Leading bookmakers are facing the prospect of profit warnings in the next few weeks following heavy losses on football since the start of a Premiership season that until yesterday had seen just four draws – the bookie’s favourite result. Bookmakers would expect an average about one in four of the 66 matches played until yesterday to have ended in draws, which would enable them to clean up because of punters’ preference for betting on wins.
Leading bookmakers are facing the prospect of profit warnings in the next few weeks following heavy losses on football since the start of a Premiership season that until yesterday had seen just four draws – the bookie’s favourite result. Bookmakers would expect an average about one in four of the 66 matches played until yesterday to have ended in draws, which would enable them to clean up because of punters’ preference for betting on wins. Bookmakers have also been hit by a run of wins by the Premiership’s leading and most heavily backed clubs, although yesterday’s draw between Manchester United and Sunderland should have helped them. With good reason, some bookmakers are wondering whether the shortage of draws reflects a change in on pitch strategy. Clubs may be thinking that going all out for the win is likely to yield more points over the course of a season than playing conservatively for a draw. The betting industry’s anxiety about the unusual pattern of results reflects the shift in gambling patterns away from horse racing towards football. Football offers the attraction of quirky bets such as the number of corners or the time of the first goal scored in a game.
Normally more than a quarter of the matches in the Premiership end in draws. Yet a fifth of the way into the season, only 6 per cent have been drawn. Sports economist Stefan Szymanski says, ‘That difference is statistically significant. It is not random.’ In no other western European league this season has the proportion of draws dropped below 20 per cent. In part, the decline in draws is owing to the Premiership’s growing wealth gap. Five big clubs are so much stronger and richer than the others that they usually win easily. Until United’s surprise result yesterday, none of these teams had drawn a game this season. The wealth gap is also evident in a goal rush: the Premiership is averaging 2.97 goals a game, the most in 41 years.
However, the wealth gap only partly explains the drop in draws. The other reason is probably the entry of number crunchers into football. Increasingly, Premiership clubs employ performance directors or statisticians who quickly noted that playing for a draw doesn’t make sense. A side drawing a match with 20 minutes remaining has a strong incentive to take risks and play to win. If it can convert one potential draw out of three into a win, fail to change the second draw, and turn the third draw into a defeat, it will have four points from three games. Three draws would only bring it three points. It is hardly complex maths, but such sums were rarely made in a game run mostly by men who did what they did because they had always done in that way.
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