FastLane 2017 And Smart Money

While checking Twitter this morning, I noticed I was tagged into a conversation about the betting on WWE FastLane. The discussion appeared to have started when Dave Meltzer answered a question about last weekend's betting by telling somebody that 'Smart money never came in.'

As regular visitors are sure to know, Dave is my favourite wrestling journalist. I have been a reader of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter since the mid-90s, so I obviously value his opinion and coverage of wrestling and MMA. However, I respectfully disagree with him on this one.

I am confident that smart money came in on this event. 

Saturday is the tell. It's a hindisight being 20/20 tell, but it's a tell nonetheless.

WWE FastLane 2017 Odds Changes On Saturday Mar 4th

In the table above, I've listed all of the FastLane 2017 winners (excluding Cesaro and Big Show who featurd in unannounced matches) and noted what their odds were on Saturday morning. 

As you can see, barring Swann/Tozawa and Samoa Joe, the oddsmakers adjusted the prices for all of the eventual winners on Saturday afternoon.

In an attempt to try and strengthen my point, here's how the lines were changed on the Saturday of last month's pay-per-view.

WWE Elimination Chamber Odds Shifts On Saturday Feb 11th

There was a similar pattern despite there being a couple of things to point out. The first one being that Nikki Bella's odds drifted out in favour of Natalya. This did not affect anything as their match ended in a double count-out meaning all bets were voided.

The Saturday moves for Elimination Chamber also resulted in heavy price reductions. In my opinion, the cuts were stronger in February because the markets were up for fewer days than they were for FastLane. 

I also strongly believe that the FastLane markets, especially for the matches where the eventual outsiders were victors, were getting enough action from on the favourites - from regular punters - to warrant conservative adjusting of the odds. That could be another reason why we didn't see the prices plummet.

The reason why I believe the off-shore oddsmakers were being conservative is because the European bookies were hit by Roman Reigns money late on Friday night. One company went so far as to take the match off the board. I wrote all about it in the post titled The Curious Case of the Reigns/Strowman Domestic Markets.

You can see, in the tables below, that the three outsiders who ended up winning their respective matches were also being backed to win during Sunday's round of betting:

Sasha Banks' price dropping through Sunday

Sasha started off the day as a +1,000 outsider, but was backed into +800 by 7pm GMT. A price she remained at right through to when the markets were taken down right before the PPV. In my opinion, there was balanced action from smart and regular money so the oddsmakers may have felt comfortable to keep these numbers hanging.

Roman Reigns' price dropping through Sunday

Roman Reigns' price descended. What more can I say other than that? 

Back-and-forth betting action in WWE Raw Women's Title match through Sunday

The WWE Raw Women's Championship market was see-sawing on Sunday evening. It's important to note that, despite being +500 when the markets first opened on February 28th, Bayley was moved out to +850 within a few hours. The early birds did not think Bayley would win the match. I too was one of those people. Bayley's price fell on Thursday, but this move coincided with almost every outsider on the board being backed (read about it in this post). 

I sent Dave Meltzer all the odds notes that I had collected once the pay-per-view had concluded in the early hours of Monday morning and pointed out that the moves from Saturday, so was surprised to see the tweet today. 

I know the sure sign of smart money is the late Sunday moves and the heavy odds, but the numbers from Saturday - and the drops through Sunday - are convincing enough from my viewpoint.