EFL Championship Most Profitable Clubs - Which Teams Can You Make a Profit Betting On?

Which are the most profitable EFL Championship to bet on?

Although backing your team every week is rather commendable, that fandom can come at a price. A price that is not found within ticket and travel costs but also the outlay of betting stakes across the season.

Even though fans believe their team will win always come out on top, even the very best have a habit of throwing away points from time to time and this can mean, it is the betting sites that win instead.

While backing your team each week is also fertile ground for some deep analysis. Analysis that comes courtesy of the 2023/24 EFL Championship season. With us taking a retrospective look at the results, we are also going to see if blind faith is a system that can lead to end-of-season profitability.

£1 goes on each team to win their Championship fixture, of which they are 552 in total.

They say the Championship can be something of a money pit. With club chairman prepared to spend countless millions in a bid to get the promised land of the Premier League, money itself becomes less of an issue.

If you can earn promotion at the end of the season, that expenditure is worth every penny and there will be further riches that follow. However, only three clubs can climb the ladder each year and for those who fail to do so, that same expenditure can prove rather costly.

Although Cardiff did not splash the cash and win promotion to the Premier League to go with it, they would end up being the most profitable club in England’s second tier. 

If you were to stake £46 across the course of last season, backing Cardiff throughout would have returned £67.56 in total. Not only is that £21.56 in profit but a 46.87% return on your investment.

The South Wales outfit may have only finished 12th in the table but did manage to claim some scalps along the way - none more so than eventual runners up Ipswich and with that outcome not being predicted by the bookmakers before kick-off,

Cardiff top of the shop when it comes to overall profitability, what about the teams that would earn promotion to the Premier League? 

Runners-up Ipswich would be the most profitable of the three teams that moved on to the top tier, the Portman Road outfit generating £7.58 profit and a 16.48% ROI. 

Two places better off than Leicester in seventh as the Foxes generated £5.57 profit by comparison and a 12.11% ROI before their manager Enzo Maresca was poached by Chelsea. 

Which means what of the play-off winners Southampton? The Saints were another outfit that managed to say goodbye to the second tier of English football and after getting the better of Leeds at Wembley in the play-off final, they would also go on to generate £3.72 profit in the regular season (an ROI of 8.09%) 

Of the 24 teams that contested last season’s EFL Championship, 13 would have generated a profit using our methodology - meaning that 11 teams would have also put you in the red over the course of 46 matches.

Leeds were the side that fell short at Wembley and after missing out on an invite to the Premier League, but they would just squeeze into the groups of teams that were profitable. The £46 staked would only return £46.02. A profit of just 2p. Then again, profit is profit and this tirne around it resembles one of 0.04%

While special mention should also go to Preston. The Deepdale outfit started the season well but soon lost pace with those who would eventually be celebrating but Ryan Lowe's men do also have something to celebrate.
Celebrations that come in the form of £10.11 profit to return an overall total of £56.11 at the end of the season.

The kind of return that shows with any team being capable of beating any other, the ability to generate end-of-season profits is perhaps more manageable than in the Premier League or La Liga, where the odds offer far less in the way of pre-match value.

AT THE BOTTOM

If you are a Rotherham fan you may want to look away now. Not only did the Yorkshire-based outfit succumb to relegation at the end of the season but they also managed to generate a negative return of investment of 51.78%.

Known as the archetypal yo-yo team between tiers two and three, the Millers had a season to forget and so would anyone who backed them in each of their 46 competitive skirmishes. An outlay of £46 would only return £22.18 at the end of the campaign, it would also return a -51.78% loss on your investment.

While they would also be joined by Huddersfield when it comes to a relegation and lack of profitability double. Like their fellow strugglers above, they would also fail to generate more than the initial £46 that was staked. A £29.66 return would mean more than a 35% loss overall.

Two relegated sides in the bottom three of overall loss is not a surprise, the inclusion of Watford certainly is. After suffering relegation from the Premier League at the back end of the 2021/22 season, the Vicarage Road outfit have failed to retutn to the top tier.

The Vicarage Road outfit had another dreadful season by their own standards and would have been responsible for plenty of bust coupons. Failures to win also leads to failures when it came to profitability and they would be responsible for a -32.83% loss on the most recent campaign. 

TIME TO COMPARE

Another way to measure the performance of the 24 teams is to measure their rank in terms of profit and compare it next to their final position in the 2023/24 Championship table and once again it does not make for good reading for Leeds.

Third in the table in real life, 13th when it comes to overall profitability. The Elland Road outfit had a ranking difference of 10 places when comparing the latter to the former and it highlights another reason to be disappointed at the end of a long and arduous season.

If there is any saving grace, it is the fact that Coventry shared the biggest disparity between the two ranks. The Sky Blues had a late dalliance with the play-off places but would eventually finish ninth in the table.

Unfortunately for those who would have backed them in every game of last season, the West Midlands outfit would have only finished 19th when measuring profitability and they would also be responsible for a -9.33% loss.

There were only two teams who managed parity with the two metrics and it is rather interesting as to who the duo are. Huddersfield who finished second bottom and Rotherham a position worse off would suffer in parallel when looking at both the two measures.

As for the team that had the biggest disparity between they finished and how profitable they were, that honour goes to QPR. They eventually finished 18th in the Championship, they finished third when it comes to profitability.

A 20.87% return on investment would have been recorded after backing Huddersfield to win each of their 46 matches. Of course, this system would have been on the road to ruin at the start of last season, it only really came good at the end.

The reason for such a heroic turnaround? None other than a certain Marti Cienfuntes. Drafted into West London after Gareth Ainsworth's ill-fated spell at the club, the Spaniard looked like he was taking over a team heading to League One. Instead, his ideas would eventually pay dividends and not only did QPR earn safety, but they would have earned any backers a tidy profit at the same time. 

Methodology

Staking for returns, profit and loss were set thus:

£1 stakes

£1 goes on each team to win their Championship fixture, of which they are 552 in total.

If that team wins the game, their profit is logged and tallied up.

If either team draws or loses, a return of £0 is recorded.

With each team playing 46 matches each, we will then observe the overall profit/loss for each. 

Which means now we have created the methodology, the results look something like this: 

Editorial Information

This article was researched and fact-checked by Dan Tracey who also then added the words - Dan is a multi-talented writer, data analyst and podcaster whose six-year career in the sports data sphere has seen incredible successes. From helping UEFA create their annual technical reports to writing articles for Sports Betting Websites, including sites like TheLinesUS and Goal