What are the best leagues for lay the draw strategy?
What Is Lay The Draw Strategy?
In one of our previous articles, we have already introduced lay the draw strategy. Basically you enter the markets with a lay bet on the draw, and when a goal is scored, you back the draw for profit. This time we want to dig a little bit deeper and figure out what are the best leagues to apply this strategy on. In order to do so, we turn to our football stats database and analyze three different entry points. These are the following:
- Halftime
- 60th minute
- 75th minute
Last, but not least it is good to know that we included matches starting from the 1st of June 2018 (up until Feb 2020). By doing so, we can focus on the most recent results.
Okay, But How Does An Average Football Match Looks Like From a Lay the Draw Perspective?
First of all, we need to know the average number of goals in a match, which is 2.66. Now, if you blindly lay the draw at halftime, you’ll succeed 75% of the time. If you do so in the 60th minute, your lay the draw success rate is 64%. Even if you lay it in the 75th minute, you’ll make a profit in 45% of the time. Important to note here, when we say you’ll succeed it means that you’ll be able to take some profit in the vast majority of your bets. You know, if a goal comes early, or underdog scores, your potential profit will be lower.
Do The Highest-Scoring Ones Provide The Best Value?
If you ask someone to tell you what are the best leagues to lay the draw strategy, the majority will answer the highest-scoring ones. If it would be that simple, everyone could make a living with lay the draw strategy on Betfair.
In our table, we highlighted everything in green which is above the average by at least 10%. On the opposite, everything in red means that the league performs below the average by at least 10%
Here are the leagues where the number of goals is significantly higher than the average:
If the theory we mentioned earlier is correct (more goals, the higher success rate for lay the draw), we should see all the entry points in green. But nope. In fact, there are 35 leagues significantly above the average from a scoring point of view, and we investigate 3 entry points, so we should see 105 green cells. The reality is only 51.
Okay, now let’s take a look at the other side of the spectrum, the lowest-scoring leagues.
There are only 23 of them, which are significantly below the average. It means that we should see 69 red cells, but in reality, it is only 33.
Not only that but if you want to lay the draw on typical high scoring leagues, you’ll always pay some kind of extra fees:
- When you enter the markets, you will usually lay prices that are higher than the average.
- If someone scores, the increase in the price won’t be as large as you want, so you’ll realize a smaller profit.
So, How Can I Find the Best Competitions?
Now that you know what factors will decrease your profitability, you simply need to look for the opposite. Leagues with average or lower than the average number of goals per match, but above the average success rate for lay the draws.
There are a few, don’t worry. In general, if you find those leagues, you’ll lay lower prices and will be able to back at higher odds.
I Want To enter At Halftime, What Are the Best Leagues For Lay The Draw?
You can see a graph below where every dots represent a league. The only yellow one represents the average match in our database (2.66 goals per match with 75% success rate).
Compared to the yellow dot, you want to know which leagues sit to the top and left. These are the following:
There are a couple of interesting ones, right? Four of these are above 80% success rate, with a decent sample size. There are also some top leagues, like the Spanish Primera Division or the French Ligue 1. There are also surprises, J2 League or the Liga De Honra are quite often on the blacklist of people who try to succeed with lay the draw strategy on Betfair. Not to mention Brazilian Serie A, where teams are not too productive, but definitely like to break the draw!
I Want To Enter At The 60th Minute, What Are the Best Leagues For Lay The Draw?
Now that you know what are the best leagues for lay the draw at the halftime, let’s take a look at the 60th-minute entry point.
Here comes the graph, as said earlier the yellow dot represents the average match in our database. The average number of goals is 2.66, the average success rate of LTD strategy is 64% at this point.
Overall, amongst the best leagues to lay the draw, there are not too many changes. Ligue1, Primera Division are still there, just as the Portugues ones and the Brazilian Serie B. Interestingly, the Hungarian NB1 is almost 10% better than the average success rate. Unfortunately, liquidity can be an issue for this league.
I Want To Enter At The 75th Minute, What Are the Best Leagues For Lay The Draw?
This is a fairly risky point to enter the markets, but the average match in our database shows that with an average number of goals of 2.66 you’ll still succeed 45% of the time. Again, the average match is represented by the yellow dot.
The surprise here is that you can achieve above 50% strike rate in certain competitions even this late in the game! Okay, the Georgian Ervonuli Liga is not something that you’ll bet often, the NWSL Women either. But, the J2 League in Japan or the K League in South Korea could be something you can target.
Summary
Now that we have gone through the best leagues for lay the draw strategy, we know that the highest scoring leagues are not necessarily the best ones. Of course, you shouldn’t start blindly lay the draws in the mentioned leagues, we just wanted to show how can you dig deeper when you apply this Betfair strategy.
The best thing you can do is to take a look at each team’s stats in our Daily Football Data Sheets. These stats are available for every team for every matchup, so you can create your own LTD shortlist in just seconds. Here is an example for tomorrow from the 60th minute onwards:
