Many popular European football championships kick off today but gamblers don’t seem patient enough to avoid betting in the first championship games. Odds movements are already taking place in various football matches and liquidity picks up over at the betting exchange of Betfair, meaning that many punters won’t wait to bet online before finding out how teams will start this season. Three Betfair graphs got my attention this morning, all of which show odds shortening. The decline of the betting lines is mainly due to tips available online in favor of Nurnberg and Fiorentina’s wins, although Lokomotiv’s odds decrease is caused by poor Dinamo’s performance.
Nurnberg’s betting odds have been declining since their high at 4.40 printed on the graph of the Bundesliga football game. At the time of writing, punters can back Nurnberg’s win at 3.60 while those who predict a win for Hamburg will get paid more than double their money should the home team comes out as a winner. Online betting tips online in the meantime fail to pick a winner, with half of those tipping a Hamburg’s win and the rest advising a bet on Nurnberg with +0.5 Asian handicap. I guess the relatively high odds of Nurnberg have led quite a few bettors to consider a value bet on the away team and that must have been the real cause of the shortening odds.
Moving on to the Serie A, the trend clearly favors Fiorentina’s win over Udinese. Almost all of the bets have been placed on Fiorentina (143K out of 162K euros) which have also pushed the odds closer to 2.00, a lot lower than the initial price of 2.50. Most tipsters suggest betting against Udinese in their first Serie A game this year versus a much reinforced Fiorentina and given the odds decline, punters seem to follow their advice.
Regarding the Lokomotiv vs Dinamo Moscow game for the Russian Premier League, the shortening odds of Lokomotiv is an effect caused by the 5 consecutive losses of the away team! Dinamo has somehow managed to lose all five games since the start of the football championship in Russia, conceding 11 goals and scoring just one! This poor performance has put Dinamo at the last position of the league, while the Russian team also lost to Stuttgart mid-week in their Europa League’s match. Therefore punters trust Lokomotiv to take advantage of Dinamo players’ bad morale and walk away with a win. Football betting odds have declined to 1.85, offering early backers who bet at 2.00 or above to trade out now securing profits.
