How Often Do Tennis Favourites Win? 92,712 ATP and WTA Matches
I checked how often the betting favourite actually wins in men's and women's tennis at each price, and whether sharp closing odds tell the truth.
Every tennis bettor has a sense of how reliable a favourite is, but few have checked that sense against the record. I took 92,712 completed ATP and WTA singles matches with sharp-bookmaker closing odds and asked a plain question: at each price, does the favourite win as often as the market says?
The headline answer is that favourites won 69.6% of the time, a touch more than their prices implied on both tours. The overshoot is concentrated at the short end, and it is not large enough to turn blind backing into profit. That gap between a slight edge and a bettable one shapes how I read every match on my tennis tips for today page.
ATP favourites beat their prices mainly at the short end
Each row pairs what the closing price implied, with the bookmaker's margin removed, against how often the favourite actually won. Across 51,995 ATP matches, favourites won 70.0% against 69.3% priced. The cleanest signal sits in the Under 1.15 band, where 6,515 heavy favourites won 92.6% against 90.7% priced, the largest ATP gap at +2.0 points.
Further along the scale the dots pull together. In the 1.50-1.69 and 1.70-1.89 bands the favourite slightly underdelivered, and near coin-flips at 1.90-2.00 won 51.1% against 50.8% priced. That is a market pricing tight matches about as well as anyone could.
View the data: atp: priced vs delivered
| Priced (margin removed) | Actually won | 95% range | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1.15 (6,515 matches) | 90.7% | 92.6% | ยฑ0.6 |
| 1.15-1.29 (9,479 matches) | 80.0% | 81.3% | ยฑ0.8 |
| 1.30-1.49 (13,520 matches) | 70.1% | 71.6% | ยฑ0.8 |
| 1.50-1.69 (12,466 matches) | 61.3% | 60.8% | ยฑ0.9 |
| 1.70-1.89 (8,593 matches) | 54.6% | 54.3% | ยฑ1.1 |
| 1.90-2.00 (1,422 matches) | 50.8% | 51.1% | ยฑ2.6 |
What I take from this is that men's tour-level heavy favourites are, if anything, a little under-trusted. Best-of-five Slams and a big serve on quick courts both make it harder for an outsider to steal a match, so a dominant player at a very short price is usually exactly what he looks like.
WTA heavy favourites show the widest gap in the study
The women's tour is often sold as the volatile one, and the overall figure barely contradicts that: favourites won 69.1% of 40,717 matches against 68.5% priced. Yet the short end tells a firmer story. WTA favourites under 1.15 won 92.6% of 4,248 matches against just 89.9% priced, a gap of +2.7 points and the biggest anywhere in the data.
View the data: wta: priced vs delivered
| Priced (margin removed) | Actually won | 95% range | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1.15 (4,248 matches) | 89.9% | 92.6% | ยฑ0.8 |
| 1.15-1.29 (7,543 matches) | 79.8% | 81.1% | ยฑ0.9 |
| 1.30-1.49 (10,642 matches) | 70.1% | 71.0% | ยฑ0.9 |
| 1.50-1.69 (9,801 matches) | 61.3% | 61.6% | ยฑ1 |
| 1.70-1.89 (7,260 matches) | 54.5% | 53.3% | ยฑ1.1 |
| 1.90-2.00 (1,223 matches) | 50.8% | 51.0% | ยฑ2.8 |
So the reputation for upsets lives mostly in the middle of the price range, not at the top. When a WTA player is priced that short, the market has tended to hedge a little too much against her, and I would rather respect that than assume chaos is coming.
Favourite win rates drift but stay within a narrow band
Season by season, the share of favourites winning moves less than the noise around tennis would suggest. Between 2010 and 2025 the ATP rate ran from 67.2% to 72.7%, and the WTA rate from 66.5% to 71.8%. In 2025 ATP favourites won 67.8% and WTA favourites 68.0%, so the two tours have ended up very close together.
The ATP line sat higher in the earlier seasons, when a small group dominated the big events, and has eased since. The WTA line has wobbled within its range without any sustained trend.
View the data: favourite win rate, season by season
| ATP | WTA | |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 71.5% | 71.8% |
| 2011 | 72.7% | 70.9% |
| 2012 | 72.4% | 70.2% |
| 2013 | 70.5% | 70.6% |
| 2014 | 71.3% | 68.8% |
| 2015 | 72.3% | 68.0% |
| 2016 | 71.4% | 67.8% |
| 2017 | 68.7% | 66.5% |
| 2018 | 68.4% | 67.8% |
| 2019 | 67.2% | 67.4% |
| 2020 | 69.6% | 67.6% |
| 2021 | 68.4% | 70.2% |
| 2022 | 68.0% | 68.1% |
| 2023 | 67.8% | 68.9% |
| 2024 | 69.1% | 66.9% |
| 2025 | 67.8% | 68.0% |
For me the lesson is that no single season justifies a new theory. A year when favourites seem to keep losing usually lands back inside the familiar band, and surface swings within a season matter more than the annual total.
Small win-rate edges still lose to the bookmaker margin
Here both tours sit side by side. The median favourite price was 1.44 in the ATP and 1.45 in the WTA, and favourites outperformed their prices by +0.7 and +0.6 points respectively. Those gaps look encouraging until you see the final column.
Backing every favourite at sharp-bookmaker closing odds returned โ1.5% in the ATP and โ1.7% in the WTA. The average margin of 2.4% simply swallows a fraction-of-a-point edge.
| Tour | Matches | Median fav. odds | Priced | Won | Gap (pts) | Return at a sharp bookmaker |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATP | 51,995 | 1.44 | 69.3% | 70.0% | +0.7 | โ1.5% |
| WTA | 40,717 | 1.45 | 68.5% | 69.1% | +0.6 | โ1.7% |
My honest caveat: these bands hold hundreds to thousands of matches, so small gaps are within chance, and this is a historical record rather than a system. Missing odds also mean 2009 is excluded entirely. Past results guarantee nothing, and anyone treating this as a staking plan is reading it wrong.
What I take from this
- Short prices are honest. Favourites under 1.15 won 92.6% on both tours, more than their prices implied. A heavy favourite losing is the exception the market already overstates.
- Edges are too thin. A gap of +0.7 or +0.6 points cannot beat a 2.4% margin, which is why blanket backing returned โ1.5% and โ1.7%. Value has to come from reading the match, not the price band.
- Coin-flips are fairly priced. In the 1.90-2.00 band favourites won 51.1% in the ATP and 51.0% in the WTA. Close matches reward surface and fatigue analysis, not a lean towards the shorter price.
Questions from readers
How often does the favourite win in tennis?
Across 92,712 completed ATP and WTA matches, the sharp-bookmaker favourite won 69.6% of the time. ATP favourites won 70.0% and WTA favourites 69.1%.
Do heavy tennis favourites win more often than the odds suggest?
Historically, yes, by a small margin. ATP favourites under 1.15 won 92.6% against 90.7% priced, and WTA favourites in that band won 92.6% against 89.9% priced.
Is backing every tennis favourite profitable?
No. A flat stake on every favourite at sharp-bookmaker closing odds returned โ1.5% in the ATP and โ1.7% in the WTA, because the bookmaker margin outweighs the slight overperformance.
I'm Camille Hoffmann, based in Luxembourg City, and I write the tennis correct-score tips at htftpredictions.com โ where surface and scheduling outweigh the rankings.
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