Samba League Soccer Betting Tips

The 2011 Brazilian Campeonato kicks off in May and is a league which should interest football punters everywhere. The ratio of home wins in the Brazilian Serie A is fascinating and I have yet to uncover a league with a higher winning ratio for home teams. Of course I haven’t researched every world wide league (maybe someday!) but of the many competitions I follow and study, the Campeonato in the land where football is religion comes up trumps.

What does this mean for us, the profit-seeking soccer punters? Well, an obvious tip is that betting on the away team in Brazil is never something you should consider. Not only is the home win percentage higher than most other leagues, but it’s surprising how strong even the teams at the bottom of the table perform in front of their own fans. For ease of illustration let’s look at final league standings over the last five years in Brazil and compare against the most watched league in the world – the English Premier League.

I’ll avoid heavy duty numerical tables but instead give you a brief summary of my findings. To add relevance to my results, I excluded the top third percentile of teams in both leagues. The logic behind this is that the top six or seven teams in all leagues tend to do well at home and win the majority of fixtures in front of their own supporters. Removing these teams gives a better insight into how the bottom two thirds of teams perform. After all, these are the games which offer value in the betting markets.

I analysed results from the 2006 to 2010 seasons (five years of data) and worked out the home win percentage of teams from positions 8 through to 20. I then worked out the mean home win percentage for each year, and took an average for the five year period. The results are compelling. In England’s Premier League, the home win percentage worked out at 39% for the five seasons. In Brazil’s Serie A the figure was 46%. When you consider the amount of home games each team plays over five seasons, you can appreciate the significance of the 7% variance.

Observing only the teams which finished last also provides interesting comparisons. In the five years studied, the total number of home games won by the bottom team in England was 17, whereas in Brazil it was 29. Both leagues consist of twenty teams that fulfill nineteen home fixtures, so the comparison is fair. Generous value can be found in the Brazilian soccer betting markets. Knowing what we do about the home record of teams it’s worth seeking out this value every week because in the long term, tipping the home team in the Campeonato is more beneficial than doing likewise in other leagues.

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