data, you can go further with those numbers and look for weaknesses that you can exploit. 

An even easier way to do this is by using those numbers to create an algorithm that can show you those weaknesses for you. 

The next question you might have is, what statistics you should be tracking specifically? Well, the answer is everything that you can think of. 

Keep track of records, home and away wins, how teams do with a certain amount of turnovers, a certain amount of innings pitched, a certain amount of field goals made, etc. 

You need to give yourself the most opportunities possible to take advantage of a possible strength or weakness that one side of the betting action has. Once you discover what is happening with statistics, you can use part or all of your model to exploit that and profit. 

Statistics help you discover the strengths and weaknesses of one side of a bet by getting into our next topic, trends. 

Noting Trends 

Statistics pay off a lot by giving you the ability to track trends that provide you with certain evidence that teams or players have a track record of being on one side or the other of a bet. 

Let’s use the NFL as an example. In 2021, the Dallas Cowboys had the best record against the spread of any team in the NFL at 13-5. 

This means that the Cowboys covered 13 of the 18 spreads in that season, which is 72.2%. Considering that the average bettor is lucky to reach 52.4% of their bets to break even, that would be a great trend to take advantage of to get a little ahead of the game. 

Another example is trying to bet on the over/under. A lot of public money likes to go on the over. But you should look at every angle when it comes to this. 

That is because, in 2021, you could have taken great advantage of some teams that just could not score many points. That would be the Denver Broncos, who went under their game point totals in 12 of 17 games during the 2021 season. 

So, if you followed that trend throughout the year, you would have hit the under over 70% of the time. 

Keeping up with these trends allows you to set targets for what games you want to bet on in the near future and what specific bets you are going after. Finding one trend in a category can also help you discover more teams that may be on one side or another of a trend there. 

Being Adaptable 

Knowing your statistics and noting the trends associated with them are a great start to building your model, but things will not always go smoothly. You may be able to take advantage of a trend for a while, but these sportsbooks know what they are doing as well. 

See; eventually, they will figure out where they are losing money within a sport or even within a team. That is because they have their own data and algorithms that keep track of all of this. 

What this means for you is that once sportsbooks catch on, they will adjust the lines they put out when it comes to that trend to try and make it more difficult for a bettor to take advantage of this. 

It is important to realize when this happens and know when to walk away from a trend. You will need to pay attention to the lines closely, and if you think something looks off, you will have to walk away. 

A perfect example is if the Broncos above usually had point totals between 40-42 in their games. Then, once the sportsbooks catch on to them going under, they might move their lines down to the 36-38 range. 

Sure, they could be playing an equally bad-scoring team that might draw that total down for one game. However, if it becomes a trend, that is the sportsbooks adjusting to the situation and making it more difficult for you to capitalize on this. 

Know the Public 

Some sharp sports bettors have a very simple strategy of fading the public. There is a good reason for this, considering that very few bettors actually make a profit from sports betting. 

So, you can build a model by tracking what the public bets on certain games and then going in the opposite direction. 

One example might be the Kansas City Chiefs during the first half of the 2021 season. At first, they struggled and were sitting around .500, but the public loved them and placed a lot of bets on them. 

However, that could have been a time to take a stand against the public and bet against them. They did not cover many of those games early in the season. 

Another example would be in the 2021 SEC Championship between Georgia and Alabama. This was one of the most one-sided handles ever, with Georgia receiving 94% of the bets in this game. 

They were undefeated at the time, and Alabama looked lackluster in their prior game against Auburn, barely squeaking out a win that went through multiple overtimes. 

However, the Crimson Tide recovered here, and despite only receiving 6% of the bets, they not only covered the spread as an underdog, but they won the game outright by multiple possessions. 

Sometimes, the public is guilty of hopping on a hot team such as Georgia or fading a cold team such as Alabama at that time. However, the sharp bettors take note of this and consider it a potential opportunity to cash in. 

Know how the public perceives certain teams because the sportsbooks will certainly make lines around that. If you have a solid idea of how that works, then you can make some serious money. 

Test Your Model 

So, you looked at the statistics, caught the trends, perceived what the public wants to do in certain games, and are prepared for the worst. Now, what do you do? 

The answer is you have to test your model out. At the end of the day, no model is perfect, and you will have to go through trial and error to make sure that you have the right model for successful sports betting. 

Track all of the data that you collect with this, and you are going to have to try this several times before you know for sure if your ideal model works. 

Doing this allows you to either confirm that your original model theory was correct or allows you to discover the possible flaws that your model has before you lose serious money by deciding to go all-in with it. 

Testing this consistently will also make you better at analyzing the data associated with it. That will let you discover quicker what you are doing right and wrong. 

Suppose it ends up being wrong or not being able to make a consistent profit. In that case, that knowledge on the analysis could give you an alternative idea to either make a new model for sports betting profit or tweak your original one. 

Create Projections

Sports Betting Model Infographic

Once you have all the relevant data, you can then begin constructing your model. You generally will use a power rating model to make this happen. Power ratings for bets simply refer to the quality of the target team vs the league average.

Based on this rating system, you can calculate the expected points for your target team at both home and away games. 

You will need to find the offense rating and defense rating first. Then you can average them together for the total rating. Do this for both home and away games since many teams perform differently in varying locations.

You can then convert total ratings into expected points. Multiply your total rating with the league average points to get this metric. You then are ready to find the win probability of your team by comparing the team’s expected points to all opposing teams’ expected points.

Integrate Probabilities Into Your Sportsbook

You can then integrate these statistics into your pay-per-head (PPH) sportsbook. It’s fairly easy to come up with lines based on these metrics. You should be able to easily compare favored teams with underdogs.

It also is simple to figure out where you’ll want to restrict betting to smaller sums. However, implementing these restrictions can be a challenge. If you’re unsure of how to do this, talk with our experienced agents on our 24-hour hotline for immediate help.

Get Started With Pay-Per-Head Services

While setting a sports betting model can be a challenge, it’s critical if you want to be a successful agent. Now that you know how to set one of these models, it’s time to get started.

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