How do you analyze football betting trends to develop winning predictions?

When it comes to using football betting trends for predictions, there is a lot of advice around this topic and most of it is riddled with contradictions. While most betting experts say that trends are important parts of football betting strategy, others say that they are useless.

However, no rule says you must do away with trends completely or any that says they must be a set part of football prediction. You can predict football matches without using trends and at the same time trends can be valuable for your predictions if used effectively.

Most bettors depend on trends to make betting decisions, they analyze relevant data to find trends they can use to their advantage. And this method has been working for them.

But, these bettors don’t make predictions or wagers entirely on the trends they identify. They use them as an additive to other information they have, as one part of their sports betting process. 

All this being said, in this article, we discuss how to use football betting trends to develop winning predictions. We also explain how to analyze them for predictions, and everything else you should understand about this topic.

Check out: Using Statistics For More Accurate Football Predictions

Article Content:

1. What are football betting trends?
2. Types of football betting trends
3. How to analyze football betting trends to develop winning predictions 
4. How to use football betting trends to develop winning predictions 

Football betting trends are patterns in past football events that can be used by bettors or a Prediction Site to predict the outcome of a future event. 

Trends may represent the direction an entity is headed or how it is developing. Such information can be valuable when you make game picks.

Monitoring developments in public betting trends is also an essential tool professional handicappers use to find value in every pick. They examine what makes a line move and see where the majority is putting their money for a particular game.

There are various types of football betting trends you can use to analyze data for better insights before predicting the result of an event.

There are different types of football betting trends, which can be found in all areas of football. But, the two we mentioned below are the main types.

Situational trends are based on specific situations. To identify these types of trends, study past results and find out if any patterns link performances and results to a particular occurrence.

In situational trends, you’re getting information that’ll help you understand the possibility of a team performing a certain way in a situation. Taking a straightforward approach is better. 

There are some situational trends you can reveal by simply analyzing data that is easy to acquire. These are a few examples of the data you should be looking at:

• Home record against stronger teams
• Home record against weaker teams
• Record when travelling far distances
• Record after significant losses
• Record after big wins
• Record after a bye week.

By collecting this data, what you’ll have on your hands is an effective tool for making insightful betting decisions and accurate football predictions.

Situational trends help you accurately consider the likelihood of an outcome occurring. They are not the only factor to consider, but they can be useful when combined with other factors.

Betting trends for Football Prediction are entirely dependent on the amount of money you stake with bookmakers and betting sites. 

These trends are more important than they appear, even if they don’t directly divulge what will happen on the field.

These types of football betting trends, answer two vital questions:

What Are The Majority Wagering On?

Being able to identify where most of the bettors put their money, forms your understanding of contrarian betting strategy. Also defined as fading the public, this prominent and easy strategy can be used when betting on football. It has solid logic even if it’s a bit limited. 

In this contrarian betting strategy we speak of, you are required to bet against what the majority are doing. This is because if they are losing more than not, then you must do the opposite.

While this strategy works in certain scenarios, it is no longer as effective as it used to be. Bookmakers and prediction sites are more efficient in setting their lines nowadays, so you won’t find a value just by betting against the public. 

Instead look for opportunities where the money from the betting public moved the odds and lines so far out in one direction, that it created value for betting on the other side.

To study betting trends and decide where public money is going, simply watch the odds and lines to see how they move. If the favourite’s odds are going down or the point spread is expanding, it indicates that the public is heavily backing the favourites.

Where Does The Smart Money Go?

It is more effective to track smart money than it is to just go against the public. Where the money ends up is the direct opposite of where the majority of the money does.

Finding out where the smart money goes is a bit difficult. Odds and lines movement brought about by the weight of public money are usually easy to spot.  

Movements brought about by smart money aren’t always obvious. But there are certain trends to watch that show what smart bettors do.

Betting trends are important for football betting. But they shouldn’t be followed solely while eliminating other factors. 

These types of trends should be deployed when you need to support or oppose judgements and assessments that you make based on other factors.

Analyzing the value of a betting trend or pattern is another thing that’ll help you with your football prediction. 

While there is no exact formula for doing this, using your intuition and deploying an accurate assessment can get you halfway to where you need to be in this process.

Something else that can help is these three factors we will be examining in this part – history and sample size, validity vs anomaly, and relevancy.

See: How To Develop A Winning Strategy For Football Predictions

History and sample size play a crucial role when you are analyzing the value of football betting trends. 

For history look for information like – how long the trend has been in existence. How much data is applicable? These two questions help you understand if the trend is important or if it’s been in effect for years and if there’s enough data to support it. 

Betting trends based on how teams perform during and after a Bye week is good data to use. But trends gotten from how a coach behaves when his team are road favourites in a matchup, may not have enough data to be of any value to you.

Another part of history to look at is the sample size. A trend can’t be considered such if it doesn’t have a large sample size accompanying it. If a team is winning, check if they just won one game or set off a winning streak for the season.

Consider history and sample size when analyzing the value of a trend. Trends that have useful data over a time frame can be trusted.

A statistical anomaly is an outlier from a norm that happens with no logical reason. They aren’t very useful for predicting future outcomes.

