Weather and betting

Weather – arguably the most under-played sports betting market impacter there is. Why? The answer is simple; until TV cameras show what’s going on, it’s more often ignored as being a factor too many and too unpredictable to be worth acute consideration.

Sports data analysts spend countless thousands of hours crunching the numbers on all kinds of stats – players, form, venues, referees/umpires, crowds etc. etc. and that’s fair enough and can and does more often than not provide for the most likely betting market scenarios. Call it sorting the wheat from the chaff. But that one missing ingredient is weather, yes even that sedate type of weather that doesn’t seem to be a factor, yet it is because it simply means it’s all about the sport rather than heat, cold, rain, snow, wind, humidity etc.

In simple terms, weather impact is ‘out of zone’ when it comes to traders, data analysts and indeed bettors themselves. I ask you, how can Asian football feeds to bookmakers contain everything but weather, when for example a wet football/soccer match lifts the goal scored ratio by an average 0.6 per match, not to mention the +penalty and +cards? Yes we have crunched the weather numbers

I’m not necessarily blaming anyone, 20 years ago there were few if any meaningful intricate stats to be had barring the vary basic stuff. Seriously, weather impact across the sports has yet to come of age and it’s there for the taking.

Very recently I posted on here about the last day at a test match between NZ and SA in Dunedin being a washout, yet even as the soggy pictures came on TV the draw price was still above 1.5 and earlier it had been around 1.9. An amazing interest rate for anyone that might have wanted it!

British Weather Services have crunched the numbers across all sports – and yes the most complex sporting weather impacts are those within football/soccer and the least within cricket, which is why weather is seen as far more vital to cricket markets than it is to football/soccer, yet for the same reason the betting value is to be found across football/soccer. But in truth there are edges, advantages and the downright obvious to be had across all forms of weather impacted sports.