When to place a bet is crucial to winning bigger!

We will let you in on a little secret: online bookmakers vary the odds over time! Extensive analysis by betoptimizr reveals that when to place a bet is crucial. Betting on match day or 1 day before the match will give you the best odds value. Placing your bets 4-5 days in advance will provide you with a significantly lower value. In-play betting or live betting will provide you with the worst value.

Bookmakers have several strategies to make profits. One of these strategies is offering bets at less attractive odds at different time stamps. By doing this, bookmakers can provide the best odds on the busiest, and most competitive, a time stamp for placing a bet: match day. To make sufficient margins, many bookmakers vary the odds over time. That way the profits of the online bookmakers are the highest.

How the odds develop over time is explained below in our betoptimizr independent analysis. How to profit from this knowledge?

Average payout over time

For the explanation of our analysis, we have used a comparison of 1×2 bets in the Premier League. We plotted the average payout percentages of 50 bookmakers over the lifecycle of a bet (each dot represents a bookmaker):

• Bets placed 4-5 days before the match starts (dark blue dots)
• Bets placed 2-3 days before the match starts (light blue dots)
• Bets placed one day before the match starts (purple dots)
• Bets placed on matchday (green dots)
  Bets placed in-play (red dots)

The betoptimizr analysis reveals four key facts when to place a bet

1. For many bookmakers, odds improve over time. The odds are most attractive just before the match starts.

2. The average payout percentages for in-play bets (red coloured dots) are some 2% (!) lower than the average payout for bets placed a few hours before the match starts (green coloured dots).

3. The odds are less attractive when placed several days before the match starts. But it depends per bookmaker: not all bookmakers change their odds over time.

4. In-play betting gives players the opportunity to bet during the game. But it comes with a price as odds are much less attractive.

5 best online bookmakers for pre-match betting

The five best bookmakers are:

Differences between online bookmakers can be huge

Our analysis also shows that an online bookmaker has an average payout of 95% does not make sense. That same bookmaker could have an average payout of 98% on matchday, but only 92% for in-play betting. Combining the two and taking an average is not proper statistics. On top of that online bookmakers vary their odds over time.

Even though the analysis above is solely based on the Premier League, we see similar differences in the other European football competitions. Does this mean that you will always have to bet on match day? Not at all, some bookmakers offer their best odds days before the match.

Doe je eigen onderzoek …

Als je zelf onderzoek wilt doen, kun je onze gratis betoptimizr tool gebruiken om binnen 20 seconden te zien welke besparing je kunt realiseren op je voetbalweddenschappen door over te stappen naar de online bookmaker met de hoogste uitbetaling. Onze  gratis tool is and 100% 0nafhankelijk.