The "polish layer." Each effect is small individually, but bookmakers price most of them crudely or with stale parameters. Aggregated, they're the difference between a model that matches the market and one that beats it.
Modeling
Contextual and Structural Factors — Landscape Note (Area G)
Summary + sample · full document is 1,785 words
Summary
Sample
Home advantage
The largest, most-studied contextual effect in football.
Magnitude (pre-COVID)
- Top-5 European leagues: home win share ~45–47%, draw ~25%, away win ~28–30%.
- Implied 1X2 advantage in probability: ~10–12 percentage points home vs away.
- In goal-rate terms: home teams score about 0.30–0.40 more expected goals per match than the same team away.
- In Asian-handicap terms: roughly equivalent to a 0.2–0.3 goal pre-set advantage.
League variation
Substantial and persistent:
- Highest home advantage: South American leagues (Brazilian Série A historically among the highest), Greek Super League, Turkish Süper Lig, lower divisions in most countries.
- Lower home advantage: Belgian Pro League, MLS, Bundesliga (smaller home advantage relative to peers).
- Drivers: travel distance, crowd intensity, refereeing leniency, pitch and surface familiarity.
COVID drop
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