What is the most difficult sport to bet on?
When betting on sports, reasonable bettors are guided by many factors, but what motivates people when choosing the sport they decide to bet on? More often than not, they choose their favorite sport and do not think at all about whether it is a difficult sport to bet on. However, many scientists are concerned with this question. Currently, there are three systems for assessing betting difficulty.
What is the most competitive sport?
This system was born out of a scientific paper, “What is the most competitive sport,” that scientists from Los Amos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and the Department of Physics at Boston University published in 2005.
The sports involved in the study were American and English soccer, basketball, baseball and hockey. For the analysis, scientists took the bookmakers’ estimates as the basis, as well as the results: when the favorite won and when the outsider won. Note that the database is unique: it took into account all the figures for the XX century. The most competitive sport was the one in which outsiders won most often.
According to the results, the most competitive sports were English soccer and baseball.
Follow the Money!
This betting difficulty rating system is based on a study of which sports were bet on more in a given year. These are the bets that the bookmakers follow with particular care, so the error factor here is reduced to zero.
According to the 2021 statistics, soccer is in first place with 23% of all bets. Second place is taken by horse racing with 10.3%, followed by basketball and baseball (they have 10% each). Cricket is in fourth place.
Add luck and skill
Michael J. Mobussen wrote the book “The Success Equation: Deciphering Skills and Luck in Business, Sports and Investments,” which is based on digitizing athletes’ skill factors and luck. In this way, he tried to figure out in which sport luck plays a greater role.
As it turned out, championships such as the National Hockey League and the National Football League (American soccer) are more susceptible to luck. The most predictable sports are basketball and chess.
If you combine all three results, you can see that English soccer is in the top two studies. It can be said that the most popular sport turns out to be the most difficult.
However, it should not be forgotten that this study is not a guarantee that you can choose the easiest sport and win. Still, betting is much deeper than that.
