Sports betting is much more than just picking sports teams and players at random to wager on and staking an amount of money on the markets. You need to conduct a certain level of research into the sports events, teams, players, sport and so on. There is a certain amount of statistical analysis required for this too, and we’re going to explain how to use this for sports betting.

Statistical Analysis and Its Necessity

When a sportsbook (like any of the top recommended sports betting sites in South Africa) sets odds for different sports markets, they are not trying to accurately predict the probability of each outcome. Instead, they want to entice bettors in to place an equal amount of wagers on each side, and this guarantees that the operator earns a profit, regardless of the final outcome. After crunching the numbers and predicting the probability of each outcome, the odds are adjusted to generate action on both sides.

Those odds are then set to carry a certain implied probability, and it is this figure that bettors base their wagers on. Yet so that you can become a successful sports bettor, you need to include some of your own statistical analysis. The goal with this is to identify variables which have a strong influence over the outcome of a match and calculate individual probabilities for the markets you intend to bet on. You should then compare the percentages of likelihood against the implied expectations provided in the odds of your chosen sportsbook.

A professional bettor will only place a wager when they consider it to have a positive value. This means that the implied probability from the odds is of a lower percentage than the likelihood of an outcome based on your own statistical analysis. So, this is necessary for you to find out what the best value wagers to place are.

How do you go about putting this in action, though?

Using Statistical Analysis Properly

Generally, statistical analysis in relation to sports betting is also known as regression analysis. This serves as a set of processes used to determine the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. In sports betting, the former of these is winning, while the latter relates to any statistic recorded for the competition. So, this could relate to the number of goals Arsenal has scored in the Premier League season so far, as an example relating to soccer betting.

This means that the way to utilise statistical analysis to your benefit when wagering on sports is to identify those factors with a strong correlation to winning that are not immediately apparent to the general betting public. This can take time and will involve some playing around with data – sometimes large sets of data – but you will likely find it to be rewarding in the end with your sports bets.

A result will have statistical significance when it is unlikely to have taken place if there wasn’t a relationship between the two aforementioned variables. Let’s say, for example, that “number of corner kicks” in soccer plays an influential role in whether a Premier League team wins the season or not. This means you need to find a dataset with a large amount of historical Premier League data included. From that, you would look at how often the team with the higher number of corners awarded also go on to win the Premier League. Depending upon the answer, you would see a percentage of statistical significance.

You can then use that for lots of different factors relating to the sports event(s) you are intending to bet on. This will give you an idea of which variables have an impact on wins and losses, and how strongly they affect such. The more significant something is, the more you can trust it to correlate with a team or player winning.