Sports bettors are always looking to develop or advance their game in such a way that they improve their chances of beating the house and gaining profits from their choices.
Within the broad sports betting realm, one can find a number of different strategies, approaches, tactics, and practices that generally promise to increase bettors’ yields and increase their success rate. Such strategies can range from particular staking tactics to bankroll management practices and from following certain tipsters to developing a consistent approach to wagering.
Favorite betting has emerged as one of the most prominent pre-game and live sports betting strategies in the past few years. With the advancement of technology, the development of digital systems and the birth of AI and big data capabilities, making robust statistical analysis has become a relatively easy thing to do even for inexperienced individuals.
Now everyone can gain access to records and analyze big chunks of data in order to identify patterns, explore cause-and-effect relationships and develop forecasting models. Based on such subsequent analysis and statistical evidence from various studies, the win rates of favorites at the aggregate level and across sports are generally found to be very high. In simple words, the favorites get to win the underdogs at a rate that might be really meaningful to bettors.
That’s how favorite betting has emerged as a popular sports wagering strategy. Overall, backing the favorite in any sports game or event is a low-risk approach, which in the long run can provide betting sustainability. But the payouts are significantly lower, given that favorites by definition come with lower odds – that’s true for every existing and new bookmaker such as the ones at Apostasdesportivas.tv– and therefore the potential profit is much less compared to the underdogs. Bookmakers and sportsbook betting sites will always present more attractive and appealing odds for the outsiders particularly because the estimated chances are lower and also because they want to attract wagers on this side of the bet as well.
Betting on the favorite, therefore, under the right circumstances, is a viable and sometimes the optimal strategy because it can reduce long-term potential losses or increase the likelihood of long-term profits. But it is not the holy grail of online sports gambling nor is it a recipe for success.
Favorite betting should be made as per fit. This means that it should be regarded as a good option only when it makes sense. When does it make sense? Well, this depends on several factors, but it appears that the most crucial one is the sport itself.
Favorites’ win rates vary across sports. That’s kind of natural, given that some sports are far less predictable than others, some are extremely fluid and volatile and some are so multi-factor games that the favorite’s chances of winning are actually relevant in the pre-game odds.
Some sports have high win rates of favorites, so it makes sense to consider favorite betting as the predominant strategy. Tennis, football, F1, and cricket are sports that are volatile and dynamic, yet they tend to produce respectively more wins for the favs compared to other sports. Having a high win rate of favs, of course, is not a guarantee that favorite betting will certainly pay off, but it makes the situation more ‘favorable’!
On the other hand, sports like NFL, baseball, MMA, and golf are more unpredictable in their game outcomes. The win rates of underdogs increase much and that’s why we get to have far more frequent upsets in these sports. In some cases the win rates of outsiders are impressively high, explaining why too often punters find it hard to get good odds for longshots.
That said, the most important thing that every bettor should have in mind is that one strategy can never fit all. Favorite betting is a good option but for particular sports and under particular circumstances.
For example, as we said earlier, tennis generally has a very good record of favs win rates – in fact, it has amongst the highest records compared to all other sports – but even here, these rates can vary from tour to tour. For example, Grand Slam favorites get to win more often than any other ATP tour favorites. This makes favorite betting not necessarily the suitable strategy if you want to bet on an ATP match. Bettors need to consider both the sport and the league or the particular event on which they want to place their wagers.