Is there value in backing your team weekly?

 Now that the Premier League season is over it’s nice to reflect on how well your team did, although maybe not if you’re a QPR, Burnley or Hull fan. As a football fan you go into every game blindly backing your team, even if you’re a pessimist deep down you still believe they can upset the odds and pull off a shock. But what if you applied this logic to betting? What if every week you’d placed a £1 bet on your team to win, how well would you have done?

As well as enjoying solid seasons, Stoke and Swansea fans would have been the most pleased from this betting scheme, with Swansea returning £23.04 profit and Stoke £22.82. Backing QPR each week would have lost you £14.24, even more misery for Hoops fans.

Despite winning the league Chelsea would have only won you 29p from a weekly bet, going into each game Chelsea were fancied to win so the odds of them doing so were considerably shorter than for say Stoke. This is a pretty interesting way of looking at the league, it pretty much represents how well a team did given their expectations.

Swansea and Stoke both overachieved this season and would have won you money, City and United will be a bit disappointed with their respective seasons and they would have got you minor losses, as would Arsenal.

Interestingly, backing Southampton would have only won £0.61, given they were tipped for relegation that’s a bit surprising. What might have happened here is that given how strongly Saints started the season the odds of them winning each game have reduced as the season has worn on. For Swansea and Stoke even towards the back end of the campaign the odds of them winning matches were high despite them recording impressive results. In order for a team to make a profit they need to win enough games but do so when they aren’t favourites.

If you’d backed your team to lose every week you would have lost money whoever you supported. It’s probably not a wise idea to back a team blindly every week but if you were going to midtable sides look the way to go to guarantee you a bit of money.   

Team	Profit/Loss
Swansea	23.04
Stoke	22.82
Crystal Palace	14.84
Tottenham	5.48
West Brom	5.43
Aston Villa	3.14
Southampton	0.61
Chelsea	0.29
Arsenal	-0.46
Manchester United	-1.13
Manchester City	-1.18
Liverpool	-4.13
West Ham	-4.24
Newcastle	-5.26
Leicester	-5.86
Burnley	-6.30
Everton	-11.63
Hull	-12.24
Sunderland	-13.7
QPR	-14.24