ABSTRACT
Results of the present study show a larger rate of home wins in the upper leagues of English professional soccer as compared to the lower leagues. By testing the Efficient Market Hypothesis on the online betting markets, home-field bias was found to be over-predicted in League One and League Two (the third and fourth divisions) relative to the premier league. The analysis is based on odds set by 51 different bookmakers for the outcomes of 16,407 soccer matches from the top four divisions in England between seasons 2010/11 and 2017/18.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank J. James Reade and Carl Singleton for their help and helpful comments. Thanks to J. James Reade for providing the data.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.