Saturday 22 September 2018

That Lesnar Market

It has been over a month since Brock Lesnar dropped the WWE Universal Championship to Roman Reigns as SummerSlam.

This means it has been well over a month since I planned to write one last post about the 'Universal Champion After Brock Lesnar' market where customers could have placed wagers on who they believed would succeed Lesnar as Raw's premier champion.

I had kept meaning to write a post about the market because - with Lesnar's reign lasting for well over a year - I had obviously dedicated time following the moves and writing about them. The amount of new markets that have been published following SummerSlam 2018 - including the Hell in a Cell 2018 coverage - forced me to hold off on this, the final post for this market.

Odds for the next Universal Champ were first installed on April 19th 2017 and closed August 19th of this year, when Lesnar dropped the strap to Roman Reigns in the main event of WWE's summer PPV.

As many people were aware, Reigns to eventually beat Lesnar for the strap was the plan BEFORE Lesnar beat Bill Goldberg to become champion at WrestleMania 33. Many, yours truly included, thought the day Reigns overcame The Beast would be at WrestleMania 34. 

It didn't.

We then went on to thinking Reigns would get the win at the Greatest Royal Rumble on April 27th. 

This also didn't occur as Lesnar was awarded the W in the pair's cage match in Saudi Arabia.

When the time came for Reigns to finally snare the title, the market had closed with the eventual winner a 1/6 favourite (he fell from 11/50 a day before the win). To say that Reigns had opened as a 2/5 favourite in April of 2017 would gloss over how his price fluctuated in the sixteen-month period. The amount of adjustments made to every selection in the Champion after Lesnar markets can be viewed by clicking on the image below. 

Universal Champion After Brock Lesnar Betting

The picture doesn't come out well due to how long it is, so I have created another table showing how only Reigns' odds were changed from April 2017 to August 2018. 

Universal Champion After Brock Lesnar Betting - Roman Reigns' Odds

I don't know for sure if we'll ever get to see a top-tier title reign like this for quite some time. AJ Styles is closing in on eleven months with the WWE Championship. I've had a quick look at the table I have been recording for his market and I've counted twenty-six updates.

Lesnar's had forty-six - surprising considering the end result was - with the benefit of hindsight - obvious months before the market even existed.


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