THE DEGREE OF INEFFICIENCY IN THE FOOTBALL BETTING MARKET - STATISTICAL TESTS

This paper tests the hypothesis that the football betting market is efficient. Our statistical tests are stronger than those in previous studies, and we examine both NFL and college data over a sample period of fifteen years. Our statistical tests detect two specific biases in the NFL market and an unspecified bias in the college market. We examine the year-to-year consistency and magnitudes of the biases and find that the NFL bias against home teams has been nearly eliminated, while the bias against underdogs has increased. Profitable exploitation of the biases depends upon transaction costs.