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While researching backing the Draw, I stumbled across a blog that seems to no longer be active, called Sport DW written by Ian. It's one of the better written blogs out there, with a statistical angle which I like, but it hasn't been updated for about two years which isn't a good sign. What caught my eye was a post from about seven years ago, which claimed that "If we look at the past three completed seasons in the Premier League, we can see how blindly backing the draw can be particularly profitable:" Evidence in the form of a table is then shown, with the three EPL seasons from 2010-13 shown: Ian clarifies that: "The figures are based on placing �10 on the draw in every Premier League match over the course of a season. As we can see, you would have won money in two out of the three seasons, with the overall profit for the three year period being an impressive �668.90, which represents a 5.87% return on your initial stakes." Unfortunately where the odd...

While there have been few Draws in the EPL since the hiatus, we did find two more winners this weekend in the "Close" and "Toss-Up" categories, although the official 2.95 for Burnley v Sheffield United was the shortest Draw price of the season. Above are results since the return, and below overall for the season to date: The Total line is for all seasons from 2000-01. It's also good to see that Pinnacle's over-round since the break has dropped slightly to 102.6% and note that the results above are adjusted to a 103% over-round and as a consequence are slightly worse than would be achieved in practice. I also finished off the numbers for Ligue.2 this season, and they are presented below: The problem with this league is that the average Draw price is so low. Overall the average price is 3.29, but in Close and Toss-Up matches it is just 3.05. In the EPL since 2012, the respective averages are 4.28 and 3.34.  While the percentage of matches ending in a Draw is c...

With 101 games remaining to be played, the French authorities decided to call it a season for Ligue 1 and unlike other leading countries decided not to go down the 'empty stadium' path. Of the top five leagues in Europe, Ligue 1 is traditionally the lowest scoring, and this season was no exception with an average per game of 2.52 goals and, in complete contrast to Germany, Away teams averaged their lowest total since 2010-11 with just 1.03 goals per game. Away teams in Bundesliga.1 averaged 1.55 goals per game this season, the highest of the top leagues since at least 1993-94 where my records go back to. As a result, the Away win percentage at 37.58% was also the highest. Low goal scoring of course means a higher probability of the game being a Draw, but in Ligue 1 the markets are aware of this. Twenty matches actually had the Draw priced at shorter than 3.0 this season, generally not a profitable range but this season you would have made 0.68 units profit. Of the 26 qualifiers...