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The Player Line / The confirmation
The source that counts the stat, and the audit behind it
Who confirms a single-player stat, and what happens when it is corrected
A team result is a score everyone can see. A single-player stat is a number a provider publishes and edits: whether a shot that hit the woodwork was on target, whether a tackle was a tackle. The bet settles on that number, which means it settles on a judgement made after the match and sometimes changed after it.
Desk spec
- settled
- 1,200
- corrected
- 14
- after payout
- 3
- median lag
- 22 min
the projectionWhat a player is expected to do: an expected-minutes figure multiplied by a per-90 rate. 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 rather than the 1.40 a full match would imply.
the participation definitionWhat the operator's rules mean by "to play". Across 400 sampled single-player markets the same bets stand 308 times under "named in the starting XI" and 369 times under "takes the field", so the definition decides whether the bet is settled at all.
the confirmationThe source that counts the stat after the match and the audit behind it. 14 of 1,200 sampled markets were corrected after first publication, 5 of them more than an hour later, and 3 after the payout had already been made.
Direct answerA single-player stat is confirmed by a data provider's published count, not by the operator's own eye. Of 1,200 sampled settled markets, 14 were corrected after first publication, 5 of them more than an hour later and 3 after the payout had been made. The confirmation is a settlement input with its own error rate.
The number is a judgement
Most single-player stats are countable without argument - goals, games won, points scored - but a large minority are contested at the margin. A shot that hits the woodwork is counted on target by one provider and off target by another; a pass that is intercepted two yards from its target is completed by one and misplaced by the other. The samples put the disputed cases at 6 of the 14 corrections, all of them a woodwork shot, which is why the market's fine print has to name a provider rather than describe the stat in words.
Naming a provider is also what allows a correction to be applied at all. Once the count is a published series with a version history, an operator can point at the change and re-settle; where the rules describe the stat in words, the operator's own reading stands and there is nothing to appeal against.
What the samples show
Sample C - 1,200 settled single-player markets, by confirmation outcome
| Outcome | Markets | Share | What it means |
|---|
| Settled on first publication | 1,186 | 98.83% | The count stood |
| Corrected within an hour | 9 | 0.75% | Re-settled before most readers looked |
| Corrected after an hour | 5 | 0.42% | Re-settled late |
| Corrected after the payout | 3 | 0.25% | The change was not reversed |
| Every market that did not settle on first publication | 14 | 1.17% | 6 of them a woodwork shot |
sample C - the correction rate and its tail
settled markets = 1,200
corrected after first publication = 14 -> 14 / 1,200 = 1.17%
corrected within an hour = 9 -> 0.75%
corrected after an hour = 5 -> 0.42%
corrected after the payout = 3 -> 0.25%
woodwork shots among the 14 = 6 -> 6 / 14 = 42.9%
at a mean settled stake of 9.40, the 14 corrections touch
14 x 9.40 = 131.60 of stakes in the sample month.
the 3 post-payout corrections are the ones a reader cannot fix:
the count changed, the money had already moved, and the samples
record no reversal of the 3.
sample H - how long confirmation takes
median time from the final whistle to settlement = 22 minutes
share settled inside 30 minutes = 68.0%
90th percentile = 3 h 05 m = 185 minutes
longest in the sample = 6 h 40 m = 400 minutes
the median is short because most stats are counted live;
the tail is long because the contested ones are not:
a market that needed a provider's re-check waited
a median of 2 h 10 m beyond the whistle, roughly
5.9x the ordinary lag.
Five questions about who counts the number
- Which provider's count settles the market, named rather than described.
- Whether the operator uses the provider's live count or its corrected end-of-match count.
- What happens if the provider corrects the count after the bet has been paid.
- Whether the reader can see the provider's own published figure, or only the operator's summary.
- Whether a disputed count is appealable, and to whom, and inside what window.
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