Referees and betting market: smart tips for your bet

Referees role: The importance of research and data analysis on referees

The question is, how knowing the referee can help you to place a winning bet?

Referees play an active role in every match. We spend time to research and analyse everything about teams and players, but most of the time we don’t do any research on referees. To the extent that many of us don’t even know who the referee of the match we are betting on will be.

This is definitely an area where almost all bettors can improve, especially because it’s not complex and all the stats and referee information can be easily checked before a match.

Referee statistics are usually present in a match analysis before important matches, i.e. Champions League, Europe League, or World Cup. In these matches, you find a lot of betting markets related to the referee’s actions (number of yellow cards, possibility of a red card, penalty kick, and so on).

There are some websites like https://www.soccerbase.com/referees/home.sd offering statistics about referees: number of home and away wins, draws, yellow/red cards, penalties, and so on. For example, German referee Felix Birtch in five champions league matches issued four red cards. However, the most strict referee is Italian Daniele Orsato, with 37 yellow cards in only 6 champions league matches! His stats in Serie A were not much different, having issued 73 yellow cards in just 12 matches.

These are real numbers, but they don’t guide you enough to create your betslip. That’s because the majority of this information is not 100% focused. You need to read and understand the information. For example, if you read that a specific referee sent of 7 players in his last 6 games, or the home team have always won – what should you do with this information?

Smart tips to follow

All of this information is relevant and canprove to be valuable if you look at it with a more focused approach.

The key here is simple: Divide the referee’s matches into different subcategories (you have to create your own sets of categories) and analyse their behaviour according to each of them.

Every football match is different, so avoid analysing the referee’s behaviour in a match like Juventus vs Genoa in a similar way to a match like Inter vs AC Milan

The question is not how many home or away wins a referee has officiated, but instead:

• How many favourites or underdogs have won when he was referee?
• How many penalties have been awarded to home favourites and how many to underdogs?
• How many yellow and red cards does he issue on average per match?
• How often does he send off a favourite home team’s player?
• Can he withstand the pressure of home fans?

Having this information is of great value to you, because it even covers the possibility of referee mistakes. By taking note of different referees stats, you will discover valuable information about lots of referees that you wouldn’t have known otherwise.

Is he affected by the atmosphere in the stadium? Is he fair and balanced with underdogs? You’ll find out if an underdog has less chance of winning a match with a certain referee and more with another.

In conclusion, referee stats give us an extra insight into the outcome of a match, helping you to build and manage bets more effectively.