SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Oddschecker has published its betting review of the 2020/21 Premier League season, revealing that bet365 led the clickshare rankings table with 17.9% of on-site clicks.
The Stoke-on-Trent-based operator’s footballing success mirrors its achievements at the Cheltenham Festival earlier this year, where Oddschecker announced it had generated 19.4% of all betslip clicks.
However, despite topping the Premier League clickshare table, Dennis Coates’ company did see its overall number of clicks fall from the previous season, where it achieved 19.9%.
In comparison, BetVictor and SkyBet both saw their clickshare percentages increase, from 9.1% to 10.6% and 7.7% to 8.4% respectively.
Meanwhile, Betfair Sportsbook was the only platform to experience a fall in clicks from 8.6% in the 2019/20 campaign to 7.3% this season, dropping from fourth to fith place and being overtaken by William Hill at 8.4%.
However, the Flutter Entertainment brand did offer customers longest average odds for winning accumulators out of the top five operators, with the winning accumulator for the 1×2 results of the average gameweek given odds of 47,787/1.
Fellow Flutter brand Paddy Power offered the widest average price on Premier League 1×2 markets at 106.9%. By contrast, tight pricing by Vbet helped it into the top 10 for clickshare with 3.8%, up from the previous year’s figure 1.2%.
Lastly, with regards to the bookmakers, SBK gave wagerers an average over-round of 100.9%, representing the best value for punters over the course of the season.
Oddschecker itself saw a 57% increase in affiliated registrations against the 2019/20 figures, in addition to a 15% increase in Premier League bets placed via the platform and an 8% increase in the volume of stakes.
The site’s nine integrated partners – bet365, Sky Bet, William Hill, Betfair, betway, BetVictor, Paddy Power, BoyleSports and SpreadEx – saw a 54% increase in turnover.
For the punters, the review revealed that those backing the favourites were more likely to be disappointed at the conclusion of the campaign, albeit with some notable exceptions.
Manchester City was both the favourite to win the league as well as the team most backed by bettors on Oddschecker, whilst Harry Kane scored 23 goals throughout the entire season, being the ante-post favourite for top goalscorer of the season.
However, the favourite team won in only 51.6% of all matches, the least amount of times a favourite has won since the 2015/16 season – the year Leicester City famously defied the bookmakers to win its first ever Premier League title – and the second lowest total since 2013/14.
This was good news for bookmakers, as the 2020/21 total fell short of the average winning favourite percentage of 54.8% due to the ‘Big Six’ teams putting on a less dominant display than usual.
For example, Liverpool’s string of injuries to key players meant that the team won 12 less fixtures than last season, subsequently delivering diminished returns to punters, whilst Manchester City experienced shock defeats to Aston Villa, Brighton & Hove Albion and Leeds United.
This means that if punters wagered £10 on Liverpool and Manchester City to win in every game this season, they would see a loss of £56.53 and £27.59 respectively.
In comparison, Aston Villa and West Ham United – both of whom performed much better than anticipated, with the latter earning a spot in the Europa League – would generate profits of £169.60 and £100.70 respectively.
The overall favourite-to-win ratio remained in favour of the operators, dropping to as low as 34% in October against the long-term average of 56%, and ‘generally stayed below the long-term average line’ due to the aforementioned struggles of the ‘Big Six’ clubs.
Rounding off the report, Oddschecker shared predictions for the coming season, with Manchester City once again the favourite at 4/6, whilst newly-promoted Norwich City were given odds of 1/1 to face immediate relegation back to the EFL Championship.
The Flutter-owned platform also offered odds for the UEFA 2020 European Championship, giving England an 11/2 chance of clinching the title for the first time, whilst 2018 FIFA World Cup winners France remain favourites at 5/1.
