What is Yield in Sports Betting?

Yield Explained in Detail

Yield is the European term for what Americans typically call ROI. In practice, the calculations are identical: net profit divided by total amount wagered, expressed as a percentage. The term yield is more commonly used in European and Asian betting markets, while ROI is standard in North American sports betting.

Some analysts draw a technical distinction between yield and ROI. Under this framework, yield measures profit per unit staked (including the stake in the return), while ROI measures only the profit relative to the investment. In practice, this distinction is rarely made in sports betting, and the terms are treated as synonyms.

A yield of 5-10% is considered strong in sports betting. The best handicappers in the world sustain yields around 3-8% over thousands of bets. Anyone claiming a yield above 15% over a meaningful sample should be viewed with extreme skepticism, as such numbers are nearly impossible to maintain against efficient markets.

Yield is the cleanest way to evaluate betting performance because it normalizes for bet size. A bettor who wagers $10 per game and profits $500 over the season has the same yield as a bettor who wagers $1,000 per game and profits $50,000, assuming they placed the same number of bets. This makes yield the fairest comparison metric across bettors of different bankroll sizes.