It is common practice even in many leading US best sporting betting sites to overly focus on inferior measures such as win/loss ratio or units won. From a financial perspective, these are inferior measures to even a basic return on investment (ROI) calculation. This is how you decide the best value bets. When trying to decide the best sports betting picks, it is important you understand this distinction. This also applies to the best sports bet picks app as well.
Below is a basic definition of some of the most common measures –
Win/Loss ratio
A simple measure of the % of winners to losers from your bets. A common statistic might be a 60% win ratio. The weakness of this measure is it does not account for the odds of the bet. A 10% win/loss ratio in golf could easily be way better than a 60% win ratio in say baseball. It is a common measure in the best sports betting sites online as well as the best sports bet picks app /apps. However, on its own, it is not a good indicator of the best value bets.
Units won or loss
As explained in our Money Management Section, it is important to understand your total betting ‘bankroll’. This is then divided logically into maximum bets of between 1 and 5%. Each bet can be a unit. If we said that 1 unit = 1% of your bankroll, then we can have a consistent framework for deciding how much to bet. So, on particularly favorable bets we might bet the maximum stake size of 5 units. This way, we can have a range of 1 unit to 5 unit bets. This partly makes up for some of the weakness in the win-loss ratio above. The bets measures (units) adapt for the expected return level.
Profits earned
This is simple to understand. On our site, we show profits earned this month and year to date. The weakness in this measure on its own is that it does not show how much was invested to earn those profits. We assume that bet stakes are $100 per sport per day. This could mean that someone would bet around $1,000 a week depending on how many sports they follow, assuming almost daily betting. So making a profit of $1000 in a month would be a good healthy return. (25% ROI-see below). This would be a very good return even for the best sports betting sites or the best sports bet picks app. These bet stakes can be increased or decreased according to your own desired risk level. New bettors might like to start at say only average bets of $10 until they gain the confidence to increase their bet sizing.
ROI -Return on Investment
This is the best measure which accounts for the weaknesses in all of the above measures on their own. This is the best sports betting picks measure. We simply divide the profits (or losses) by the amount invested to understand what our actual returns are. While the measure can vary widely on individual bets, over a period of time it should settle down.We believe a good return is anything over 20%, given that betting is clearly riskier than leaving your money in the bank earning 1%. Stock markets aspire to 10% per annum in larger companies and as noted in our article on betting versus stock markets here, it is in reality quite difficult to exceed that return over the long term. So, even though many bettors are attracted by the multiple 100% returns possible through risky parlays, the reality is that someone consistently achieving an ROI of 20%+ on their betting is doing very well.
Summary
In summary, there are far more sophisticated financial measures than ROI. Examples include DCFs/IRR’s etc. which take account of the time value of money).
However, these are not necessary for simple betting measures. We do advocate that if you are reviewing any best sports betting picks sites returns (as well as the best sports bet picks app) that do not display ROI, to take extra caution, due to the weaknesses in other measures. The best sports betting sites online should all use this measure if you want to find the best value bets.
