Davis cup bias in home/away players

With Davis Cup coming this weekend, I thought it was a good opportunity to find out how well the model goes. Many people would say that the Davis cup is a completely different game compared to normal tournaments, and if you have been to several countries which host it, I’m pretty sure that you will agree. Although this is the federation cup – which is the female equivalent to the Davis Cup – take a look at this clip which shows Maria Sharapova being heckled in Israel.

Ok, this is extremes, but the Davis Cup isn’t far behind as far as crowd fanaticism goes. Surely the home ground advantage is worth more in the Davis Cup than it is on any normal match. So how have we gone in the past blind betting as well as model betting on the home and away players?

I have data for only 168 matches, so not a lot should be read into it, but the finding are quite interesting. The home player averaged odds of 1.53 whilst the away player averaged odds of 2.72. Betting to win $100 on the home player means than $92k was bet for a profit of $1.6k for a 1.7% ROI. Whilst betting on away players $23k was bet for a profit of $319 or 1.4%. So, despite a lot more being bet on home players, largely due to very short odds, both home and away bets seem to be doing pretty good.

As far as the model goes. 63 bets were made for a 5.6% ROI betting on the home players, whilst 1.0% was made betting the away players over 23 bets. A lot less bets on the away players, but at least it shows that the model is on song at getting the home court advantage correct when it comes to Davis cup betting.

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