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One win for the favourite and a rare win for an underdog in the two European football finals from the weekend but no large profits. Depending on when you backed Bayern Munich, you may even have made a small loss with the price on Bayern Munich shortening to odds-on in some places, although Pinnacle closed at around 2.02 and 2.14 was the price I took on Betfair. Here are the numbers updated, and not a pretty sight for those who prefer the underdog in finals: There were 76 knock-out round matches, fewer than the usual 90 owing to the change in format to single elimination in later rounds due to the pandemic.  In the Champions League since 2004, the ROI when backing the favourite is  3.6%  which increases to  7.8%  in Big-5 matches.   Backing the favourite in every knock-out match this season (Champions League and Europa League) had an ROI of 20.2% , and in Big-5 matches, of 40% . (Big-5 in this context means matches featuring clubs from England, France, ...

Slow starts are somewhat magnified this season with just 60 games in total, but finally some signs of life for MLB's Hot Favourites and the systems in total are actually in profit for the season! In the NHL, the trend I mentioned for Unders in empty stadiums has continued with a 40-26-4 record. The books are adjusting the total as might be expected, but for now Unders is the play. With no Home advantage, these playoffs are unique, but I've been looking at the records of Favourites and Underdogs since the league re-structured while ignoring the venue. Historically, backing the Favourite in an NHL play-off game is not a great idea, and actually one that is getting worse by the season. This season appears to be following the same pattern, with 'Dogs currently showing a 15.1%  ROI. I think I've mentioned before that accounting for time zones in this sport can be helpful, with the Eastern Conference often quite different to the Western Conference (teams are geographically c...