SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The fourth session of this year’s Betting on Football Conference (#bofcon) at Stamford Bridge was focused on data and trading patterns.
It featured Senior Odds Compiler at Super Soccer Jeevan Jeyaratnam, Paolo Personeni of Sportsradar and Nathan Rothschild, Co-Founder of iSport Genius, with the Founder of Sportsbook Training Services Jonathan Smith moderating the ‘Trading Places – How has the availability of data affected trading patterns’ panel.
The performance of Leicester City this season was looked at from a trading perspective with numerous bookmakers standing to lose millions thanks to the team’s mammoth odds (up to 5000-1) at the beginning of the season. Asked whether there needed to be a review of data analysis due this this occurrence Jeyaratnam dismissed this stating that the club’s performance is an anomaly and a blip.
He said: “You can’t go back and entirely reassess how you do things based off 30 odd games, and one season.”
Leicester City’s Head of New Business Mark Davies was in attendance having featured on the morning Club Call panel, and gave a prediction of 50/1 for the Foxes title odds next season.
Jeyaratnam also gave an example of where there exists considerable potential for closer analysis. He referenced the upcoming Macclesfield v Cheltenham match in the Conference and the odds of 4/5 for the away side which have already won the league. He stated: “The ⅘ quote has appeared without anyone looking at it properly.”
Jonathan Smith brought the panel to a close by asking whether bookmakers themselves gain an education from the data received. Rothschild responded by noting that when they began they saw themselves as a B2C company but that this direction was altered after clients came to them asking whether they could supply backend data as opposed to front end. He noted: “The B2B approach came to us as opposed to us going out looking for it.”
This panel was sponsored by TX Odds.
