As the Premier League 2024/25 season has got underway, alongside the bulk of club competitions across Europe, a mini-betting boom gets underway as punters try to get to grips with the new season. You can see evidence of this not just in betting volumes but on social media platforms, where there is an increasing focus on advanced statistics to integrate into betting strategies.
The point, as such, is that bettors increasingly understand that there is a world of data out there that can help them strategize better than ever before. Of course, none of this should be surprising. Knowledge has always been power in betting. Yet, the types of metrics and tools we have available have evolved a lot recently. It’s not just sports betting either. Consider how slot games have changed, with social gaming platforms like Sports Millions now publishing “volatility” ratings for each game on that platform, allowing players to make informed decisions before playing.
xG Has Transformed Our Perception of Performance
Arguably the best example of an advanced betting metric is the xG system in soccer. Sometimes sneered at by traditional fans as a kind of boffins’ statistic, xG is a calculation of how many goals a team ‘should’ have scored in a game. Of course, it also opens up other statistics, such as xGA, i.e., how many goals a team should have conceded. Individual players, too, will have xG data published.
Bettors should immediately see how useful xG data can be, especially as the data sets grow across the course of a season. They can tell us more than basic win-draw-lose tables. In essence, they can tell us when a team has been unlucky or when a team is getting better results than their play suggests. In short, it can help you find betting value.
Of course, using xG is not foolproof. It is only one element of a statistical strategy, and not everyone agrees with the method used to produce it. But there are other advanced statistical strategies that can be used, including (for soccer) expected assists (xA), Zone 14 control (how often a team reaches the position outside the opponents’ box), field tilt (total final third passes), and so on. Other sports will, of course, have their own metrics, including PER (player efficiency ratings) in NBA games.
The question, however, is what to do with all that data. Certainly, you can glance at an xG table and see that a team is better than what the ‘real’ standings say. However, the data could – and should – also be contrasted with the available betting odds. The point is to pinpoint value where the sportsbooks’ odds don’t match up with the underlying talents of a particular team or athlete.
AI Bots Can Help Us Understand Data
You can also go further. For the vast majority of us, complex algorithms are out of reach – but we now have AI bots that can formulate those strategies for you. ChatGPT and similar bots are not – contrary to some social media boasts – going to deliver winning betting strategies in a vacuum, but they can formulate data sets if you feed them the correct information.
Betting, overall, has become a lot more statistics-based on the customer side. If you consider the huge rise in popularity of bet builders, AKA same game parlays (SGPs), most expert bettors are focusing on player props, such as passing yards and rushing yards in American football or shots on target and fouls committed in soccer.
This shift towards a more data-driven approach in betting highlights a broader trend in how bettors engage with the games they love. As more advanced metrics become accessible, punters are no longer just relying on gut feelings or simplistic statistics. They are integrating complex data points into their strategies, which, in turn, is transforming how bets are placed.
However, the challenge remains in how to effectively harness this wealth of information. While advanced metrics provide deeper insights, they also require a sophisticated understanding of the sport and betting markets to be truly effective. Bettors must strike a balance between using these tools and maintaining a strategic approach, recognizing that data alone won’t guarantee success. No matter how much effort you put into it, a player can always inexplicably miss an open goal, or a team can simply implode. But, in the bigger picture, using statistics can give you a bigger advantage.
