The Shrinkflation of Betting Edges - Is Genuine Value Disappearing From Football Markets?

[SharpEddie47]

Spent last month going back through my records comparing edge quality across five-year periods.

2005-2010: average closing line value on my bets approximately 3.2%. Meaningful edge. Consistent.

2010-2015: 2.7%. Still positive. Noticeable decline.

2015-2020: 1.9%. Getting thin.

2020-2024: 1.4%.

The trend is clear and it's been clear for a while. The edges I was finding in 2007 don't exist in 2024. Not because I've gotten worse. Because the market has gotten better.

AI odds compilation. Official real-time data feeds. US institutional money improving European market efficiency. Syndicates operating at larger scale with better models.

The question I'm trying to answer honestly: is there still genuine positive expected value available for a serious retail bettor in football markets or are we past the point where that's realistic.

I don't have a clean answer yet.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The public money edge I've built everything on has compressed.

Not disappeared. Compressed.

2010: fading heavily public-sided games produced strong returns. The gap between public perception and actual probability was large enough to be systematically exploitable.

2024: the gap still exists. The market corrects for it faster and more completely than it used to.

The books have gotten better at pricing public sentiment into their lines before I can act on it.

The opening line that used to sit at -3.5 public favorite in 2010 now opens at -4 because the book has already priced in the public lean.

The edge hasn't disappeared. It's been partially absorbed by the operators before I can reach it.

The window is shorter. The return per bet is smaller. The methodology still works.

For how much longer is the honest question I don't want to answer.

 

[Klaus]

The Bundesliga edge has narrowed but remains.

Specific data: my model's closing line value has decreased approximately 0.8% over the last seven years.

Still positive. The positive return is genuine.

But the trajectory is consistent with Eddie's observation.

The reason in my specific case: Bundesliga data infrastructure has improved dramatically. Stats Perform now provides granular in-play and pre-match data to operators that was unavailable seven years ago.

The information I was ahead of the operators on in 2017 the operators now have access to as standard.

My model compensates partly by going deeper into secondary factors the data providers don't capture.

But the data providers are expanding their coverage continuously.

Every year there are fewer factors they don't capture.

 

[oli_sussex]

From the exchange the efficiency increase was visible in real time.

2012-2015: genuine pricing errors in specific markets. Observable. Exploitable. Consistent source of edge for disciplined traders.

2015-2019: errors becoming rarer. Corrected faster when they appeared. Window to act narrowing from minutes to seconds.

2019-2023: the obvious errors are largely gone from top-flight markets. The remaining inefficiencies require either significantly better data or significantly faster execution than retail bettors have access to.

The exchange premium charge tightened simultaneously with the efficiency increase.

The combination: fewer edges available, smaller margins when found, higher platform costs for consistent winners.

Left the exchange partly because the business case for serious trading was deteriorating structurally.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Not sophisticated enough to have tracked closing line value.

But I've noticed something practical.

The Six Nations prices I get now versus ten years ago. The early prices that used to represent genuine value.

I used to be able to get Wales at prices that looked wrong by the time the match started.

Now when I get what looks like a good early price on Wales it moves toward me immediately.

Sharp money appears within minutes and corrects whatever I thought I'd found.

The correction speed tells you something about how many eyes are on those markets now compared to a decade ago.

 

[SharpEddie47]

Taffy observing the correction speed is the practical measure of efficiency.

The academic definition of an efficient market is one where prices reflect all available information immediately.

Football markets aren't there yet. But the speed at which they approach that state has increased dramatically.

The retail bettor's edge was always in the gap between information existing and prices reflecting it.

That gap has compressed.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The US legalization is underappreciated as a factor in European market efficiency.

2018 onwards: serious American institutional money engaging with European football markets.

European football was relatively inefficient compared to US sports markets partly because the US capital wasn't in it.

Post-PASPA that changed.

Sharp American money is now consistently in Champions League and top Premier League markets.

Markets that were somewhat soft in 2017 have been bet to significantly tighter margins partly because of American capital and modeling sophistication entering them.

The domestic UK market tightened itself. The international market tightened because America arrived.

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

American perspective on the other side of this.

NFL markets are brutally efficient now. Have been for years.

The sophisticated money has been in NFL for decades. The retail edge was always thin and is now essentially non-existent in standard markets.

The NFL prop market exploded as an alternative source of value when the main markets closed up. Then that got efficient too.

The pattern Eddie's describing in football is the pattern that played out in American football years earlier.

What happened to NFL markets is probably the destination for European football markets.

The timeline might be five years or might be ten but the direction is clear.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

I don't find edges so this doesn't affect me the same way.

But I'm wondering about something.

If the serious analytical bettors are finding it harder to find genuine value, and they're the people who make the markets more efficient by exploiting errors...

