Stats Busters: How Heavily Are Totals Impacted By The Current Margin?

Totals are designed to be 50-50 propositions, so for the bettor – even with a bit of value – they’re always going to be precarious viewing. Whether a team kicks straight during any given game often has the most significant impact on whether a total will be reached or bettered. When a team gets on a roll and runs up the score, what is the impact of this on the totals?

The Logic

There are often arguments both ways across conventional media and fans on the socials. Are close games likely to lead to slower scoring, with teams putting more thought into each play, and moving more decisively, or does a big lead slow scoring with teams knowing the contest is over and just running down the clock? 

When a team kicks away to a five-goal lead, which bet does that help? What about when it jumps to a ten-goal lead, or 100 points? 

The Scientific-y Method

We delved into our minute-by-minute database of scores since 2016 and mapped the scoring rate of both teams combined against the margin of the game at that point in time. 

The scoring rate of the teams combined correlated positively with the margin of the game, however there were a couple of notable dips. While a 1-goal game saw average scoring of 0.85 pts per minute, this rate wasn’t achieved again until the margin was close to 10 goals, implying that teams do slow the scoring (and thus run the clock) when they’re ahead by a reasonable amount. Once the margin gets up around 6-10 goals though, they are more likely to play with abandon, and scoring flows freely (a closer look showing this scoring comes from both teams – e.g. the losing team also scores freely once they’re down a bunch).

Result

The answer then is a bit from pot A and a bit from pot B. Yes, scoring can slow down when a team has a lead and is trying to protect it, but this is only true up to a point – once they think they’re uncatchable, they run up the score freely, improving their stat sheet and percentage.