CLV, closing line value, is the difference between the odds at which an author published a pick and the odds for the same selection at kick-off. It is the only metric that tells you something about a tipster before several hundred settled picks have accumulated.
The formula
An author takes the home win at 2.10. By kick-off the bookmaker has cut the price to 1.95. CLV = (2.10 / 1.95 − 1) × 100% = +7.7%. The match has not been played yet, but the author has already “beaten” the line: they bought the outcome cheaper than the market ended up valuing it.
The opposite case: published at 1.80, closing at 1.92. CLV = −6.3%. Even if the pick wins, it does not change the fact that the market considered the outcome less likely than the author did at the time of publication.
Why the closing line and not the result
The result of a single match says almost nothing about the quality of a pick: a 1.30 favourite loses every fourth or fifth game, and that is normal. The closing line, on the other hand, absorbs everything the market has learned by kick-off: line-ups, weather, professional money. Years of research on betting markets agree on one thing: the closing prices of Pinnacle and other low-margin bookmakers are the most accurate publicly available estimate of an outcome’s probability.
So an author who systematically publishes picks with positive CLV is finding the market’s mistakes before the market does. Their ROI may swing for months because of variance, but their expected value is positive. And conversely: positive ROI with negative CLV is almost always luck, and it ends.
How CLV is computed on TheAnalytic
- The published odds are captured by the server at the moment the author clicks “publish”, from the chosen bookmaker’s line — not from the author’s words. The mechanism is described in the article on locking picks before kick-off.
- The closing odds are taken from the same line at the start of the match.
- In the tipster rating CLV is shown as the average over all of the author’s settled picks in the chosen period; on each pick’s page it is shown for that specific bet.
The exact admission rules and the handling of edge cases are collected in the rating methodology.
How to read the number
- +2 to +4% on average over a hundred or more picks is a very strong result. Bookmaker margins on popular markets are 2–5%, and such a CLV clears them.
- Around zero means the author moves with the market. Long-run ROI will be roughly minus the margin.
- Consistently negative means the author publishes after the line has already moved, or picks outcomes the market then re-prices the other way.
CLV on a single pick means little: a line can move because of an injury announced an hour before the game. Look at the average over the sample and at whether it grows over time.
Limitations
CLV measures price only, not stake size and not market selection. An author may have good CLV on corner totals, where lines are less efficient, and poor CLV on top-league match results. That is why CLV on the author page is broken down by market and league. And one more thing: CLV is meaningless for picks published after the match has started, which is why the service does not accept such picks at all.