BookieBowl August 2019: Battle of Britain’s High-street Bookies

Welcome to the first round of BookieBowl – where we test the odds of the online bookmakers.

When we say, “test the odds”, we don’t mean whether Ladbrokes offers Liverpool odds of 2/1 to beat Everton, whereas William Hill only offers 5/4.

When we say, “test the odds”, we are interested in how much profit online bookmakers build into their overall odds for any particular match, and across all the matches they cover.

These profits come out of their customers’ accounts – and the job of BookieBowl is to determine which online sportsbook leaves the most profits for you, the sports bettor.

The level of profit bookies build into their odds has several names – overrounds, house edges, the vig, the juice, and a few other wacky terms.

But it all means the same thing – the guaranteed profit the bookmakers build into their odds structures.

If you want to learn more about overrounds, then we encourage you to read this excellent overround primer.

If you are comfortable with the concept of overrounds, and just want to find out which bookie offers the lowest overround (and leaves the most amount of money for their customers), then read on.

Test details

For this first round, we will test the four major high-street brands in the UK, namely: –

• Ladbrokes
• Coral
• William Hill
• Paddy Power

We are going to test these bookies on their football (soccer) odds only, because the reality is that 90%+ of online betting is on that sport. Sorry rugby fans.

We will test the odds across several footballing club competitions which take place in August 2019, namely: –

• English Premier League
• English Football Championship
• Scottish Premiership
• Champions League Qualifiers
• German Bundesliga
• Spanish La Liga
• Italian Serie A
• French Ligue 1

Finally, we will test the odds across several time periods where football betting activity is known to be heavy. These are: –

• Friday evening
• Saturday lunchtime
• Sunday lunchtime
• Midweek

This will allow us to build up a complete picture of how these bookies perform across the whole month.

We won’t test every match in every competition, but try to fit in the big games, as these should attract the most betting action.

With those caveats and conditions out of the way, let’s get started.

1. The Friday Odds Test

Fridays are increasingly used to stage the first Premier League match of the weekend. On this particular Friday, it was the 9^th August, it was the start of a new Premier League season, and a lot of punters were filling in their betting slip for the weekend. It was the perfect time to start testing bookies’ odds.

Please note that only one of these games (Liverpool v Norwich) actually took place on the Friday. The other 4 matches were spread over the Saturday and Sunday – but the odds themselves were captured on the Friday.

2. The Saturday Odds Test

The following Saturday (17th August) we tested these 4 bookies once more. Again, we stuck to the Premier League, with 5 games under the microscope. Tests were carried out around lunchtime, to capture the odds of the early kick-off game (Arsenal v Burnley).

3. The Sunday Odds Test

Sundays are when many of the big EPL matches take place these days, so on 25th August, we tested these 4 bookies for their Sunday odds. To make it interesting, we added games from the Scottish Premiership, English Championship and the German and Spanish leagues.

Tests were carried out around lunchtime, to capture the odds of the early kick-offs.

4. The Midweek Odds Test

Football is often a 7-day-a-week affair these days, with domestic cups, Champions League and Europa League games all fighting for the attention of punters. So our odds tests need to cater for midweek action. On Tuesday 27th August, we examined 5 matches in the League Cup and Champions League qualifiers.

Tests were carried out in the late afternoon.

Final Average Overrounds Table

We added up every overround for each bookmaker, and then divided by 20. This was the final average overround for each bookmaker across the 20 matches.

There is no table associated with this shortcode.

Performance Review

Here’s a detailed view of how each bookmaker performed, with strengths and weaknesses and whether they make the grand final.

Coral

With an average overround of 5.1%, Coral was the most competitive big-brand bookmaker. Coral’s best odds were on the English Premier League, with the lowest overround of 2.69% seen a couple of hours before the Southampton v Liverpool game. Coral’s worst odds came on the same weekend, quoting a 6.53% house edge on the Wolves v Man Utd game. However, this game was played 48 hours after we sampled the odds, so prices closer to kick-off may well have improved. Overall, this was a very solid performance from Coral, and this bookie can be relied upon to keep odds competitive across all football matches. Coral qualifies for the grand final as group winner.

William Hill

William Hill performed solidly, finishing with an average overround of 5.4%. Considering William Hill’s brand awareness – and how little attention it needs to create to get business – that’s not too shabby. The Premier League games had the best value odds. The gap between this bookie’s best and worst overrounds was very narrow – 3.78% on Liverpool v Norwich and 6.45% on Rosenborg v Dinamo Zagreb. If you bet on football at William Hill, you can be comfortable that you will rarely be receiving bad odds. William Hill qualifies for the grand final as group runner-up.

Ladbrokes

Since 2016, Ladbrokes and Coral are part of the same group. But the overrounds at Ladbrokes are – on average – almost 1% worse than those at Coral. This was true on most individual games, with Coral having more attractive odds on 15 of the 20 games tested. Admittedly, Ladbrokes did outperform Coral on a couple of League Cup games – but that doesn’t make up for the consistently poorer odds on the Premier League. Since these two brands are under the same umbrella, it doesn’t make sense to bet with Ladbrokes when you can lose almost 1% per less betting with Coral. There’s no trip to the Grand Final for this bookie – better luck next year.

Paddy Power

I love Paddy Power’s daring marketing campaigns, so I really wanted this bookie to do well here. So, I was hugely disappointed by the awful odds on offer at Paddy Power. An average overround of 7.314% is ludicrous, with particular low lights being the Wolves v Man Utd (9.07%) and Leipzig v Frankfurt (8.33%) matches. But Paddy Power saved the worst til last. The final game of the test – an attractive cup tie between Leeds and Stoke – was slapped with a 10.53% house edge. Based on this data, anyone betting on football with Paddy Power is going to lose a lot of their bankroll unnecessarily. Paddy Power finishes bottom, receiving the wooden spoon, and may well not be invited back next year.