One the key aspects of sports trading I try to teach my members with the X-Club is the importance of knowing the markets. As a trader its quite easy to fall into the trap of complacency once you have developed a successful strategy.

In almost a decade of professionally trading the betting exchanges I have witnessed some dramatic shifts in the markets, with margin’s being eroded all the time.

Take the under/over 2.5 goals market at half-time in a game that is say 1-1, 2-0 or 0-2, the price of the over 2.5 goals 7 seasons ago would hardly be below 1.35 at half-time.

It would be rare that the same market would ever go over 1.35 at half-time, the vast majority of Premier League games settle in the 1.25 – 1.33 range at half-time. In some matches it can reach 55 minutes or even higher before the price hits what you would have seen in the early days of the betting exchanges.

Betfair revolutionised the in-play markets on football in my opinion and the bookmakers caught on to the growing trend that punters wanted to bet in-play. The introduction of bookmakers prices have forced the price of these markets down over recent seasons and the odds that we see now available are more a reflection of the true odds.

We now have a number of under/over goals markets available and depending on the score the all reflect a similar price on their being another goal scored in the second half.

The table below represent the Premier League (all 380 matches) the overall percentage of those matches which had at least 1 goal in the second half. This percentage has been coverted into odds to reflect the true odds each season of a goal being scored in the 2nd half.

The Premier League

Over the past 7 season an average of 76% of all Premier League matches has seen 1 or more goals scored in the 2nd half meaning the break-even odds are 1.32.

The New Football Season

My doors have once again opened in the X-Club for new traders to join the community, over the close season I have been tweeking our existing strategies on football to ensure that we maintain the margin within the markets.

I am also introducing 4 brand new ‘beta’ strategies that we will discuss in our live trading room, we did this last season and found a couple of gems that was added to the manual, hopefully one of these will reach the standard that is needed to make it into the X-Traders Manual

To find our more about the X-Club then head over to Pro X Trading

Good luck with your trading this season

Matt Finnigan