Same AFL Game, 1 Market or 861: How Deep Australian Bookmakers Actually Go

Every Australian bookmaker will tell you they cover the AFL. That single sentence is doing an enormous amount of quiet work.

I spent last week pulling apart a snapshot of our own AFL market data: 500 pricing rows, 245 distinct fixtures, 11 bookmakers with markets open. The number that stopped me was not a price. It was a market count.

On one Carlton v Geelong fixture, one operator had 861 separate markets open. On the same weekend, another had two. On Collingwood v Western Bulldogs, the range ran from 786 markets to one.

Same sport, same fixture, same 22 players. The difference in what you can actually put money on is roughly 800 markets.

Most bettors never think about this. They compare the two prices on the screen, pick the bigger number, and move on. That habit costs them more than most realise, and it is not only about price.

What market depth actually means

Market depth is the number of distinct betting options a bookmaker has open on a single event. It describes range rather than generosity, and range decides which questions you are allowed to ask.

A shallow card looks like this. Generation Web, on Sydney v Port Adelaide, had exactly two markets: Head to Head and Line. Amused had one: Head to Head. That was the entire offer.

A deep card is a different product. On Hawthorn v West Coast, Unibet had 804 markets open. On Carlton v Geelong, 861. Sportsbet sat in the middle of the range, opening 286 to 298 markets on the fixtures we measured.

Here is the same snapshot, fixture by fixture.

AFL fixture	Bookmakers pricing it	Largest card	Smallest card
Carlton v Geelong	8	861 (Unibet)	2 (Generation Web)
Carlton v Melbourne	8	853 (Unibet)	1 (Amused)
Hawthorn v West Coast	5	804 (Unibet)	1 (Amused)
Collingwood v Western Bulldogs	7	786 (Unibet)	1 (Amused)
Brisbane v Gold Coast	4	298 (Sportsbet)	1 (Amused)
Carlton v Western Bulldogs	3	298 (Sportsbet)	1 (Amused)
Collingwood v Hawthorn	4	295 (Sportsbet)	1 (Amused)
Geelong v North Melbourne	4	295 (Sportsbet)	1 (Amused)
Port Adelaide v Sydney	4	291 (Sportsbet)	1 (Amused)
Essendon v Port Adelaide	4	286 (Sportsbet)	1 (Amused)

Across the whole 500-row snapshot, 164 fixtures had exactly one market open and 191 had exactly two. That is 355 of 500 pricing rows, or 71 per cent, where the entire offer was a head-to-head or a line. At the other end, 33 rows carried more than 200 markets.

Note the third column. The deepest card always belonged to Unibet or Sportsbet. The thinnest almost always belonged to Amused or Generation Web.

The margin gap is real, but it is not the whole story

Depth is the obvious difference. Price is the one that shows up on your balance.

Because a bookmaker's margin is baked into both sides of a head-to-head, shopping the same fixture across books compresses that margin. We measured it directly: take the best available price on each side from every bookmaker pricing that fixture, and compare it against the best single book that priced both sides.

AFL fixture	Books compared	Margin, best price each side	Margin, best single book	Saved
Collingwood v Western Bulldogs	5	3.02%	4.95% (PlayUp)	1.93 pts
Brisbane v Gold Coast	3	4.03%	4.87% (Amused)	0.84 pts
Collingwood v Hawthorn	3	4.17%	5.49% (Amused)	1.32 pts
Geelong v North Melbourne	3	4.21%	5.25% (Amused)	1.04 pts
Essendon v Port Adelaide	3	4.31%	5.22% (Sportsbet)	0.91 pts
Hawthorn v West Coast	4	4.57%	5.45% (Amused)	0.88 pts
Carlton v Western Bulldogs	3	4.84%	5.82% (Amused)	0.98 pts
Port Adelaide v Sydney	3	4.87%	5.33% (Amused)	0.46 pts

The Collingwood v Western Bulldogs row is the clearest example. Five bookmakers priced it. Western Bulldogs ranged from 1.74 to 1.82, Collingwood from 2.00 to 2.08. Taking 1.82 with PlayUp and 2.08 with Amused gives a combined margin of 3.02 per cent. Staying inside PlayUp alone gives 4.95 per cent. Nearly two percentage points of margin, gone, for the effort of checking a second tab.

That is not a rounding error. If you bet $500 a week on AFL head-to-heads at an average margin near 5 per cent, you are paying roughly $25 a week in margin. Getting that to 3 per cent keeps about $10 of it. Over a season that is the difference between a hobby that bleeds and one that treads water.

If the mechanics of that number are unfamiliar, our piece on how bookmaker margin works and how to calculate it walks through the arithmetic, and removing the margin to find the true price covers how to turn a two-way market into a percentage estimate.

Why depth matters more than price (eventually)

Price shopping fixes one problem. Depth fixes a different one, and it is the one that keeps serious bettors in the game.

A bookmaker with two markets open on a fixture can only accommodate two opinions. If you think Collingwood wins, you are covered. If you think Collingwood wins by 1-12, or that Nick Daicos racks up 32 disposals, there is nothing for you.

A deep card lets you express a specific view instead of a general one. On one Sportsbet fixture in our snapshot, Brisbane Lions v Port Adelaide, the 292 open markets broke down like this:

Market group	Markets open
Milestone	124
Period	64
Special	42
Scorer	26
Other	18
Total	7
Margin	5
Line	5
Head to Head	1

One head-to-head market. 124 milestone markets. The bulk of the card is player-level and period-level, not match-level.