Take these two trends – a team that lost 9 times playing on a nationally televised game. If it’s their pattern (trend) then there may be a good reason for it. They probably don’t respond well to the extra pressure of playing on national television.

If another team played the same 9 times, they lost in a game broadcasted by say NBC but did well in a game televised by ESPN. This performance doesn’t tell you anything concrete as to why their performance changed for each network. That is why you should ignore this type of trend, as it is just a mere coincidence.

Before a football betting trend can be valid, it must first be based on data that is relevant. 

While some data isn’t relevant, when used as a measure of value, this refers to the period where said data was relevant.

The most valuable trends are those that remain relevant even after a long period.

Factors like bye weeks are one data that can remain relevant over the years, mostly because a team’s performance before and after a bye week can remain consistent to some level.

Some data is relevant over an extended period, while some are only relevant over shorter time frames. Find the relevancy of the data you’re analyzing before you extract any value from the trends and patterns.

What are some practical ways you can use football betting trends to develop winning predictions? 

We have discussed and explained some easy trends and patterns you should study. Incorporating them into your football betting strategies can help you make the right prediction choices.

See also: 5 Tips On Winning A Football Prediction Contest

Every team has a different approach to a football game. Some teams prefer to control the game from the beginning. 

By establishing a quick lead in the game, they can choose to use up time or push on offensively later on in the game.

Other teams don’t dominate from the start, these end up having fewer options later in the game. They take big risks to steer the match in their favour, but end up making costly errors.

These behaviour patterns with teams are exactly why you should study first-half scoring trends. If a team often scores well in the first half, it should be perceived as a strong team. Those have an edge over teams that always have low first-half scoring numbers.

When you’re analyzing football betting trends, following smart money can be a good approach. However, it can be somewhat difficult to know where this money is headed.

Thankfully, there a specific trends that give you this information. Similarly, these moves are good indicators of smart money.

Instant Moves Off Opening Lines

The majority of the betting public won’t bet on opening lines. Instead, they’ll wager closer game time. 

Those significant moves that happen after opening lines have been posted are because of professional bettors. They are the only ones who get straight in on the action when the markets open.

Moves Away From Key Numbers

Any moves that happen away from key numbers on the point spread are usually indicative of a smart action, particularly when they are favouring the underdog.

This is because a lot of money is needed to move spreads away from common winning margins. So, if a +2.5 underdog drop to +2, or a +6.5 underdog drops to +6, then the professionals may be backing the underdog for that match.

Late Moves Against Previous Flow

When there is a late move against the previous flow, then professional bettors have been waiting for the public money to move a line to a certain number. 

Once it hits their desired numbers, they wager immediately and got their money down. These moves are again a result of smart money.

Home underdog trends are one of the most useful strategies for utilising football betting trends in prediction. And there are two reasons for that:

The first reason is – backing home underdogs is nice and precise. Just find areas where the home team are the underdogs against a stronger team, then see if there’s value in backing them to cover the spread or win outrightly. 

The public is more inclined to back popular teams on the road, which creates value on the other side of the line.

However, this reason is limited because home underdogs cover against stronger teams regularly and even win. 

But backing them every time you make a prediction could backfire eventually. Instead, be more selective.

The second reason – if a team’s home-winning or covering record is strong, then this is a valuable trend you should follow. If you only back the underdogs when situations like this arise, you can expect long-term profits.

When you assess the overall performance of a club, don’t forget to take the head coach’s ability into account too. We say this because coaches have a bigger influence on matches than most bettors think.

A few coaching trends to watch out for include:

• A coach’s track record of playing aggressively or defensively. This is necessary when you back over/under or you’re predicting how many points will be scored.
• Coaches who play exceptionally well against defensive teams.
• Few coaches perform when playing strong teams.
• The ones who do poorly in important games. 

Another football betting trend that can help in this area is pre-season trends. This one helps you understand how seriously coaches take pre-season games.  Understanding a coach’s attitude to preseason games is important if you intend to be on them. 

If a coach that takes them more seriously than others is against a coach who doesn’t, this should give you all the information you need. You can use this to know which way to bet. 

Generally, knowing all these things we’ve listed is essential when you’re analyzing different results. So, study coaching trends as much as you can.

Bye-week trends are particularly helpful if you’re using the bye-week strategy. This strategy entails you betting on teams their first week of a return immediately after a bye week.

Note, this strategy can be flawed because it doesn’t consider enough factors. But if you make some adjustments like studying how each club plays after their bye week this could be a great strategy.

Just favour trends that indicate how a team always does well after a bye week. If no such trends exist, then maybe they don’t benefit much from bye week like other clubs.

How teams behave after a significant defeat, after losing a heartbreaker or being beaten by a big rival is a great indicator of how they’ll be for their next game.

Some teams will take this blowback as fuel and give an astounding performance in their next game. However, you can’t expect this same attitude from every other club in football.

It’s not every team that reacts well to a devastating defeat. A team can win matches consecutively after a huge loss, while others will just fold and lose matches successively.

Bounceback trends are useful when you’re recording a team’s previous results. If a club comes back well from a defeat, back them to do that again. Likewise, if they do poorly after losing, then they’ll likely continue this trend.

More Resources:

Football Prediction And Statistics – A Partnership With Incredible Results

Strategies for Analyzing and Interpreting Football Prediction Site Data

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