Championship closing-line track record
How Pinnacle's closing prices fared against 89 finished Championship matches, 2026-08-14 to 2026-09-20. Updated 2026-09-29.
Pinnacle's closing favourite won 44.3% of the time, against the 47.2% its closing price implied on average. Matches were drawn 30.3% of the time against an implied 26.2%. The closing line's mean Brier score (0.646) and the opening line's (0.641) differ by 0.0045, within two standard errors (0.0077) of zero: on this sample the closing line is not measurably more accurate than the first price we recorded.
The closing price against the result
| Measure | What happened | What the closing price implied | 95% range of what happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Closing favourite won | 44.3% (39 of 88) | 47.2% | 34.4%–54.7% |
| Match drawn | 30.3% (27 of 89) | 26.2% | 21.8%–40.5% |
| Price moved toward the result | 51.7% (46 of 89) | — | — |
Calibration by closing probability
| Closing implied probability | Outcomes | Mean implied | Happened | 95% range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0–20% | 17 | 16.7% | 23.5% (4) | 9.6%–47.3% |
| 20–40% | 182 | 28.7% | 29.1% (53) | 23.0%–36.1% |
| 40–60% | 61 | 47.9% | 47.5% (29) | 35.5%–59.8% |
| 60–80% | 7 | 66.1% | 42.9% (3) | 15.8%–75.0% |
| 80–100% | 0 | — | — | — |
Did the closing line beat the opening line?
The closing line's mean Brier score (0.646) and the opening line's (0.641) differ by 0.0045, within two standard errors (0.0077) of zero: on this sample the closing line is not measurably more accurate than the first price we recorded.
| Per match | Matches | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Closing line scored better | 44 | 49.4% |
| Opening line scored better | 45 | 50.6% |
| Price never moved | 0 | 0.0% |
| Moved toward the result | 46 | 51.7% |
| Moved away from the result | 43 | 48.3% |
Of the 89 matches whose price moved, 51.7% moved toward what happened.
Biggest upsets
- Norwich City 3-4 Bolton Wanderers — Bolton Wanderers closed at 7.13 (13.5% implied), 2026-09-20
- Wolverhampton Wanderers 1-2 Blackburn Rovers — Blackburn Rovers closed at 6.56 (14.7% implied), 2026-08-14
- Queens Park Rangers 1-2 Preston North End — Preston North End closed at 4.55 (21.2% implied), 2026-09-19
- Bristol City 0-1 Lincoln City — Lincoln City closed at 4.23 (22.8% implied), 2026-09-15
- Norwich City 1-2 West Bromwich Albion — West Bromwich Albion closed at 3.87 (25.0% implied), 2026-08-15
- Watford 2-1 Southampton — Watford closed at 3.83 (25.2% implied), 2026-08-16
- Blackburn Rovers 2-1 Middlesbrough — Blackburn Rovers closed at 3.82 (25.3% implied), 2026-08-22
- Portsmouth 0-2 Derby County — Derby County closed at 3.68 (26.3% implied), 2026-09-01
- Burnley 1-2 Bristol City — Bristol City closed at 3.68 (26.3% implied), 2026-09-05
- Wrexham AFC 1-2 Birmingham City — Birmingham City closed at 3.56 (27.2% implied), 2026-08-28
More Championship
Other competitions
How these numbers are computed
Data window. Every Championship final that kicked off in the 365 days before 2026-09-29; the matches that qualified run from 2026-08-14 to 2026-09-20. The study is recomputed once a day.
Which finals count. A football final is counted only when the last clock reading we recorded reached minute 89, the collector's evidence that full time was played; finals in other sports must pass the site's plausibility checks (no tied final in a sport that cannot end level). A final must also be the one the site publishes at its own result page, under the competition it belongs to. 89 finals qualified.
Where the prices come from. Our archive records the two bookmakers as separate events, and only one of them carries the score. Each final is paired with the Pinnacle event for the same match. First by name: the same two teams (names normalised the way the live odds board merges the two books) on the same UTC date, with kickoff times no more than 30 minutes apart. Where no name matches exactly, by the odds board's own test for one game listed twice, among Pinnacle events filed under the same competition: the same sport and competition class, both sides recognisably the same teams, kickoffs no more than 15 minutes apart — and when Pinnacle lists the fixture the other way round, its prices are put back on the right teams. A final with two equally close candidates, a candidate whose sides cannot be told apart, or a Pinnacle event claimed by two finals is left out rather than guessed. 89 of the 89 finals found their Pinnacle event, 0 of them by the second test.
Opening and closing prices. The price is Pinnacle's full-time moneyline (1X2 where the sport can end level, home/away where it cannot). The closing price is the last one we recorded at or before kickoff; the opening price is the first one we recorded — not necessarily the first price Pinnacle posted, because our collector records a market from the moment it first sees it. The median match was first priced 111.5 hours before kickoff. A match counts only when every outcome has both an opening and a closing price: 89 did.
Removing the margin.Each outcome's probability is its inverse price divided by the sum of the inverse prices of all outcomes (proportional normalisation), so the probabilities of one match add up to 100%.
The measures. The favourite is the outcome with the highest closing probability; a match where two outcomes tie for highest has no favourite. The draw row covers only sports that can end level. The calibration table places every outcome of every match in a band by its closing probability — lower bound included — and counts how often outcomes in that band happened. The Brier score of a match is the sum, over its outcomes, of the squared gap between the probability and what happened (1 for the outcome that occurred, 0 otherwise); 0 is a perfect forecast. The opening and closing scores are compared match by match, and a difference is called real only when it exceeds twice its standard error. "Moved toward the result" means the probability of what actually happened — the winner, or the draw — was higher at the close than at the open. The 10 biggest upsets are the winning teams with the lowest closing probability; each links its result page. The 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals.
Publication floor. A competition's numbers appear once 30 matches qualify; below that the page states what the archive holds and stays out of search results.
Window: 365 days. Pairing tolerance: 30 minutes by name, 15 by the second test. Pinnacle events examined: 38355. The companion study, bookmaker margins by league, measures what each book charges; this one measures how right the sharper book's last price was.