Elias joined MLS this year in becoming the official provider of stats for the league. This is a good thing for fans, owners, and sportsbooks. Not a good thing for betters of MLS. I believe that MLS is now following the unspoken lead of the NFL by looking the other way at the proliferation of gambling...errr..."gaming". There are exactly two and only two reasons why the NFL is our most popular sport. 1)TV and 2)gambling. The league's usage and proliferation of both has skyrocketing bottom lines of NFL owners since the 60's. Some of those guys are involved in MLS. You don't think so? Then why has the NFL mandated a public and accurate injury report for years? Seriously, the fines for cheating this for teams caught red-handed are huge. The answer is: so the spread is accurate. The published answer is so the media/public know. Whatever. Don't think it's just a small coincidence that this season MLS lines can be found at more that 3 books AND Elias is suddenly involved in MLS. The numbers have, and will always be there; but who wants to spend the time to get the precious extract called information? We do - to find an edge. Sportsbooks do, they want to prevent "the edge" from existing. Sportsbooks don't profit only from "edge", generally. They profit from "the vig", the percentage taken for all bets. Accurate info assures an accurate spread and makes certain that the ONLY way to profit IS vig. It's this info that will allow anyone (even us) to have an advantage over the public (or even sportsbooks). Not anymore! I promise you that in addition to having to read clinicly boring previews of MLS games now, paragraphs groaning under the weight of stats; we now have to tolerate all of this info being reworked, analysed with statistical tools, summarized, and sold to any and every sportsbook that will buy it. We no longer have a true advantage. Elias is a whore. The original purpose may or may not have been fantasy league support or historical content. When in doubt, follow the money. Elias' money will be on the gambling side eventually. Sucks doesn't it. Don't completely despair - *Competition for money will always effect odds so just search for the best deals. *Elilas doesn't know soccer, they know formulas, numbers, math, and baseball. They are a whore, out for money...good for them. The intangeble will still be king in this sport, so strive to understand this and just be more careful of your acceptance of risk with reduced anomolies in the lines. *Sportsbooks will be lazy until betting on MLS becomes so prevalent that it becomes worth it to the house to inject careful oversight to squeeze out the margins. This is why math geeks (Elias) can sell their work to sportsbooks. To sum, the true currency in sports betting is in the usage and interpretation of the numbers, not the numbers themselves. If you are good at this, there is a job waiting for you at a sportsbook somewhere warm. Elias will be busy selling their soul.
I'm not sure I follow. MLS doesn't seem any more available on sportsbooks this year than the last 2 years. At this point I think the number of people who bet MLS is way way way too insignificant to be of any consequence. The fact that so many sportsbooks screwed up the play-off lines last year and didn't fix it goes to show that there was no noticeble effect on them for offering screwed up prices. (ie, virtually no one was betting the MLS play-offs anyway) Given the amount of interest in betting on MLS shown on these and similar boards, I think it's safe to say the main reason so many sportsbooks offer MLS is just to make their product look more complete and all-encompassing. And also to get the occaisional bet from some adict who doesn't know what he's doing and just wants to bet on something. I'm sure it takes very little time and effort to get some prices from another site and post them. Hopefully this will change. If more people were aware of the possibility of betting on MLS it would probably have a very beneficial effect on the league's popularity. Maybe the alliance with Elias will somehow promote that.