Sports betting provides a great way to apply economics and test its predictions.
This website contains the lecture notes for an undergraduate course (ECON30580) on the economics of betting markets that I taught at UCD in Spring 2026.
If you would like to use some of this content in your teaching, send me an email. My book Fine Margins can be used as a supplementary resource for teaching this material.
If you are interested in reading some of the research the book is based on, you can find it here.
1. Introduction
2. The Past and Present of Betting Markets
3. Basics of Betting Markets: Odds, Margins and Probabilities
4. Risk Aversion and Betting Decisions
5. Beliefs, Betting and the Wisdom of Crowds
6. Pari-Mutuel Betting Markets and the Favourite-Longshot Bias
8. Information and Market Structure
10. Efficiencies and Favourite-Longshot Bias
11. Applications of the Monopoly Model: Draws, Advertising and Inside Information
12. Field Size and Margins Across Markets
13. Betting with a Point Spread
16. Betting Exchanges and Prediction Markets
18. Impacts of Gambling and Taxation Issues
19. Regulation of Betting Markets
Notes on Topics Not Covered in 2026