Pelagic posted the title game prices on 9 June this year, three weeks earlier than any operator managed last season, and four of the other fourteen followed within a fortnight. The early books were soft — we measured a 21% overround on Pelagic’s opening market against 14% on the same market a month later — and two teams shortened by more than a point before training camp opened.
The softness is structural. An outright market posted in June is built on last season’s results and an offseason of guesswork, and the operator prices it wide to protect itself against the guesswork being wrong. As information arrives — camp reports, preseason snaps, injuries — the market tightens and the wide early prices on the teams the information favours disappear. This year Prairie went from 8.00 to 6.50 between the opening and the first preseason game.
Whether the early market is value depends on the direction: a 21% overround means most early prices are worse than they will become, and only the ones on teams the summer favours improve. The ante-post guide covers the arithmetic, and Pelagic remains the operator with the earliest and deepest outright books in our guide — with, as its review notes, no cash-out on any of them.
