The fair price, how we strip the margin out of 7 sportsbooks
Every bookmaker price includes a margin. Take the middle price across our 7 books, remove that margin, and you get a clean estimate of what an outcome is really worth.
Why every price has a margin
On a sportsbook the listed odds already include a margin, typically 4-8% spread across the outcomes. Sum the implied probabilities on a Premier League 1X2 market and you usually get something like 1.06, a 6% margin. A fair price removes that so the outcomes sum to exactly 1.00.
How we build it
For every market we take the median price for each outcome across Bet365, Stake, 1xBet, BC.Game, Rainbet, Razed and Roobet. We convert those to implied probabilities, then scale them so they add up to 100%. That is the fair probability. One divided by it is the fair price.
Why the median
An average gets dragged around by one slow or generous book. The median ignores the extremes, so the book that is out of line stands out against the rest instead of moving the reference with it.
Reading the edge
If a book pays more than the fair price, the gap is your edge: (book price divided by fair price, minus 1) times 100. A 2.20 against a fair 2.08 is a +5.8% edge. Small edges are noise, so we only flag gaps above our threshold.
Limits of the approach
The fair price is only as good as the books behind it. With just 3 or 4 books quoting, one outlier matters more. Some books share a pricing supplier, so they are not fully independent. When fewer than 3 books have a price, we do not show a fair price at all.
FAQ
- Is the fair price a prediction?
- No. It is the market consensus with the margin removed. It tells you what the books collectively think, not what will happen.
- What if only a few books price a match?
- We need at least 3 books quoting a market to show a fair price. Below that you still see every price we have, just without an edge figure.
- Is the fair price always right?
- No price source is always right. But a margin-free consensus is a far better reference than any single book, and it is the same reference for every match on the site.