Player Injuries: Impact on Odds and Betting Strategies

In which sports are injuries most important? 

There’s an argument to say that the fewer players there are in a team, the more that injured player’s absence will be felt. 

Following that rationale, an injury to a basketball player (basketball is a five-player per team sport) or volleyball (six players) may have more of an effect than in sports with a bigger number of players per team, like football, baseball or cricket (11-a-side), or rugby union (15-a-side). After all, one player out of 15 may affect the game less than one player out of five. 

Some players are more equal than others

To paraphrase George Orwell: all players are equal, but some players are more equal than others. In two ways. 

The first is that some sports have players in key positions/roles that are undeniably more important than other positions. Think a pitcher in baseball, a Quarterback in American Football or a goalie in ice hockey. Few would argue that the loss to injury of a starting Quarterback isn’t more significant than losing a long snapper to injury.

The quality of the actual player is of course another consideration. Though Christian Eriksen and Bruno Fernandes are both attacking midfielders for Manchester United, losing Fernandes would be a far bigger blow to Man Utd than losing Eriksen, because he has a far bigger impact on the team, scores more goals and provides more assists. 

The effect of injuries on betting odds

The absence of injured players inevitably makes their team weaker. This obviously isn’t lost on the Sportsbooks, who will factor in the impact of those absences in their odds. They will consider:

• The importance of the role the player (or players) has.
• The overall quality of the injured player(s). 
• The quality of the player(s) coming in to replace them. 

The more of a loss the player or players are to the team, the more the team’s odds will lengthen. 

For example: 

LA Lakers are 1.8 to beat the LA Clippers. 

• Star man Lebron James gets injured the day before the game- Lakers drift to 1.95
• Important player D'Angelo Russell (we’re assuming here that Lebron James isn’t get injured in this example) gets injured the day before the game – Lakers drift to 1.83.

Of course, any injuries that the LA Clippers have are also considered in the odds. It may be that their injuries are considered more serious than what the Lakers have so it might be the Clippers who drift in price, not the Lakers.