Fixtures served with no bookmaker price
839 / 999
board of 20 September 2026
Football: a price months before the bookmakers open
On 20 September 2026, 839 of the 999 fixtures we served carried no bookmaker price at all. Not a worse price, not a wider price, none. No book in our feed had opened the market.
Lead time across everything we price
The two figures cover different things, and we will not merge them. The 839 is measured on the 999 fixtures served on that board, on that day. It is not a rate that can be applied to the 6,261 we price. Writing "84% of our fixtures have no market price" would stretch a share measured on 999 over 6,261, a statement that is false without being a lie, which is the worst kind.
What this page refuses to claim
This page claims coverage and lead time. It claims nothing about whether the price is right.
Three separate measurements taken on 18 and 19 September say we do not beat the market on football, and those measurements stand.
On goals markets, over/under and both teams to score, we measured on 10,158 held-out matches that our probabilities did not beat the closing Pinnacle price (Brier 0.249 against 0.242, log loss 0.691 against 0.677). The board publishes no gap figure there at all.
Calibration of the early price is judged on 20 December 2026, under a protocol sealed in advance so the test cannot be chosen after the result is known. Until then: coverage and lead time, never accuracy. If the December measurement is bad, it goes on the track record page like the others.
Why an early price exists at all
A bookmaker opens a market when it expects enough turnover to justify the risk of pricing it. A model has no such constraint: if the fixture is on the calendar and both teams have a history, it can produce a probability the day the fixture is announced.
That is the whole of the difference. It is not cleverness, it is the absence of a commercial reason to wait. It also means an early price has no market to be checked against, which is exactly why we do not claim it is accurate.
Method
The 839 of 999 comes from the board of 20 September 2026 and is recorded in a dated protocol document. A fixture counts as having no bookmaker price when no book in our feed quotes its match-winner market at the moment the board is built.
The lead-time distribution comes from the upcoming priced calendar as of 21 September 2026: for each fixture, the days between the moment our price exists and kick-off. Median, quartiles and maximum over the 6,261 fixtures, with no trimming.
Citing this page
MySyndicate football coverage, September 2026: on 20 September, 839 of 999 fixtures served carried no bookmaker price; median lead over kick-off 124.1 days across 6,261 upcoming fixtures priced on 21 September. Coverage and lead time only, calibration is not judged until 20 December 2026. https://www.mysyndicate.io/football-early-prices