House Edge on Touchdown Scorer Bets

Does anyone know the estimated house edge on touchdown scorer prop bets?

I see most sites have bets that look like this:
Touchdown scorer name: first/last/ any time.

"player A" +800, +800, +130

I've never seen a prop bet line including no touchdowns for the player, making it difficult to calculate the house edge.

I've seen lots of books increase odds on special plays, wondering if they become advantage bets?

I have a feeling that the house edge on these type of bets is very high, but haven't found any way to evaluate.

For the Super Bowl there are simple binary bets on "Will player A score a touchdown?" on any player with a reasonable chance of scoring one. Probably every offensive player.

I have never seen one put like this before. It's hard to estimate the house edge without seeing a line that player A will NOT score a touchdown. If +130 were a fair line, that would imply player A's chance of scoring at least one touchdown is 43.5%. This implies a mean number of touchdowns by player A is 0.4295.

Let's assume a mean total points in the game of 45. Let's subtract for 3.5 field goals, so that leaves 34.5 touchdown points. That means 34.5/7 = 4.93 touchdowns. Let's divide those between the two teams, so 2.4643 touchdowns per team.

So, player A can expect to score 0.4295/2.4643 = 17.43% of touchdowns.

A fair line that player A scores a specific touchdown (like first or last) would be +474. So, that makes the 8 to 1 bets look like great bets.

However, that is all based on no juice. I suspect there is a great deal of juice. Again, it would be nice to see a line on NO player A touchdown to have something to compare to.

Thanks for your response. I am still hoping to find a way to calculate the odds on the binary type bet player to score yes/no.

I did some more research and I found full set of odds to calculate the first touchdown scorer type bet at bet365.

At bet365, they list the odds for most possob;e touchdown scorers, aw well as, "any other touchdown scorer" and "no touchdown scorer". By including these options, they provide all possible outcomes and the house edge can be calculated.

I plugged in the numbers and calculated a house edge of around 35% for the first touchdown scorer. I didn't realize how big it would be.


I still haven't been able to find a binary bet for player to score a touchdown yes or no.

You mention that the binary bet has been available on the superbowl in the past. I tried to find a historical bet like this, but was unsucessful.

It would be extremely helpful to determine the house edge on "anytime scorer" type bets.

Pinnacle usually has yes/no TD lines for offensive players. However they are worded as "over/under 0.5 receiving touchdowns" or "over/under 0.5 rushing touchdowns" depending on the player's position. Not quite what you're looking for but hopefully that helps.

Thanks.
It's a start. Will elp in determining house edge some more on anytime touchdown scorer markets.

In the UK soccer (e.g. Premier League) there are nearly always "first scorer" bets - bookies even try to add a correct score to produce longer odds. In soccer if no-one scores then you can also look up the odds for a 0-0 outcome (obviously this doesn't apply in American Football unless there's a prop "No Touchdowns"). It's also slightly complicated as I think any wagers on people not playing before the first goal scored have their bets returned.

I've never done the calculation nor checked the exact rules but suspect you could do some estimates. My feeling is the returns aren't likely to be that great.

Thanks for your input.

There are props for no touchdowns scored in American football. Not sure how much this helps though because the average amount of touchdowns per game is about 4.5.

Finding the pinnacle markets with 0.5 over under has been tremendously helpful. Pinnacle house edge on these prop bets is 7-9%. Much lower than the first TD type bets.

I asked this question because some of the sports books have offered boosts on "any time" touchdown scorers. I wanted to see if the boosts were enough to overcome house edge. Since I initially had no idea of what the house edge was, I couldn't tell.

Now that I know the house edge is usually 7-9%, much easier to determine.

Thanks for the help!

Beware weid rules.
in Soccer if a goalie carries the ball across the goaline in his attempt to throw it out, the goal isautomatically awardedto the nearest offensive player,
Also results on field of play and results after an appeal in the UK canbe different but bookies pay opff on field resuls.

Quote: FleaStiff

Beware weid rules.
in Soccer if a goalie carries the ball across the goaline in his attempt to throw it out, the goal isautomatically awardedto the nearest offensive player,
Also results on field of play and results after an appeal in the UK canbe different but bookies pay opff on field resuls.

In the Premier League my understanding is if an attacker kicks the ball on target and a goal results, then if the ball, on its way in, glanced off a defender the goal is still awarded to the attacker. I'm guessing if the goalie doesn't quite stop the ball (either letting it through or carrying it across the line), then the same rule applies.

However if the ball is now going away from the goal and deflects off the defender/goalie then it's an own goal; this typically happens if it bounces off the woodwork or another player. I can imagine a scenario where a corner is caught by the goalie but he falls over the line, then that would probably be an own goal. There's also a "Dubious Goal Committee" that look at cases where it wasn't obvious who scored.

Quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubious_Goals_Committee

"As a rule, if the initial attempt is goalbound it is credited to the player making the goal attempt. However if the deflection means that a wayward effort results in a goal then it is attributed to the player who had the last definitive touch of the ball."

Quote: marksters

I asked this question because some of the sports books have offered boosts on "any time" touchdown scorers. I wanted to see if the boosts were enough to overcome house edge. Since I initially had no idea of what the house edge was, I couldn't tell.

DK has Jones/Moore to both score boosted to +625. Fair odds using Pinnacle lines is only +482

Agtreed. I rated the bet as positive EV and made a max bet