The Top Places to Look for Accurate Sports Betting Stats

By on September 11, 2018
Sports Fan

One of the most crucial aspects of sports betting is accurately handicapping the matchup based on statistics and data. The more knowledge a gambler has at their disposal, and the better they are at organizing such information, the more accurate their predictions will be. This makes finding value much more manageable, which in turn leads to increasing profits and the bankroll.

However, finding valuable data can be a more difficult task than you might think. The basic statistics that are tracked by the sports leagues themselves are usually relatively useless, at least on their own. You have to be able to filter queries, find advanced stats, and synthesize the information collected to really set realistic probabilities for each side when betting.

To make life easier for our readers, I’ve tracked down the five best resources online for finding accurate data and statistics for sports betting. These sites allow users to manipulate the numbers, including old betting lines, in a plethora of ways to help them identify trends and create betting systems.

While collecting the statistics is a vital part of the overall handicapping process, you’ll still need to model and simulate the numbers when you’ve found your data. Regardless, starting with robust datasets and useful breakdowns is a crucial step in becoming a successful handicapper.

Sports Insights

Sports Insights is a powerful tool for handicappers who understand betting value and the importance of timing when making sports bets. This resource doesn’t track box score statistics like some of the other datasets; instead, they follow gambling data such as odds, line movement, and much more.

This website is used by many of the top sports gamblers in the world, as it can analyze the public betting trends and line movement across 50 sports books, allowing you to anticipate changes and wager accordingly. They also share the sharps betting trends, which is where the seasoned handicappers are investing their money.

No matter what sport you’re betting on, Sports Insights is a potent tool that you should have in your arsenal. The only problem is it’s a paid subscription service and can be quite pricey. They have two packages, the “premium” and the “pro.”

The pro service has much more functionality and can help you predict line adjustments, find the best opportunities to fade the public, and send out alerts regarding injuries, weather, and other factors that could alter the betting odds at the last minute.

If you’re serious about winning your bets regularly, you’ll want to invest in a service such as this one. Being able to shop for the best lines and find value all in the same place is as helpful as it gets for handicappers.

BetLabs

BetLabs is another invaluable tool for handicappers hoping to create their own betting systems. This site is part of the same network as Sports Insights and is actually one of the features included with a membership to the aforementioned website. While Insights is a better site for pure sportsbook data, BetLab allows users to manipulate massive datasets from just about every sport, with a mix of sports and gambling statistics for detailed regression analysis.

Members can apply up to 400 filters to the various databases to find their own patterns and trends and create unique betting systems. For example, you can implement filters to identify which teams have historically covered the over when favored at home while averaging 80 rushing yards per game.

You may get as creative as you’re capable to find obscure trends that you’d never see without so much data and so many filters at your disposal. Used in conjunction with Sports Insights’ line movement and betting odds trackers, a handicapper has just about everything they need.

Football Outsiders

Football Outsiders is one of the premier statistics and analytics site for football betting and fantasy football. This website is creating advanced stats similar to what we’ve seen utilized in baseball and basketball so effectively, to better help gamblers and fantasy players predict upcoming performances.

There are tons of moving pieces on any given NFL play. So much so, that it can be challenging to determine who deserves credit for the success of a run, for example. Football Outsiders has created statistics that break down how much the offensive line impacted a rushing attempt, how much the running back was responsible for, and what percentage of the play was due to bad defense.

If you want to really understand which players are good and which are the product of their system, Football Outsiders is for you. Plus, they’re continually posting articles and analysis about film study, new stats, and general information to help you make great sports betting decisions and roster moves in daily and season-long fantasy.

Pro Football Focus

Pro Football Focus offers a similar product to Football Outsiders. For bettors interested in legal sports betting, it can be a potent weapon to have at your disposal. PFF also develops their own advanced stats which express the elusiveness of running backs, a quarterback’s adjusted completion percentage, and a cornerback’s success in different coverages. These numbers can show you the truth behind the superficial box score stats, and thus give you an advantage at the sportsbooks.

What Pro Football Focus does that’s unique is break down and score each players’ performance on every single play of the game. And they track this historical data for years. This takes an extensive amount of film study to isolate one athlete’s contribution on each down of the game, to give them an overall game score.

Again, there are times when the box score and basic stats will make you assume that a player had a good game when they really didn’t. PFF looks deeper and determines how well they did their job, even on the plays were a mistake didn’t result in any negative repercussions. This way you’ll know who’s really good and who has been getting lucky.

Sports Model Analytics

Sports Model Analytics is another data modeling site that allows users to apply filters and play around with the numbers to create their own betting systems. The purpose of the tools found here is to generate predictions based on regression analysis and historical stats. The models do most of the work including updating the data and creating forecasts making this a valuable tool for handicappers.

For users who may be unable to invest the vast sums of money required for Sports Insights subscriptions, a website like this one can be utilized for much less. Whereas Sports Insights costs $249 per month for their pro package, Sports Model Analytics only costs $14. You can still get many of the same benefits from this resource that you would from BetLab, just with fewer customizable filters.

Novice handicappers may want to start with a tool like this one to get the hang of statistical predictive modeling. Once you understand regression analysis and advanced stats, some of the more potent tools will make more sense for your budget.

Sports Database

Sports Database is precisely what the name says, a massive collection of all box score data saved in one place. The database uses a mixture of data scrubbers and user input to create one resource full of information like historical stats, upcoming schedules, playing surface, weather, and even betting lines. What’s even better, you may access all of this information for free!

However, there is a bit of a catch. You’ll need to be able to write and customize SQL queries to locate the data that you’re looking for. This can be much more time consuming than merely applying filters to a dataset like BetLabs. But if you’re good with SQL, or willing to learn, the Sports Database is an ideal place to get started making betting systems.

The site also has learning manuals and a blog page which shares different queries and shortcuts. If you’re willing to do a bit of extra work up front, this page is an excellent starter tool for the thriftier handicappers among us.

The Wrap Up

If you want to be one of the handicappers that win their sports bets consistently, there are quite a few sets of data you’ll need to pay attention to. First, you’ll need to be aware of the betting lines and what’s being offered at each sportsbook. We frequently mention the value in relation to sports gambling, and the only way to determine whether a pick has positive value is to know the number at which it’s being offered.

Once you know the odds, and how they’re moving, you’ll want a firm understanding of what’s really happening on the field of play. For this stage of handicapping, you need historical stats for regression analysis and advanced statistics that help isolate individual athletes’ contributions during a match. With those tools at your disposal, you can really begin breaking down matchups and creating predictive models to help you with your picks.

The bottom line is, knowledge is what separates the gamblers who turn a profit and those who burn through their bankroll every single year. You need to know how to collect the appropriate information, how to determine which stats matter most, and model the statistical data so that you may analyze contests and make accurate predictions going forward.

The locations mentioned above will all assist you in your quest to become a dominant handicapper. Take some time to play around with them all, the majority offer free or cheap short-term trials so that you may decide how valuable the tools are for you. Start manipulating the numbers and searching for patterns and who knows, maybe you’ll develop the next winning betting system!