That matters because narrow markets are where mispricing survives longest. A head-to-head on a Thursday night AFL game is the most heavily bet, most efficiently priced market on the card. A market on a player to take 12 marks does not receive anything like that volume of attention. Fewer eyes on a number means a stale number stays stale, which is why winning accounts get limited far more often on prop and niche markets than on the main line.

Depth is also the reason some bettors appear to beat a bookmaker while others on identical form cannot. That is rarely a smarter read. It is usually access to more of the board.

The coverage problem nobody talks about

Depth varies enormously between operators. So does frequency of coverage.

Of the 140-plus bookmakers Krok Odds tracks, 11 had AFL markets open in our snapshot. And they were not equally present. Amused priced 99 fixtures. Sportsbet 90. Generation Web 89. Betfair Exchange 90. Unibet priced only 34, but when it did, its cards were deep.

Bookmaker	Fixtures priced	Smallest card	Median card	Largest card
Unibet	34	3	84	861
Sportsbet	90	1	17	298
Dabble	4	0	174	252
TAB	42	1	13	242
BetBunker	4	80	90	90
BetMakers	19	0	20	20
Ladbrokes	2	5	6	6
PlayUp	27	1	1	4
Generation Web	89	1	2	2
Betfair Exchange	90	1	2	2
Amused	99	1	1	1

Read the median column, not the maximum. Unibet's median card was 84 markets. Sportsbet's was 17. Amused's was 1.

An operator that prices every fixture but offers a single market is useful for exactly one purpose: comparing the main line. An operator that prices a third of the fixtures but opens 800 markets on each is useful for the other nine-tenths of the board. You need both, and you need to know which is which before you go looking for a specific bet.

This is also why best odds lists are so often misleading. A comparison that only looks at head-to-head prices will rank the deepest card in the market last, because the deepest card does not need to be the sharpest on the main line. It is competing on range. Our Australian bookmaker margin report covers how that trade-off plays out across sports.

How to use this without opening eleven accounts

You do not need eleven accounts. You need to know which operator to open for which question, and a way to check before you commit.

On head-to-head and line markets, the play is shopping price. Five books on one fixture gave us a 1.93-point margin reduction, and that came from checking rather than from any insight. A comparison view that stacks Australian bookmakers side by side does it in one pass rather than eleven tabs.

On player props and milestones, the play is depth. If the market you want does not exist at your main account, it probably exists at one of the operators with 200 to 800 markets open. The AFL odds hub shows which fixtures are covered and how deep.

On anything with a stale-looking price, treat the number as an opportunity rather than a trap. Wide margins mean loose lines. Our value bets tool surfaces where the available price sits above a fair estimate, which is another way of saying the bookmaker has not corrected yet.

Before you deposit anywhere, check how that operator behaves on limits, withdrawals and market range. Our Australian bookmaker tier list ranks them on the things that matter after you have joined, and how many bookmakers actually operate in Australia explains why the count is higher than most people assume.

One more thing worth knowing: we are not paid by any bookmaker, which is the only reason a measurement like this is worth publishing. Krok Odds takes no bookmaker money, so the depth numbers above are reported as measured, not as negotiated.

What this means in practice

Market depth is the least discussed and most consequential difference between Australian bookmakers. On a single Carlton v Geelong fixture, one operator offered 861 ways to bet and another offered two. On Collingwood v Western Bulldogs, shopping the head-to-head across five books cut the margin from 4.95 per cent to 3.02 per cent.

Neither number is unusual. Both are structural, and they point the same way. Depth decides what you can bet. Price decides what it costs. Most bettors optimise the second and never check the first, which is how you end up with a strong opinion and nowhere to put it.

If you want to see how deep the board goes, start with the AFL odds comparison and work from there. It takes about a minute.

Frequently asked questions

How many markets do Australian bookmakers offer on an AFL game?

In our 500-row snapshot covering 245 fixtures, the range ran from 1 market to 861. The deepest cards belonged to Unibet and Sportsbet. 164 fixtures had exactly one market open, and 191 had exactly two.

Which Australian bookmaker has the most AFL markets?

On the fixtures we measured, Unibet opened the largest single card at 861 markets on Carlton v Geelong, followed by 853 on Carlton v Melbourne. Sportsbet's largest was 298. Depth varied by fixture, so a single ranking does not hold across every game.

Does market depth affect the odds I get?

Not directly. Depth is the number of markets available, while the margin on any one of them is determined by the prices set. The two do interact, though. Operators competing on range do not always compete hardest on the main line, so the deepest card is not automatically the best price.

How much does shopping odds across bookmakers actually save?

On Collingwood v Western Bulldogs, taking the best price on each side across five bookmakers cut the combined margin from 4.95 per cent to 3.02 per cent, a saving of 1.93 percentage points. Across the eight fixtures we measured, savings ranged from 0.46 to 1.93 points.

Why do some bookmakers only offer one or two markets?

Operators with thin AFL cards are usually competing on the main line rather than range. Generation Web's two markets were Head to Head and Line. Amused's single market was Head to Head. Their offer is a price, not a board.

Do I need accounts at every bookmaker to get the best of this?

No. Two or three accounts covering different strengths is usually enough, with one for the main line and one for depth on props and milestones. Knowing which operator to open for which market matters more than the number of accounts you hold.

James Whittaker is Senior Market Analyst at Krok Odds, covering pricing mechanics, line movement and how the corporate books actually operate. He previously worked in financial markets before moving to sports analytics.

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