James has worked for the jockey club and has 20 years sports betting experience he utilises his skills in our tipster competitions and writes sports betting content.
Last 5 Seasons Draw Percentages
In my last blog, I showed that for the English Premier League in the last five seasons, draws were often the outcome games that were priced the longest.
Furthermore that when only those odds for an outcome in a game were considered, when the game ended in that outcome, the reduction for draws was considerably smaller than for home or away wins.
I undertook plenty of football form study when collating the figures.
The OLBG articles would be a good starting point for those who like spending time discovering new angles for their bets.
Types of Football Bet
Therefore a bettor who was able to predict draws has the potential to be more profitable than one who is able to pick home wins and away wins.
The reason for this is that the bookies themselves are less able to predict the draws than wins for either side.
Here is a random EPL week in the 2024/25 season with just the draw odds:
| Home | Draw Odds | Away |
|---|---|---|
| Nottingham Forest | 3.45 | Fulham |
| Everton | 3.5 | Crystal Palace |
| Brentford | 3.6 | West Ham |
| Ipswich | 3.75 | Aston Villa |
| Manchester United | 4 | Tottenham |
| Chelsea | 4.25 | Brighton |
| Bournemouth | 4.33 | Southampton |
| Newcastle | 4.4 | Manchester City |
| Wolves | 5.6 | Liverpool |
| Arsenal | 8.1 | Leicester |
In addition to the bookies being unable to pick the draws, I think that even when they do think there is a good chance of a draw, they don't always make the odds as low as they might;
Bookmakers like it when people bet on all the available outcomes, it makes it easier to create a situation where they win whatever happens, and this is what bookies like.
The stats have been fairly consistent over the seasons especially in the last 5 (2019-2024)
| Season | Overall Draw % |
|---|---|
| 2023/24 | 22% |
| 2022/23 | 23% |
| 2021/22 | 23% |
| 2020/21 | 23% |
| 2019/20 | 24% |
| 2018/19 | 19% |
| 2017/18 | 26% |
| 2016/17 | 22% |
| 2015/16 | 28% |
EPL Stats Stats
Draw Strategy
Let us face it, we on OLBG are in the minority, in that we really think about what we bet on, we enter our tips in the tipping competition with reasoned comments.
How many punters simply go into the betting shop and back the team that they support to win the game?
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I can't prove this, but I suspect lots, far more than are on OLBG and far more than will be able to give a reasoned argument for why they are betting on the outcome that they are.
The trouble for the bookmakers is that nobody supports the draw, so they will sometimes need good odds on the draw in order to tempt punters to back that outcome.
This is all well and good, but of course, it is no good to know that draws, in general, can be profitable, if you aren't able to pick which games are most likely to end in a draw.
In my next couple of blogs I am going to write about certain statistics that I think will be helpful in identifying games that will end in a draw.
| Home | Away | Overall | H Draw % | A Draw % | Overall Draw % | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Win | Draw | Lose | Win | Draw | Lose | Win | Draw | Lose | ||||
| Everton | 50 | 28 | 17 | 27 | 38 | 30 | 77 | 66 | 47 | 29.5 | 40.0 | 34.7 |
| Aston Villa | 32 | 36 | 27 | 31 | 28 | 36 | 63 | 64 | 63 | 37.9 | 29.5 | 33.7 |
| Stoke | 41 | 30 | 24 | 15 | 27 | 53 | 56 | 57 | 77 | 31.6 | 28.4 | 30.0 |
| Fulham | 47 | 21 | 27 | 15 | 36 | 44 | 62 | 57 | 71 | 22.1 | 37.9 | 30.0 |
| Sunderland | 34 | 30 | 31 | 18 | 25 | 52 | 52 | 55 | 83 | 31.6 | 26.3 | 28.9 |
| Newcastle | 31 | 21 | 24 | 17 | 21 | 38 | 48 | 42 | 62 | 27.6 | 27.6 | 27.6 |
| West Ham | 30 | 18 | 28 | 11 | 24 | 41 | 41 | 42 | 69 | 23.7 | 31.6 | 27.6 |
| Liverpool | 52 | 29 | 14 | 38 | 21 | 36 | 90 | 50 | 50 | 30.5 | 22.1 | 26.3 |
| Tottenham | 57 | 24 | 14 | 35 | 24 | 36 | 92 | 48 | 50 | 25.3 | 25.3 | 25.3 |
| Arsenal | 60 | 20 | 15 | 44 | 26 | 25 | 104 | 46 | 40 | 21.1 | 27.4 | 24.2 |
| West Brom | 30 | 16 | 30 | 17 | 18 | 41 | 47 | 34 | 71 | 21.1 | 23.7 | 22.4 |
| Chelsea | 66 | 18 | 11 | 47 | 22 | 26 | 113 | 40 | 37 | 18.9 | 23.2 | 21.1 |
| Man City | 70 | 12 | 13 | 35 | 28 | 32 | 105 | 40 | 45 | 12.6 | 29.5 | 21.1 |
| Man United | 81 | 6 | 8 | 53 | 25 | 17 | 134 | 31 | 25 | 6.3 | 26.3 | 16.3 |
For the purposes of this section, I am concentrating on current Premier League teams that have played two or more Premier League seasons before this one.
The table shows for each of these teams, the number of home and away draws they have been involved in and the percentage of all games that ended in a draw. We can see that the top five sides here are Everton, Aston Villa, Stoke, Fulham, and Sunderland. The bottom side in this table is Manchester United.
Over the five seasons I have looked at we can see that Everton, the top side, has drawn more than twice as often as Manchester United.
Of course, the fact that a team has drawn a lot in the past does not necessarily mean they will do so in the future. It would be possible for a team to be high in the above table on the strength of one or two seasons where they drew a lot. What we want to know is which teams can be relied upon to draw a lot in any given season.
I have redone the above table five times, one for each of the five seasons I looked at. It would take up too much space to reproduce each of them here, so I have included a summary of each of the five teams position each year (J means joint, eg J2 means joint second).
| Here we can see that not all of the sides that were in the top five are consistently near the top of the table. Fulham were top in 2010-11 but has been consistently mid-table apart from this. Sunderland has been mid-table except for the 2011-12 season when they got joint second. Aston Villa are consistently top half but were ninth last season. The one side that seems to consistently come in the top five is Everton. |
If a punter had backed Everton to draw each of their games this season (workings for this blog were done before Everton's win over Swansea on 22 March 2014), then the results would have been a level stakes profit of 4.43 points.
It has been away from home that Everton have had the most draws, which is as I would expect from the first table, and if only Everton's away games had been backed in this way then that would have given a profit of 7.73 points so far this season.
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Although I think there is a lot more to do, this is encouraging; in combination with some other statistics, this could yield even better results.
Of the other four teams I have mentioned, only Stoke would have made a profit this season so far, and for Stoke it was at home where the most draws happened.
Backing Stoke to draw at a point a game in each home game so far this season would have resulted in a profit of 5.5 points.
This is part of a series of blogs, read the previous blog here.
