Sweden is the big favorite to win Eurovision 2012 trading at 2.80 over at the Betfair betting exchange. Russia is the second favorite bettors’ country available for betting at 7.4 followed by Italy, which pays 11 times our wager. More than a million Euros have been traded at the betting exchange 2 days before the Eurovision final on Saturday, proving that betting on music contests is quite popular in sports betting. Is there a way bettors or sports traders to make a profit out of Eurovision 2012?
I suppose there are profitable strategies out there, even for betting on Eurovision! For me it’s all about the Betfair graphs. Coming from relatively successful sports trading at horse racing markets, I occasionally glance over the long-term betting markets of Betfair, trying to find a valuable investment – such as US Presidential Election. The favorite’s odds graph is often the one that gets my attention and I am not the only one, given the huge volume of bets on favorite outcomes of several sport events.
2012 Eurovision features Sweden as the favorite country to take it down in the end. The original Betfair graph isn’t much of a help though, since we can’t make out a lot of details on it, due to some bets having got matched at very long odds (10+). Yet there’s a handy option called “Inverse Axis” and by ticking on the appropriate square, a much more useful odds graph is presented to us. The vertical axis shows the implied % chance calculated by the actual odds – that is dividing 1 by the current odds.
Sweden is currently 35% favorite to win Eurovision 2012 according to the betting odds, in other words the betting market. How efficient is the betting market on a song contest like Eurovision you may ask. I don’t have an answer to that, other than that sports betting’s market is usually quite efficient and we need to look for minor edges. For example, Sweden’s real chance to win Eurovision might be 36% right now and odds may fluctuate between 2.70 – 2.90. Therefore, we need to trade when the odds are close to those limits.
Still, I’m not such a big fan of sports betting rather than [intlink id=”472″ type=”category”]sports trading[/intlink]. And in terms of trading, Sweden’s betting graph shows a clear uptrend – I remind you we are talking about their chance of winning, which means % is increasing, odds are shortening. At this point I wouldn’t trade against Sweden, but actually back Sweden and hopefully make money by trading out at much shorter odds. How short can Sweden’s odds to win Eurovision be? All the way down to 1.01 of course, however there’s still plenty of time for negative news or bad performance to take place and revert the situation.
Let’s say I bet on Sweden at 2.80 and odds shorten down to 2.40. I could now trade out half or all of position and secure a profit, no matter the outcome at Eurovision’s final! Here’s a hypothetical scenario in the image below:
We also need to set a stop loss, in case bad publicity makes the odds drift back up. I would use the double bottom shown in the original graph (32%) which equals with 3.15 odds. Thus, I would lay Sweden and exit my position with a loss. That scenario is shown in the following image:
Yes, sports trading is very much like any other trade you make in [intlink id=”13″ type=”category”]stock markets[/intlink] or [intlink id=”27″ type=”category”]foreign exchange[/intlink]! Betting on Eurovision 2012 is just another instrument available to risk your money, set a stop loss and predict a price movement. It’s just a matter of how good you are in predicting the future, even in a music contest such as Eurovision!