The Player Line: the market that is about one person
A team market is about an event that will happen. A market on one person is about what a person will do inside it, and it rests on two estimates nobody can observe: how long the player will be on the pitch, and what he will do per minute while there. This desk is about that second subject - the single player as a priced, settled bet, the sentence in the rules that decides whether the bet is settled at all, the source that counts the stat afterwards, and why a market about a person carries a smaller limit than the match it sits in.
- samples
- 10 invented
- expected minutes
- 78.0
- fair price
- 2.93
- offered price
- 2.70
four definitions, one match: the same bet is settled, or returned, by a sentence in the rules rather than by anything the player does.
The bar the reader would use is a full match, and it is the wrong one. Every figure here follows from the 78.0-minute estimate: move the minutes twelve either way and the fair price moves from 2.45 to 3.63, which is the whole of the desk.
one player, one stat, one line; the price is an estimate of the minutes before it is a view of the player.
A market on one player is priced from a projection of that player's output - an expected-minutes figure multiplied by a per-90 rate - and settled against a definition of "to play" written in the operator's rules. The sample player is expected to play 78.0 minutes at 1.40 shots on target per 90, so the model expects 1.21 of them, the line is set at 1.5, and the fair price is 2.93 against an offered 2.70.
What the samples show
The whole subject sits in one estimate. A full match would imply 1.40 shots on target for the sample player, which prices the market at 2.45. The projection says he will play 78.0 minutes, not 90, so the expected output is 1.21 and the honest price is 2.93. The 0.48 of price between the two figures is not a margin and not a view about the player: it is twelve minutes of expected absence.
The second finding is that the bet itself is fragile. Of 400 sampled single-player markets, 308 stand under a rule that means "named in the starting XI" and 369 stand under a rule that means "takes the field", so between 92 and 103 of the same 400 bets are returned rather than settled - by the wording, not by the player. A desk about one person has to be about that sentence as much as about the projection.
None of the samples describes a real operator, player, team or match. They are ten invented sets of counts, minutes and prices, defined on this page, and every other figure on the site is derived from them.
Ten samples
One player, one stat.
- expected minutes
- 78.0
- expected output
- 1.21
- fair / offered
- 2.93 / 2.70
Four words for "to play".
- stand, in the XI
- 308
- stand, takes the field
- 369
- of the sample
- 400
Who counts the stat.
- settled
- 1,200
- corrected
- 14
- after payout
- 3
One player against the team.
- scores when it wins
- 30.0%
- overall
- 21.25%
- fair price
- 4.71
The ceiling on a person.
- player maximum
- 800.00
- team maximum
- 5,000.00
- payout ceiling
- 12,000.00
Thirty-six rule pages, read.
- settle a player market
- 22
- define "to play"
- 14
- all six rules
- 1
One month of single-player bets.
- turnover
- 75,200.00
- settled
- 7,380
- retained
- 7.92%
From whistle to settlement.
- median
- 22 min
- inside 30 min
- 68.0%
- 90th percentile
- 3 h 05 m
Two further samples are defined on the pages that use them: sample I on the tie between two providers, and sample J on how wide the minutes estimate really is.
The desk in one table
The clearest place to start is the estimate that decides the price: how long the player is expected to be on the pitch, and what that does to the number.
| Step | Value | Price it implies | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| A full match assumed | 1.40 | 2.45 | Per-90 rate carried across all 90 minutes |
| The projection (78.0 minutes) | 1.21 | 2.93 | 78/90 x 1.40, priced from the chance of 2 or more |
| What the twelve minutes are worth on a 10.00 stake | 0.48 | 4.80 | 24.50 against 29.30 returned at the fair prices |