Average Joe’s vs. Globo Gym: What should the odds have been?
By: Ben Porter
Tags: Dodgeball, Sports, Sports Betting, Movies

Starting lineups for the championship

Odds for the Championship Match

Now it’s time to investigate the price that was egregiously miscalculated by the bookmakers in the movie. Heading into the championship match, Average Joe’s was +5000 to win it all, making the Globo Gym Purple Cobras -10000 (presumably). This means, after winning four straight, the oddsmakers were still only giving Average Joe’s a 1.96% chance.

In the previous section we established the Average Joe’s suspect entry into the tournament and their low seed. We also gave them a few points back for their well-regarded and knowledgable, but also deranged coach Patches O’Houlihan. We also introduced a strong motivation factor, which we know will drive bettors to the windows and kiosks. Given all this information, we assigned Average Joe’s a pre-tournament price of 60–1.

Now we have four more games worth of information to incorporate into our price, as well as the fact that Average Joe’s only need to win one more game instead of five.

Average Joe’s had its back against the wall in its first game vs. Team Blitzkrieg, then again in its fourth match vs. the Poughkeepsie State Flying Cougars. It showed vulnerability early in both matches but rallied back with plenty of heart and perseverance. In between those matches Joe’s faced the Lumberjacks and my personal favorite team: Skillz That Killz. Cotton McKnight said Average Joe’s “had their work cut out for them facing the Lumberjacks”, so given that and their lopsided victory we can assume this would go a long way in shortening Joe’s championship odds. Skillz That Killz, on the other hand, was “looking past the Average Joes” and “doing more dancing than dodgeballing”, so we might not be able to gain much insight from this win.

That brings us to the Globo Gym Purple Cobras, who showed less than zero vulnerability on their road to the championship. They handily defeated every team they went up against, as they were predicted to do as one of the assumed top seeds in the tournament. Also, their secret weapon, Fran Stalinovskovichdavidovitchsky aka the deadliest woman on earth with a dodgeball, literally killed a guy in the bar with a throw. They don’t fuck around.

There’s also one more thing we need to consider before coming up with a price for this game… the effect of Patches O’Houlihan, who tragically died after being crushed by two tons of irony.

The death of a coach is difficult to quantify, but given the team’s lack of dodgeball experience and O’Houlihan’s prodigal wisdom of the game we have to assume he meant the world to the team. The “win for your coach” motivation factor isn’t quite enough to offset the material loss of one of the sharpest dodgeball minds we’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing. This one hurts Joe’s and its probability of winning. I also don’t think this has much of an effect on public betting, as emotional bettors will be split: half betting on a team to win for its coach while the other half bets against the team whose coach just died under a “Luck of the Irish” sign.

I’d open this moneyline at Globo Gym -1000, Average Joe’s +750. That’s a margin of roughly 2.67%, by the way. That’s low, but given the high profile nature of the match and the volume of wagers on it, it’s perfectly reasonable.

I don’t, however, think that’s what the closing odds would be. I think the public would be all over Average Joe’s, and as risk adds up the line would move to roughly +480 (and -600 for Globo Gym). That’s a 17.2% chance to win the match, roughly 10.5x the pre-tourney probability. Sharps would’ve hammered the favorite in this competition, but I’d be okay with that since it would offset some of the public risk on Average Joe’s.

Average Joe’s +480, Globo Gym Purple Cobras -600

I think that’s much more reasonable than Average Joe’s 50–1, don’t you?