AFL odds guide
AFL team announcements: a price-check sequence
How to record team news and bookmaker quotes without claiming one caused the other.
Anchor the match
Confirm the clubs, venue and bounce time on the official fixture before opening an odds row. A late change matters only to the match it affects. Save the source and time of any team announcement you use; a screenshot without a publication time cannot establish what information was available when a price was captured.
Match the same bet twice
To describe a change, take two observations for the same club, match, market and line at the same bookmaker. A head-to-head quote and a line quote are separate markets. If the handicap changes from +8.5 to +6.5, record both numbers rather than calling the later payout a simple price move. A second bookmaker is useful context, but its quote is not the earlier observation from the first book.
Keep the conclusion narrow
A price observed after team news is not proof that the news caused it. Other information and trading decisions can arrive in the same period. State what changed, when it was observed and which prices were missing. The comparison board is a current-price view; it does not reconstruct an opening line from odds history.
Worked example
Illustration: Book A shows Club A head-to-head at 1.85 at 14:00 and 1.78 at 16:00. A team announcement appears at 15:00. The observed quote fell by 0.07 in decimal odds; the two timestamps alone do not prove why.
Illustrative numbers for explaining the calculation. They are not current bookmaker quotes.
Sources and method
The quotes and announcement times are hypothetical. This checklist requires prospective, same-market observations before any real movement article is published.
Found a correction? Contact the editorial team.