A Weekend Of Wise Wagers

SummerSlam Weekend turned out to be two days of wise wagers when it came to closing heavy favourites covering their bets at both NXT TakeOver Brooklyn and SummerSlam 2015.

The takeaway I have from Saturday's NXT betting is that the so called ripple effect I have written about in the past might not be as strong as I thought.

Sort of.

I have always been of the opinion that, when smart money is bet off-shore, the action tends to makes its way over here. This was not entirely the case on Saturday as there was no way to place a bet on TakeOver at any of the off-shore sportsbooks that accept wagers on professional wrestling. It was only the local Paddy Power and Sky Bet that had prices up for the event.

The most telling indicator was the flip-flop that occurred in both the Jushin 'Thunder' Liger versus Tyler Breeze and Baron Corbin versus Samoa Joe bouts.

In the case of Liger and Joe - both wrestlers were underdogs when their respective markets opened and remained that way until the latter round of betting when both became short-priced favourites to go over on Saturday's show.

Liger had opened as a 5/4 outsider on August 6th and was 6/5 on the morning of the show. Joe - on the other hand - was available at 15/8 when his odds were installed and was 5/4 at 10:20am BST on TakeOver Saturday. By the close of the betting, the pair had plummeted to 3/10 apiece.

It's worth noting that Liger was 10/11 and Joe at 6/4 with Sky Bet. So, whoever did bet into the Paddy Power numbers were unaware that Sky Bet had odds out for NXT on the day of the show. The Sky Bet odds were eventually taken down earlier than the 2am BST cut-off, though.

Finn Balor's Paddy Power odds were also shortened. They moved from 2/5 on the morning of the show to 1/10 at 11pm BST when the book was closed.

The off-shore wagering on SummerSlam 2015 also points to smart money being placed. It appears that this occurred between the hours of 7pm to 8pm BST. Nine of the ten favourites ended up being victorious with the only favourites that failed to win - Dolph Ziggler - being awared a draw with Rusev. This obviously ended up with punters for Ziggler or Rusev holding cancelled tickets.

This is how the 7pm to 8pm BST wagers shortened the odds for the eventual winners:

• Sheamus went from -1,850 to -2,750
• New Day from -1,700 to -2,750
• Amell & Neville no change from -6,000 but did drop further before the match 
• Ryback remained at -2,000 between 7pm and 8pm but shortened later on
• Ambrose & Reigns -180 to -600
• Seth Rollins -600 to -2,000
• PCB also -600 to -2,000
• Kevin Owens -900 to -2,300
• The Undertaker -280 to -530

There is no explanation to the Dolph Ziggler number going from -105 at 4pm to -1,050 at the start of his match. In the past, I have suspected that the smart wagers have been placed by people working out the winners from the production notes' music cues for the night. 

The case for this could be made here as it was Ziggler's music that played at the end of the match. However, the thing that works against this idea is Brock Lesnar's theme was cued up to close out the event.

It'll be interesting to see the time the odds change for next month's Night of Champions event.

I'll be back soon with a look to see how the WWE SummerSlam prop markets were settled.