Comparing model projections with market prices
Sportsbook prices are a crowd forecast with a built-in margin. Here is how to strip that margin out, convert prices to probabilities and compare them with a model projection — as research, not as a wager.
Market prices are the single best-informed forecast publicly available for most NFL games. Comparing a model against them is one of the fastest ways to understand where your analysis is genuinely different — and where it is just repeating the consensus.
American odds are probabilities in disguise
A negative price like -160 implies the favored side wins about 62% of the time. A positive price like +140 implies about 42%. EdgeIQ shows the implied chance next to each price so you do not have to do the arithmetic.
Why the two sides add up to more than 100%
Add the implied chances for both teams and you will usually get something like 104%. The extra is the operator's built-in margin. Comparing a model probability against a raw implied chance without removing that margin makes the market look consistently pessimistic on both sides at once.
EdgeIQ shows margin-free comparisons, so the two sides are rescaled to sum to 100% before anything is compared.
Reading a disagreement
- Small gaps are noise. Two or three points of probability is well inside model error
- Large gaps deserve a reason. Check for an injury, a weather change or a roster move the model has not absorbed
- Persistent gaps in one direction usually mean the model is missing a factor, not that the market is wrong
What EdgeIQ is not
EdgeIQ is analytics software. It does not accept wagers, hold funds, process payouts or tell anyone what to bet. Prices are shown for comparison and context only, and projections are statistical estimates that carry uncertainty.
EdgeIQ is a sports analytics platform. Projections are statistical estimates based on historical data, carry uncertainty and are never guarantees. EdgeIQ takes no wagers and is not a sportsbook.