What Are Historical Betting Odds and Why Are They Useful?

Historical odds data paints the picture of the prices that were offered from when lines opened on our site, right up until the game began.

Having this at your disposal offers detailed insight into how those betting odds fluctuated before kick-off, with extra research helping to understand why certain odds may have changed significantly for a particular match.

We provide a full breakdown of historical betting odds for each bookmaker, for every market. By hovering over the prices offered by each individual sportsbook, you will be able to see any odds movement that happened before the game.

Additionally, we supply you with the quarter or half scores, depending on the sport, which can demonstrate where teams have consistently come from behind. This can be particularly helpful if you are somebody that prefers live betting over pre-match, and where historical betting odds can still be useful for you.

The ways in which historical betting odds can be useful for your betting research are:

• Analysing specific bookmaker trends (i.e. regularly offering the best odds)
• Reverse-engineering sharp movement
• Building betting models
• Comparing long-term bookmaker accuracy
• Measuring how odds for specific teams or players have changed in time
• Identifying consistent patterns to find an edge

Accessing Historical Odds by Sport

You can discover results and historical betting odds for all of the sports that we offer on our site, whether it be football, tennis, basketball, boxing, or something else that you are interested in.

For each of these different sports, the historical odds data and betting behaviour will be very different, meaning some bookmakers may have made significant changes to the prices they offered pre-match.

For example, football is largely dominated by data driven decisions and probability, whereas boxing for example is a little bit harder to predict and can be powered by public betting a lot more.

Every sport is measured differently, which you will be able to see in the historical betting odds for each when you analyse them.

Football 

Football is a sport in particular where historical betting odds are regularly examined by sharp bettors and tipsters to find any value bets that they can.

We provide a huge amount of football historical odds data, spanning back over a decade for certain leagues and competitions. These results are clearly broken down into countries and their leagues or competition, where each outcome and the historical football odds can all be found.

The most popular markets available with historical football odds for all leagues and competitions are the 1X2, over/under and Asian handicap options. But, an extensive look at more popular competitions can help you find many other markets too.

Analyse football results today and utilise the historical betting odds available to refine your betting approach on the sport to a new level.

Basketball (NBA, NCAA)

Another sport in which historical betting odds and closing line value are extremely important for betting strategies is basketball.

In particular, it can be useful to study against the spread (ATS) and where a team might be regularly covering the spread set by bookmakers, or where teams aren’t. This immediately provides you with betting opportunities by using the basketball results that we offer, on a popular market for the sport which is offered by all sportsbooks.

Closing line value is of particular importance, because lineup changes can be announced late, and missing star players can have a huge impact on the betting odds, especially in a league like the NBA where players are rested frequently due to a long season. So we highly recommend you look closely at closing lines for several markets when analysing the NBA historical odds.

You can check out the NBA historical odds or another major league with OddsPortal today to inform your betting decisions on upcoming games.

Other Sports (Tennis, Baseball, etc.)

Historical odds that we provide you with on our site can be particularly helpful when analysing niche markets and sports, because that is where bookmakers might make mistakes based on automated prices.

With such a range of sports and markets offered throughout betting, it means some things can be missed, and this is where you may have an opportunity to pick up elevated prices when comparing with historical odds from results in your chosen sport.

For example, tennis betting is a great example of this due to the vast amount of tournaments taking place on a daily basis. This means it could be profitable to look through the tennis results, and find where a player has consistently won against the odds or exceeded value in other markets by challenging his opponent as the underdog.

Similarly, there are many other sports in which you could research the historical results for, like baseball, hockey, darts, and more.

How to Use Historical Odds for Betting Analysis

Historical odds can vastly improve your betting decisions, across several different markets too. You can analyse the 1X2, match result, or moneyline market, but also have the ability to look at the over/under, handicap/spread market, or other options too.

Taking a deeper look at the archived results for your preferred sports can reveal when teams or players have consistently overperformed, and where interesting betting opportunities might be able to be found.

It’s helpful to see the historical odds alongside the final scores and results of any sporting competition, because it provides some added context to the outcome. By also measuring how individual teams or players have performed against the odds consistently can directly help your betting approach.

The strategy of analysing historical odds and results is used extensively by sharp bettors and tipsters, with the addition of regularly watching matches to examine performance alongside those prices.

Historical odds and how bookmakers misprice teams can be particularly evident at the beginning of the season, before some consistency sets in and they’re forced to analyse how they’re setting the odds.

For example, Nottingham Forest in the Premier League were best priced at 3.06 to beat eventually relegated Southampton in the second game of the 2024/25 campaign. In their rich vein of form to start the season, they also won as underdogs at odds of 11.65 away to champions Liverpool, and were best priced at 4.96 in their win against Manchester United away.

FAQs about Results and Historical Betting Odds

Are Historical Odds Useful for Predicting Future Outcomes?

Yes, historical odds can be extremely useful for predicting future outcomes, because they provide an extra layer of analysis and help your decision making. Similarly, they can help you avoid making rash decisions, with the historical odds and results guiding you down a different path to what you originally thought was the best bet.

Can I Use Historical Odds to Build a Betting Strategy?

A betting strategy can definitely be built based on historical odds, but you will need to do some extensive research to also incorporate squad changes, injuries, and much more alongside analysing the archived results that we supply.

Similarly to any betting strategy, you need to investigate various different factors at the same time to keep it foolproof.

Can I Filter Historical Odds by Country or Competition?

Yes, you can find individual countries within each sport, as well as the specific competitions you are looking for. For example, you can find NBA results, or NCAA Basketball results within the USA tab on our basketball results page.

What Are Closing Odds vs Opening Odds?

Opening odds are the prices at which the bookmakers offered when they first added the odds to their site for a particular market within a fixture. Meanwhile, closing odds relates to the final price that was offered before a match began.

There is a clear difference between the two. The opening odds are the first price offered by a sportsbook before a match, and the closing odds are the final price before a match starts.

Are Archived Odds Available For All Betting Markets (e.g. Over/Under, Asian Handicap)?

Yes, on our site we provide you with archived odds for all of the betting markets that we offer. Simply click on an individual archived result you are interested in, and you can filter the market tabs to find over/under, Asian handicap, or another market. Once you click on those, the odds breakdown from all of our online bookmakers in your location will be present.