Suspense and Surprise: The Role of Bookmakers’ Spreads

Isabel Abinzano, Harold Bonilla and Luis Muga

Journal of Sports Economics, 2025, vol. 26, issue 3, 240-267

Abstract: Uncertainty in a competition's final result can affect the event's demand via suspense and surprise. Based on a sample of more than 50,000 professional tennis matches, this paper shows how information from bookmaker prices, implied probabilities, and price spreads contain relevant information that explains the uncertainty in the final results of the matches. There is a negative relation between the implied probability for the favorite and the different measures of match result uncertainty proposed and a positive relationship between the spread and these measures when the bookmaker sets prices based on information. This second relation disappears when the bookmaker sets prices based on betting volumes. The results have potential implications both for organizers in scheduling matches with higher levels of uncertainty and for punters in setting strategies that predict the exact result of a match.

Keywords: uncertainty; bookmakers’ spread; tennis; match results (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G10 G14 L83 Z2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15270025241289406 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:26:y:2025:i:3:p:240-267

DOI: 10.1177/15270025241289406

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sports Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().