Saturday Was Once Again The Day

In the days following WrestleMania 32, I published this post where I pointed out that following the betting lines on the day before the event was a giveaway to the eventual winners. Barring a couple of explainable exceptions, the same can be stated of this year's Mania.

Here's a table with the winners from Sunday with their odds at the beginning of the day and a certain point later on.

WrestleMania 33 Odds Moves From Saturday Morning to Early Evening

I believe 7:30pm was the key time where oddsmakers decided to cut down the prices of the selections that were being backed. 

As you can see, there were strong moves across the board for the eventual winners apart for one. More on that later. Most of the selections were at far shorter odds within an hour of the prices being cut.

I purposely left The Hardys from the table above because - as they were late additions to the match - they obviously weren't available to wager on as an individual selection.

This does not mean people weren't backing 'The Hardy Boyz' to win. Technically speaking, they were. 

Here's why.

Click on image to expand

The image above is how the market looked on Saturday morning. Pay particular attention to 'Field wins WWE Raw Tag Team Championship' below the -250 for Enzo and Big Cass. It was +177 at this time.

At 7:30pm, the market was unchanged from the morning. However, by 8:30pm, the odds for 'Gallows and Anderson' and 'Cesaro and Sheamus' had both been cut. They dropped from +225 to +168 and +1,150 to +1,100 respectively. The reason? To make a guess: I believe it's because 'The Field vs Enzo and Big Cass' was where the punters were placing their wagers in the hope of a settlement against the favourites at the time the bet was struck.

'The Field' had moved from the aforementioned +177 to +135 between 7:30pm and 8:30pm on Saturday. As a result, the favourites' price improved from -250 to -175. With Enzo and Big Cass being opposed by the punters, the oddsmakers were forced to lower the individual prices for the two opponents as well as 'The Field'.

And then there's the selection I highlighted in the table as being the exception.

The WWE Intercontinental Champion is highlighted because he won on Sunday despite his opponent - Baron Corbin - being backed on Saturday night.

It could be argued that the reason behind Corbin seeing action on Saturday was because defeating Ambrose was the original plan. This may have changed when WWE decided to move the WWE Smackdown Women's Championship to the main part of the event and had to choose another bout to replace it.

The Intercontinental Championship was chosen.

As noted on Sunday night, Ambrose won the match after entering it as an underdog. He may have entered as the outsider, but the money was certainly coming in on him in the hours leading into the match.

Dean Ambrose started out the day up at +850. He was backed into +800 by 8pm. It went downhill from there as his price was slashed in half within an hour. He had fallen to as low as +125 

Ambrose started to drift back out just before bell-time, but that could easily be a case of fans believing that Corbin - in the midst of a monster push - would get the win. They may have even backed the favourite under the misguided thought that all the chalk at that point were locked in to be the eventual winners.

Despite Ambrose .vs. Corbin, I think this evidence is strong enough to point to Saturday once again being the day where either WrestleMania smart money came in or oddsmakers made their moves to snip their lines. This isn't only the case for WrestleMania 33 and last year's event. It has also been an indicator for some shows in the latter part of 2016 and even the most recent pay-per-view, FastLane 2017.

It'll be something to watch as we head into the next batch of WWE pay-per-view weekends.