Not feeling the buzz: Correction study of mispricing and inefficiency in online sportsbooks

Main finding

Much of the original out-of-sample profit depended on a single outlier bet recorded at erroneously long odds; after correction only one strategy remained significantly profitable in the original period, returns came mainly from individual bookmakers' mispricing rather than the buzz signal, and there were no further profits in data after 2020.

Limitations

The original WTA sample and a later 2020–2023 extension are distinct evaluations; the surviving original-period strategy generated no further profits in the extension. This does not establish present executability.

Study details

Authors

Lawrence Clegg, John Cartlidge

Published

2025 (first online 2024)

Venue

International Journal of Forecasting 41(2), 798–802 (preprint arXiv:2306.01740, 2023)

Status

Published

Evidence type

Peer-reviewed replication

Evidence strength

Strong (our assessment of how much weight the finding can bear)

Sport

Tennis (WTA women's singles)

Markets

Online bookmaker match odds

Method

Re-runs a published 'buzz' strategy (based on online page-view attention) on the original data, corrects a data error, decomposes where the returns came from and extends the test to later years.

Sample

The original study period plus an extension beyond 2020.

Replication

Corrects Ramirez, Reade & Singleton (2023), 'Betting on a buzz', International Journal of Forecasting 39(3).

Read the original

doi:10.1016/j.ijforecast.2024.06.012 (opens in a new tab) · Free version (opens in a new tab)

Our summary is an original paraphrase for education. Verification: Bibliographic record checked against publisher, index or author listings. Our brief cited the 2023 arXiv version; the journal version is listed here. Checked 2026-10-25.