The Importance of Betting Early
LABSI Working Paper No. 37/2012
28 Pages Posted: 6 Feb 2012 Last revised: 5 Nov 2013
Date Written: November 5, 2013
Abstract
We evaluate the impact of timing on decision outcome, when both the timing and the relevant decision are chosen under uncertainty. Betting markets provide the testing ground, as we exploit an original dataset containing more than one million online bets on games of the Italian Major Soccer League. We find that individuals perform systematically better when they place their bets farther away from the game day. The better performance of early bettors holds controlling for (time-invariant) unobservable ability, learning during the season, and timing of the odds. We attribute this result to the increase of noisy information on game day, which hampers the capacity of late (non-professional) bettors to use very simple prediction methods, such as team rankings or last game results. We also find that more successful bettors tend to bet in advance, focus on a smaller set of events, and prefer events associated with smaller betting odds.
Keywords: decision timing, information overload, betting, sports forecasting
JEL Classification: D81, D83
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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