Study · AFL 2026 · Round 1 to the Grand Final
Big favourites
almost never lose.
AFL teams priced at 80% or more were expected to win about 46 of their 53 games in 2026. They won 52.
212 games with closing prices from 3 or more bookmakers, 5 March 2026 to 26 September 2026 · Published 30 October 2026 ·
Free to quote under CC BY 4.0 ·
Download the data (CSV)
AFL2026
86.5%
Big favourites priced
Favourites
by price.
In close games the price was about right. From 80% up, favourites won far more than their odds said.
| Favourite's price | Games | Priced to win | Won | Lost |
|---|
| 50-60% | 50 | 55.4% | 64.0% | 18 |
| 60-70% | 63 | 64.7% | 63.5% | 23 |
| 70-80% | 46 | 74.7% | 71.7% | 13 |
| 80-90% | 42 | 85.0% | 97.6% | 1 |
| 90% and up | 11 | 92.2% | 100.0% | 0 |
| All favourites | 212 | 70.1% | 74.1% | 55 |
The one loss: Greater Western Sydney Giants (away), priced at 84.7%, lost 64-67 to Essendon Bombers on 19 July 2026.
Final shows the favourite's score first.
Home ground
month by month.
Home teams were priced to win 54.8% and won 58.5%, or 124 of 212. Home favourites won 78.0% of 123 games against a 71.5% price.
| Month | Games | Home priced | Home won | Home wins |
|---|
| March | 28 | 58.7% | 60.7% | 17 |
| April | 34 | 52.2% | 67.6% | 23 |
| May | 42 | 56.5% | 69.0% | 29 |
| June | 29 | 55.6% | 55.2% | 16 |
| July | 38 | 55.0% | 52.6% | 20 |
| August | 32 | 50.9% | 43.8% | 14 |
| September (finals) | 9 | 54.4% | 55.6% | 5 |
| All | 212 | 54.8% | 58.5% | 124 |
April and May were strong for home teams. By August the edge had gone the other way.
"Home" is the home team named by the bookmakers. Some AFL games are played at a shared ground, so home ground means less than in other sports.
Is it
real?
This is one season, 212 games, so we flag it plainly: the numbers are small. Favourites as a whole beat their price by 4.0 points; resampled 4,000 times, that gap lands between -2.0 and 9.4 points, 95 times in 100. Home teams: +3.7 points (range -1.9 to 9.2). Both lean the same way as the big-favourite result, but neither is proven from one year. College football showed the same big-favourite pattern in 2026.
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How we
measured.
The method
We took the closing head-to-head price for every AFL game from 5 March 2026 to 26 September 2026 that had prices from at least three bookmakers (about 11 on average). Each bookmaker's two prices were turned into chances, then scaled so the two teams add up to 100%, which removes the bookmaker's cut (on average 5.45%). We averaged the bookmakers for each game and matched it to the final score. The 3 drawn games were left out.
On the Brier score (the average squared error of a chance; a coin flip scores 0.250), the closing prices scored 0.1781, better than the 0.1954 they expected of themselves, because the big favourites won more often than the prices said.
The data file
afl-favourites-2026.csv has one row per game. Columns: date, home, away, home_chance (margin-free closing chance for the home team), books, home_score, away_score, home_won.
Free to use, share and adapt under CC BY 4.0. Please credit “Bet Better (betbetter.world)” and link to this page.
Cite this study
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