Which Sportsbooks are sharp?
While I believe that every sportsbook’s opinion/lines should be considered when determining the fair value of a given bet, some sportsbooks are better at this than others are. In general, it is best to trust lines that are tight, have high limits, and aren’t overly sensitive to action. These are characteristics of a sportsbook that is confident in the lines that they set. We sought out to find the optimal weighting of each sportsbook in a given market when coming up with our fair market odds to use for Bettorodds, our new line shopping tool. The idea is if two books differ on a market that the one that is “wrong” will be bet into and move towards the book that is “right” and that by the time the game starts most books will be relatively uniform and settled at the right price. We looked at which books had other books move towards their prices and which books were the ones moving towards the others prices to determine which book’s prices should hold more weight. We divided this up by sport and type of wager. The results were pretty in line with expectations but a few things did jump out. Make sure to check out the sportsbook sign up links at the bottom of the article to take advantage of all of the sportsbooks promos and lines available to you.
MLB Main Markets (moneylines/ spreads/ totals)
Sportsbook/ Weight:
Last. BetMgm: 0.937
MLB Secondary Markets (mostly player props)
Sportsbook/Weight:
Last. Kambi: 0.531
NBA Main Markets
Sportsbook/Weight:
Last. Betmgm 0.944
NBA Secondary Markets
Sportsbook/Weight:
Last. Kambi: 0.627
Conclusions
The main markets like I said are pretty in line with reputations - I think the interesting thing to some is how uniform they all are in both sports. No book really stands out and while some are sharper, it is a relatively smooth weighted average not overly used by any one book. Even the top recreation books don’t fall too far behind the sharper ones. The secondary markets tell a different story, Fanduel is a huge standout in MLB with Propbuilder being the only other book above 1.0 weight. Fanduel’s dominance in MLB secondary markets is unparalleled and really interesting. Essentially, if Fanduel stands out early in the day, often times we would see everyone else move to Fanduel rather than the other way around. If you aren’t using Bettorodds weighted average, be careful playing seemingly low EV props on Fanduel for MLB. They may not close +EV. Seeing this has also helped confirm for me that waiting for lineups given Fanduels pinch hit rules (pinch hit counts as action) is the way to go for Dinger Tuesday. Their lines don't move much so there isn't much reason to fire away pre lineups on a given Tuesday. NBA props were more uniform - Circa technically was first but only had 1/20th of the number of markets as the others so it kind of makes sense they would be first (and maybe surprisingly not a bigger gap) as they only post major prop markets (ex. Luka doncic points) and only the ones they are confident in. I do wonder if they would be first if we took out the vast majority of props for everyone else and only included the 5% that Circa has. Regardless, the top 5 are pretty uniform for the NBA with little separation between them.
Speaking of separation, Kambi is a major outlier with MLB and NBA secondary markets. It raises lots of questions (that I discuss on the podcast) with little clear answer as to what they are doing. While every sportsbook that takes any form of action and comes up with their own lines should be considered / have a weight, Kambi’s secondary markets consistently have a lower weight than the rest. I also found it interesting MGM was the worst for mainlines in the NBA and MLB although it wasn’t by all that much.
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