Aussie Rules spreads/money line

[andywend]

In the NFL, a 14 point favorite would be priced around -600 on the moneyline.

IN the NBA, a 14 point favorite would be priced around -1500.

However, in Aussie Rules football, a 14 point favorite is priced around -250 on the moneyline at most.

I routinely find teams that are favored by 9 points priced around -160 straight up.

The oddsmakers know full well that very few Aussie Rules games wind up being very close and I would like to know why that is the case?

Can any bettor who bets Aussie Rules events routinely explain this?

Thanks.

[donkson]

I think a big reason is because the public culture on AFL betting isn't line oriented, it's mainly ML betting, even on huge favourites.

Scoring is very volatile, making it very hard to judge a correct line, hence why the line is rarely close to the final margin.

A good team can come out, play poor by their standards, win by 20 points and never be in trouble. Or they can come out and win by 60 points against the exact same team.

[Alt75]

This year and the past few weeks are a bit of an anomaly, games are usually a lot closer, with the new team the Suns and a few teams with a poor run of injuries/form, crap recruiting Collingwood's dominance etc off the top of my head there's been a lot more 100 + margins than in recent years, but also there were 2 draws which is extremely rare. The typical margin in AFL would be 1-39

There was a thread earlier in the season pointing out how spot on the bookies were with AFL lines. We also have a plethora of other options like pick your own line and margins compared to the markets offered on most offshore books for AFL.

Being 6 points for a goal and as donkson pointed out the volatile frequency of scoring factors into it with a 14 point margin is only 2.2 goals which in ideal conditions, that amount of points can be changed in a matter of a minute or twofold OR can be a teams score for the quarter, where as in NBA/NFL a 14 point turn around takes a lot longer. If I understand what you're asking correctly, if the bookies were offering huge spreads over 10 goals like -59.5 that compared with NBA/NFL ML's and spreads on shorter priced faves on a regular basis they'd be getting killed on the + lines by sharps more often than not. Only the public squares would be regularly over their own teams to cover such a spread.

[Gee]

Its pretty simple.

Points are just worth less in AFL than NBA or NFL.

The line and value of a point reflects the fact that teams can score goals very quickly and that on average, teams score about 25-30 goals per game. Aussie rules games often don't end up that close in the end for this reason, although anything up to 4 goals can be considered very close depending on how the game is played.

Its hard for bookies lines on AFL to be that sharp for these reasons as well, but they do a decent job.