Gerard Daffy is an Australian sports betting and online gambling pioneer having been involved in the bookmaking industry all his adult life.

In this episode Gerard discusses the AFL and NRL season so far and looks ahead to the finals including futures betting.

Punting Insights You’ll Find

Why this year has been such a good one

The three times each week when the line will move

The teams he is happy to keep as winners in Tatt's book

How and why punters often over-react to just one game

Today’s Guest:

Gerard Daffy

Get the Transcript:

David: We’re only a month or so away from the footy finals so I wanted to talk to you about the season so far and of course what we’ve got to look forward to over the next couple of months, starting with AFL. How has the season been so far for Tatts?

Gerard: It’s been a pretty good year in all codes, so many upsets in this day and age. I just had a look the other day. Leading into this weekend in AFL, we’ve had 153 matches. Only 105 favorites won and that’s probably been the poorest winning record we’ve had in recent history particularly since we’ve had the newer sides in the competition. Most thought that the competition would be one sided.

It probably was to some degree over the last 2 seasons but it’s definitely averaged out now and we’ve seen a lot more shocks.

David: So in horse racing when there is a blowout winner though they say it’s a good result for the bookies. Is that the same in AFL where if it’s a big upset, it tends to be a big result?

Gerard: Well not really because in a field of 2, the other side is always going to be backed, backed the outsider particularly for those who don’t want to take the short prices. I guess the best example of it we’ve seen so far this season was the recent win by St. Kilda win over Fremantle. St. Kilda were $14 but we actually took 4 times as many individual bets on St. Kilda as what we did for Fremantle, just value punters or people who’ve got sides that they support and they back them week in week out but having said that, obviously when a $1.03 pop goes over and there are always matching results because there’s so much business now done through multi’s. While your singles book you might lose on it, ultimately, with a lot of people now focusing on multi’s or trying to pick 2 or 3 wins or maybe even the whole round, once an outsider gets up, that’s normally enough for you to break it square at least for the weekend.

David: With a result like that when Freo are $1.03 do you get much action at the line or plus or minus the points as you do for a straight bet?

Gerard: You do. A lot of people do turn their focus to the lines and it’s interesting looking at those because again, 153 games this season, only 75 favorites have covered the lines and that’s less than 50%. While you might think that these teams will win by big margins, it doesn’t always go that way. A lot of them take their foot off their pedal. They might come out of the blocks and lead by a big margin but it doesn’t always transpire that that will go on throughout the game.

It does get very dangerous at this time of the year. Once sides have consolidated their position either in the 8 in or out of it. There’s not a lot to gain by beating sides by 20 goals so you run the risk of say, some of those bigger sides risking players or not even playing them in the first instance. Taking minuses has never been my cup of tea anyway but more importantly from this time of the year onwards, it gets extremely dangerous.

David: You mentioned 153 games and 75 favorites have covered so the bookies are doing a reasonable job because that’s only a game and half off the perfect 50/50.

Gerard: Yeah, that’s right and I suppose when it’s a $1.90 take you pick, in theory you’d want to be more than 50% in your favor anyway and that would be enough to win on a level staking plan, but given that most of the money is used for the favorites anyway.