Here’s Martin with his article on how betting lines can help inform your fantasy football picks
How analysing betting lines can help inform your fantasy football picks
When it comes to fantasy football, everyone’s looking for an edge. Whether it’s through deep research into each fixture of the week or even just looking at the top tips articles, we all need to be fully informed of our players each week. There is, however, a very quick and very easy way to get a good view of each game without doing any real research yourself. Every week, the bookies will put out odds for match outcomes, goal scorers, bookings, corners, wins to nil; everything – all of which can be translated into fantasy football tips.
One form of fantasy sports that has utilised this method of research for a very long time is the daily fantasy sports. In the USA, daily fantasy sports are wildly popular and have an inordinate amount of resources dedicated to players who want to know everything about the upcoming week in their fantasy sport, with the most popular being fantasy NFL. When it comes down to it, fantasy sports are taken a lot more seriously in the USA so they tend to know exactly how more casual players in the UK can improve their game. The method that we’re going to explore is that of analysing betting lines.
Fantasy American players know how it’s done
🏈 #FantasyFootball 🏈
Penn State RB Miles Sanders
Height: 5-10 5/8
Weight: 211
Hand: 9 2/8
40 Yard Dash: 4.49 (80th percentile)
Agility Score: 11.08 (82nd)
SPARQx Score: 120.3 (75th)#PennState #PSU#DLFDevy #DLFDynasty#NFL #NFLDraft #Fantasy #Football#NFLCombine #Rankings pic.twitter.com/dEFSlhNZ6A— Pete Lawrence (@_PeteLaw) April 3, 2019
When it comes to fantasy sports tactics, a lot can be extrapolated from the USA version. Daily fantasy sports are incredibly popular, very competitive, and potentially very lucrative, so players explore every avenue to get ahead. One of their most used methods is analysing betting lines. It’s said that “betting lines are a vital factor to consider when building your lineup” because the oddsmakers are experts in making predictions and then relaying the likelihood of an instance occurring. They may not always be correct but they’re rarely far off. The importance of injuries is further detailed, as it can change the entire approach of the team. Luckily, without doing a huge amount of research, bookies can reveal who is the most likely to come into the squad as well as how much of an impact that change has on the team’s chances of winning a game.
When it comes to building your lineup in daily fantasy sports, it’s integral to consider the opponent. They say that it’s best to use players more reliable week-to-week than potential big players and odds will relay that same sentiment, with consistent scorers – for example – getting shorter odds to score in each game. In fantasy American football, altering the line-up each week is crucial because of unfavourable match-ups, which is why “start them, sit them” advice articles are so crucial. But, as fans know from the Premier League, match-ups are not as cut and dry as the NFL’s offence versus defence; it’s 11 versus 11 for 90-plus minutes, with upsets like Liverpool’s unexpected and high scoring win over Manchester City occurring quite regularly over the course of the season.
What we can take from the pros across the pond
American football and soccer are very different sports. American football is played in distinct phases of offence versus defence, with a few targets who do the scoring while the ball is actually in play for around 11 minutes per game. In football, you get over 90 minutes of the ball constantly being in play and almost all players on the field having a chance to score. Set pieces allow players not traditionally associated with goals, such as defenders, to get up the field and have a chance at goal, whereas in the NFL, it’s most commonly the quarterback passing to a wide receiver, sometimes a tight end, or allowing the running back to rush into the end zone. This means that calculating who exactly will score in football a bit more difficult, especially as there are fewer scoring plays in football as opposed to American football. Nevertheless, the odds presented by the bookies can be utilised to get a good view of what’s to come in the games ahead.
You can start by looking at which team is expected to win on the match result betting line. Teams need to score goals to win games. Thus, the more heavily favoured they are to win, the more goals they’re expected to score. From there, you can go into the odds for anytime goal scorers to see which players are the most likely to score according to the calculations of the oddsmakers. However, there is a slight hitch to this, as many oddsmakers have a system of enforcing a set split in odds between top strikers down to defenders. So, you may not actually be seeing the true likelihood of, let’s say, a Tottenham centre-back to score even if they have a huge height advantage over the opposition’s players – which would make them a big corner threat. But, other factors will have been considered, such as a team’s history of conceding or scoring on set pieces. Another good area to look into is the player bookings market. Because yellow and red cards result in minus points in most fantasy football formats, it can be very useful to see who the bookies anticipate committing fouls in the game – especially in big derby games or contests between two relegation rivals. Tensions flare, and the bookies know exactly which players have a short fuse or are bad tacklers.
So, there you have it, utilise the methods shown by the daily fantasy sports players in the west and analyse the betting lines to get a quick, expert view of which players to pick for your fantasy football team.
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