Let's look into some mispriced betting lines for UFC 285 and see which fighters are overvalued and which ones are undervalued heading into Saturday’s ESPN+ pay-per-view event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
One of the first “aha!” moments I had in gambling (generally, not just MMA) was to start thinking about why markets might be wrong, rather than just trying to predict what I think will happen.
At its core, that's what a betting line is: a market where we can “buy” or “sell” events happening. For the most part, these markets are efficient, with the “price” eventually reflecting the true odds of the event.
While this is less true in MMA – where there are far more information asymmetries than major markets like the NFL or NBA – it's still broadly (and increasingly) the case. Therefore, to beat the markets long-term, we need to figure out spots where they're wrong.