AFL Round 1 Betting: Winning on overs and underdogs

AFL Round 1 isn’t far away now.

When it comes to betting, Round 1 is obviously a little different – there’s no form to go on. You can rely on last year, team changes and pre-season form to an extent. But with six months since the last game for each club, it’s hard to pick.

It’s important to remember, however, that everybody is in the same boat… including the bookmakers. So while different participants in the market have different resources, there are levels of uncertainty everywhere.

AFL Round 1: Previous Years

While we need to know how teams might perform, the edge really comes in identifying how the market performs. That’s where the money is made!

We can use some history for that. So we’ve taken the past five seasons and looked at Round 1 for each: 45 matches in total.

Is there an edge to be had?

AFL Round 1: Head-to-Head

Of the 45 matches, favourites won 27 and the underdogs won 18. Backing all favourites or underdogs across the board is a silly approach at the best of times, and it’s no different here… both approaches would result in a decent loss on turnover. Play on.

AFL Round 1: Line Betting

That’s ok. We’re punters and it’s not all about the head-to-head.

Good teams win, great teams cover the line.

This is where things get interesting. Check out the table below which shows the 45 match sample. While 27 of the favourites may have won their games, it shows that only 18 of them covered their closing line.

So 27 of the 45 outsiders covered the line. Have $100 on the outsider at the line in each of them… at, we’ll say, $1.91. Collect of $5,157 on your stake of $4,500… profit of $657 at 14.6 per cent! Very nice…

So we know that over the past five years, Round 1 underdogs have been undervalued at the line. They do better than the market expects.

Year	Favourite	Underdog	Line	Margin	Cover?
2019	North	Freo	-4.5	-82	No
2019	GWS	Ess	-2.5	72	Yes
2019	St K	GC	-27.5	1	No
2019	WC	Bris	-6.5	-44	No
2019	Syd	WB	-10.5	-17	No
2019	Adel	Haw	-22.5	-32	No
2019	Melb	Port	-32.5	-26	No
2019	Coll	Geel	-12.5	-7	No
2019	Rich	Carl	-39.5	33	No
2018	Syd	WC	-20.5	29	Yes
2018	Melb	Geel	-5.5	-3	No
2018	GWS	WB	-20.5	82	Yes
2018	North	GC	-2.5	-16	No
2018	Haw	Coll	-3.5	34	Yes
2018	Port	Freo	-33.5	50	Yes
2018	St K	Bris	-22.5	25	Yes
2018	Ess	Adel	-2.5	12	Yes
2018	Rich	Carl	-28.5	26	No
2017	Geel	Freo	-7.5	42	Yes
2017	GWS	Adel	-6.5	-56	No
2017	WC	North	-22.5	43	Yes
2017	GC	Bris	-25.5	-2	No
2017	Haw	Ess	-22.5	-25	No
2017	St K	Melb	-7.5	-30	No
2017	Syd	Port	-21.5	-28	No
2017	WB	Coll	-15.5	14	No
2017	Rich	Carl	-13.5	43	Yes
2016	Haw	Geel	-5.5	-30	No
2016	WC	Bris	-58.5	64	Yes
2016	Port	St K	-38.5	33	No
2016	WB	Freo	-9.5	65	Yes
2016	North	Adel	-14.5	10	No
2016	Syd	Coll	-9.5	80	Yes
2016	GC	Ess	-43.5	61	Yes
2016	GWS	Melb	-9.5	-2	No
2016	Rich	Carl	-26.5	9	No
2015	Haw	Geel	-22.5	62	Yes
2015	Adel	North	-5.5	77	Yes
2015	GWS	St K	-19.5	9	No
2015	Freo	Port	-5.0	7	Yes
2015	Bris	Coll	-14.5	-12	No
2015	WC	WB	-12.5	-10	No
2015	Syd	Ess	-23.5	12	No
2015	GC	Melb	-16.5	-26	No
2015	Rich	Carl	-10.5	27	Yes

AFL Round 1: Total Points

Regular readers might remember that last year, we had a look at longer-term trends and found that total points in the AFL actually went under on 55% of matches. For what’s supposedly a 50/50 proposition, that’s significant.

The strange thing with Round 1 is that we actually see the opposite.

It’s actually 24-21 in favour of the overs – or 53% to 47%.

2018 in general was an even bigger year for unders overall, as the market didn’t respond to changes in rules and games styles. The unders went 1-9 in Round 1 last year… so for the previous four years, the overs trend in Round 1 was an enormous 23-13 – or 64% to 36%.

AFL Round 1: Summary

So just in this very simple analysis, we’ve learned a couple of potentially valuable things about Round 1:

• Underdogs don’t win much, but they cover the line often
• Total scores go over far more than they usually do.

Is this a betting edge? Perhaps. It is, of course, a small sample of data (only 45 games), so may well be just variance at work.

But as always… approach Round 1 with extreme caution!