Study · ATP tennis · 2024 to 2026 · 1,722 matches
Five sets
favour the favourite.
At the men's Grand Slams, players priced at 80% or more were expected to lose about 31 of their 256 matches. They lost 19.
1,722 completed matches with closing prices from 3 or more bookmakers, 14 January 2024 to 28 October 2026 · Published 30 October 2026 ·
Free to quote under CC BY 4.0 ·
Download the data (CSV)
Best of five
vs best of three.
Men play best of five sets at the four Grand Slams and best of three everywhere else. A longer match gives the better player more time to win.
| Matches | Matches | Favourites priced | Favourites won | Gap |
|---|
| Men, Grand Slams (best of 5 sets) | 793 | 72.7% | 76.5% | +3.9 |
| Men, other events (best of 3) | 929 | 66.6% | 67.9% | +1.3 |
The Grand Slam favourites beat their price by 3.9 points; resampled 4,000 times that gap lands between 1.2 and 6.5 points, 95 times in 100. At best-of-three events the gap was +1.3 (range -1.7 to 4.3), too small to call.
Big favourites
at the Slams.
| Grand Slam favourites | Matches | Priced to win | Won | Lost |
|---|
| Priced 80% or more | 256 | 87.8% | 92.6% | 19 |
Favourites
by price.
All 1,722 ATP matches. Every band won a little more often than priced.
| Favourite's price | Matches | Priced to win | Won | Lost |
|---|
| 50-60% | 472 | 55.4% | 57.6% | 200 |
| 60-70% | 471 | 64.8% | 66.7% | 157 |
| 70-80% | 405 | 74.7% | 77.0% | 93 |
| 80-90% | 262 | 84.8% | 88.9% | 29 |
| 90% and up | 112 | 92.7% | 95.5% | 5 |
| All favourites | 1,722 | 69.4% | 71.9% | 484 |
By
surface.
| Surface | Matches | Favourites priced | Favourites won | Gap |
|---|
| Hard | 1,155 | 68.9% | 70.4% | +1.5 |
| Clay | 401 | 69.7% | 72.8% | +3.1 |
| Grass | 139 | 72.8% | 80.6% | +7.8 |
Grass favourites beat their price by 7.8 points (range 1.4 to 13.8), but that is only 139 matches, mostly Wimbledon.
5 shock
results.
Players priced at 90% or more played 112 matches and lost 5.
| Date | Favourite | Priced to win | Lost to | Where |
|---|
| 30 August 2024 | Carlos Alcaraz | 96.2% | Botic van de Zandschulp | US Open, 2nd Round |
| 2 July 2024 | Andrey Rublev | 93.3% | Francisco Comesana | Wimbledon, 1st Round |
| 22 March 2025 | Carlos Alcaraz | 93.0% | David Goffin | Miami Open, 2nd Round |
| 3 September 2026 | Lorenzo Musetti | 91.9% | Dane Sweeny | US Open, 2nd Round |
| 29 May 2025 | Jakub Mensik | 91.9% | Henrique Rocha | French Open, 2nd Round |
Is it
real?
Across all 1,722 matches, ATP favourites beat their price by 2.5 points (95% range 0.5 to 4.5). Most of it comes from the Grand Slams, which fits how tennis works: over five sets, luck has more time to even out. Compare the WTA study, where every match is best of three.
Today's
tennis matches.
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How we
measured.
The method
We took the closing match-winner price for completed ATP singles matches at 35 Grand Slam, 1000-level and 500-level tournaments from 14 January 2024 to 28 October 2026 that had prices from at least three bookmakers (about 14 on average). Each bookmaker's two prices were turned into chances, then scaled so the two players add up to 100%, which removes the bookmaker's cut (on average 4.61%). We averaged the bookmakers for each match and matched it to the official result. Retirements and walkovers are left out.
Coverage is uneven: we have more Grand Slam matches than smaller events, and not every match at every tournament.
On the Brier score (the average squared error of a chance; a coin flip scores 0.250), the closing prices scored 0.1869, against the 0.1978 they expected of themselves.
The data file
tennis-atp-favourites-2024-2026.csv has one row per game. Columns: date, tour, tournament, level, surface, round, best_of, favourite, underdog, fav_chance (margin-free closing chance for the favourite), books, fav_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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