Bettors Who Use Quantitative Models
Bettors who use models as Poisson Distribution, Linear Regression and etc… are benefited by the gigantic data history that these leagues have…
These models need a large amount of data to absorb the necessary information and transform it into real and exact odds for certain events of a specific sport match.
Bookmakers also benefit from this gigantic database… They use this data for their algorithms to price the odds of the events of a match as fairly as possible.
Disadvantages Of Betting On Big Leagues
While extra information about a match can be important for the bettor, the rapid spread of this information in newspapers and news media becomes a disadvantage for the bettor.
With the news spread, other bettors can get ahead of you, besides that the bookmakers are also aware of this news… the oddmakers are also on duty in this aspect, and when they are aware of this news spread quickly add the weights that this information will influence the odds of this match.
With this the odds have moved to the fair, and to get ahead of the market and get +EV this way in the big leagues the bookmaker really has to be very, very fast.
So this becomes a disadvantage when compared to the small leagues, which in turn is perfectly possible to extract information ahead of the other bettors but for that you need to structure yourself and be aware of this information logically.
Advantages Of Working In Small Leagues
The great advantage of working in small leagues is really the ability to extract information that the market doesn’t have.
For example, if a bettor who lives in Brazil works in some or all Brazilian leagues, he will benefit from the possibility to extract information that other bettors and even bookmakers do not have.
Having a structure for this is perfectly possible. Contacts in every part of Brazil providing important information and benefiting from off-field aspects, like for example late salaries, or even if there is a bad atmosphere between the players in the dressing rooms etc…
Betting On National Leagues
As mentioned above in the example about “insider” information extraction…
As small leagues allow perfectly a more qualitative pricing model, the bettor that bets on leagues from his own country can benefit from knowing the teams, so he can make a better interpretation of the available data from that league.
The bettor’s interpretation will determine if he will be able to extract positive expected value (+EV) or not from the market.
Disadvantages
Low Liquidity
Unlike the big leagues, the small leagues have very low liquidity, and this is detrimental in the long run for the bettor.
The low liquidity is a risk reduction that the sportsbooks use because of the low amount of information that they have from these leagues, knowing that there are bettors who have much more important information than it.
Because of this, a reasonable volume of bets on a certain side of a line, the odds of this line will drop sharply… so it is a great disadvantage that the bettor of this league has.
Conclusion
Each bettor should evaluate their goals in sports betting and choose the path that best suits their objectives. The bettor must be aware in which leagues will have more advantages and less disadvantages to act, according to his method of acting.