What is yield in betting?
Yield is a bettor's total profit divided by the total amount staked, expressed as a percentage, showing how much is won or lost on average for every unit of money wagered.
If I had to judge a betting record by a single number, this would be it. Win rate ignores the odds. Profit ignores how much was staked. Yield folds both in.
Yield = profit ÷ total staked × 100
It’s the standard stat on European tipster platforms. In the US you’ll more often see the same sum labelled ROI. In practice the two are used interchangeably, though ROI is sometimes measured against the starting bankroll instead.
Example
A tipster’s record over a season:
- 350 bets, with stakes varying from 1 to 2 units
- Total staked: 420 units
- Total profit: +29.4 units
- Yield: 29.4 ÷ 420 = +7%
So on average every 1 unit staked came back as 1.07. If you’d followed along with $10 units, you’d have put $4,200 through your bookie over the season and finished $294 up.
For a sense of scale: the bookie’s margin means a bettor picking at random ends up with a negative yield, roughly the size of that margin. Staying above zero over a long record is already an achievement. A steady single-digit yield over a thousand or more bets is excellent. If someone claims +40% over a long period, I assume there’s something wrong with the record.
Watch out
- Sample size. Yield swings wildly on small numbers. +30% after 20 bets means nothing. I don’t take a yield seriously under 300 bets at odds around evens, or under 1,000 if the average odds are high.
- Yield isn’t income. A +10% yield on 50 bets a year makes less money than +3% on 2,000 bets. Volume matters as much as the percentage.
- Check the odds used. A record calculated at prices that disappeared within a minute overstates the yield a follower could really get.
- Look at the losing runs too. The same yield can come with a smooth ride or a brutal one.
I show how to check all of this in how to judge a tipster.