Find your niche

 In my first post, I would like to share something fundamental. My first rule when it comes to sports data analysis is: "Find your niche". This means that you shouldn't just pick any sport when it comes to analyzing trends, anomalies and valuable information.

Today I would like to start with a relatively unknown sport so that this fact can be better understood. "Handball".

Handball is a very popular sport in Europe. It has mostly been neglected in betting analyses. Many bookmakers have different odds to each other, so there are unique opportunities to exploit these for your own profit.

In our first analysis, we take a closer look at the results of the 2024 European Handball Championships

https://ehfeuro.eurohandball.com/men/2024/.

The used odds and data are based on the closing odds from oddsportal.

https://www.oddsportal.com/handball/europe/european-championship/

There were a total of 57 matches between the preliminary rounds and the main round.

The special feature of handball and the odds is that "draws" have very high odds. In contrast to soccer or basketball, these odds are significantly higher than the average.

At the European Handball Championship, the average odds were 17.7. The favorites had average odds of 1.33. The underdogs had average odds of 10.29. The advantage of these high odds is that just a few correct tips are enough to make a profit.

My hypothesis is that the market favors the favorites and overvalues them. It is therefore advantageous to place either on the underdogs winning, a draw or the so-called "double chance" (dog win and draw). 

In the 57 games of the European Handball Championship, this hypothesis produced the following result.

If we had bet on the underdogs in every match, we would have made a profit of +8.61 (ROI: 15.11%) units. In the event of a draw, this profit would have been exorbitantly higher +67.74 (ROI: 118.84%).

It is also striking that 35 of the 57 games (61%) were below the total.

The sample size for this analysis is comparatively low. I will look at the results of the other championships and also include other continental championships (Pan-America, Asia, Africa).

This analysis is a good example of small betting markets where there are immense opportunities to profit from irregularities. It remains to be seen whether this trend can be verified with further data.