Does the efficiency increase actually slow down at some point because the edge-finders are less profitable and therefore less active?

The people creating efficiency are being squeezed out.

Probably this doesn't work the way I'm imagining.

 

[oli_sussex]

Princess's intuition has a name. The adaptive markets hypothesis.

Markets are efficient only because participants work to exploit inefficiencies. If all participants abandon the market efficiency breaks down.

In practice: the participants who remain when retail bettors are squeezed out are institutional actors with better technology and data.

The efficiency doesn't collapse because the less sophisticated participants leave.

It increases because the remaining participants are more sophisticated.

The retail bettor's departure doesn't create opportunity. It just means the remaining competition is harder.

 

[Klaus]

The destination question is worth examining directly.

If AI compilation continues to improve and data coverage continues to expand: at what point is there no edge available to a retail bettor regardless of methodology?

My honest assessment: top-flight European leagues may reach that point within five to seven years for standard markets.

Lower leagues, specific market types, and markets with genuine information asymmetry will retain edges longer.

But the trend is not reversible.

The retail bettor serious about positive expected value will increasingly require either specialization in thin markets or access to tools that approach institutional quality.

 

[SharpEddie47]

Klaus's five to seven year estimate for top-flight market efficiency.

I think that's optimistic for the top and pessimistic for the edges.

Champions League and top six Premier League? Already close to uninvestible for retail.

Championship, League One, lower Bundesliga, second-tier European leagues? Still meaningful inefficiency.

The shrinkflation is happening from the top down.

The strategy becomes progressive retreat into thinner markets where the data infrastructure is less developed.

You follow the inefficiency downward until you hit the floor.

The floor exists. It's probably the level where the official data providers don't cover and the liquidity is too thin for institutional money to operate efficiently.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The progressive retreat model is real but has a specific limit.

Thinner markets mean thinner liquidity.

You can find a genuine edge in a Moldovan league match and be unable to get more than £20 on at any price near fair value.

The edge scales inversely with accessibility.

The most inefficient markets are the least useful for anyone betting meaningful amounts.

The market where you can place proper size is efficient. The market where you can't place proper size is inefficient.

That's not a coincidence. That's the structure.

 

[ThePuntingProf]

Thirty years of watching this happen in real time produces a specific perspective.

The edges I found in the early nineties were different in kind not just degree from what's available now.

Genuine pricing errors that persisted for days in some markets. Information advantages from actually knowing people close to clubs. Price discrepancies between different operators that no one had modeled.

Those edges are gone. Have been gone for fifteen to twenty years.

The edges I found in 2005-2010 were different from those. More sophisticated. Required better methodology.

Those edges are substantially gone now.

What remains requires better methodology again.

The pattern repeats. Each cycle of edge requires more sophistication to find and less return when found.

I have kept up with each iteration partly through discipline and partly through thirty years of accumulated pattern recognition.

I don't know how many more iterations I have in me.

At fifty-eight the question of whether the next level of sophistication required is within my reach is one I haven't answered honestly.

 

[SharpEddie47]

Prof naming the thing I've been building toward with the data.

The edge inflation question isn't just "does value still exist."

It's "does value still exist at a level achievable by the version of me that exists now."

Twenty years ago I had more time, more energy, more capacity to develop methodology.

The market is requiring more sophistication at the same time my ability to supply more sophistication is declining.

That convergence has a point of intersection.

I don't know where it is.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Eddie and Prof describing the same thing from twenty years apart.

The methodology having to keep pace with the market.

And the methodology having human limits that the market doesn't have.

 

[DublinDegen]

reading this thread from a different position again...

the edges shrinking doesn't affect me because i never had edges...

what it does do is make the thing even more clearly a losing proposition for anyone without institutional resources...

the serious bettors like eddie and prof are finding it harder...

the casual bettors never had edges to lose...

the only participants who are better off as the market gets more efficient are the operators...

the direction of travel benefits exactly one party in this ecosystem...

 

[FadeThePublic]

Conor stating the conclusion the data points toward.

More efficient markets are better for operators and worse for every category of bettor.

The efficiency the market reaches benefits the house.

We've spent years trying to beat the market as it improves.

We've been helping build something that has one beneficiary.

 

[oli_sussex]

The accurate version of the efficient market story in betting.

Academic efficient market theory: efficiency benefits all participants through better price discovery.

Betting market efficiency: efficiency means the operator captures more of the margin that edges used to generate for sharp bettors.

The efficiency increase has one primary beneficiary and it isn't the retail bettor.

 

[Klaus]

The trajectory is clear.

I continue because the edge remains positive and the methodology remains sound.

The day those two conditions change simultaneously is the day the activity no longer makes sense on its own terms.

I have never been able to determine how far away that day is.

The data suggests it is closer than it was.