Starting Price in Football Markets?

[feilimb]

I just started using the Betfair API in the past week or two and have been trying to capture some market prices in Football (Match Odds and Over/Under 2.5 Goals).

I have been using the Java wrappers provided on this forum in the Java section. I noticed that the starting price always appears to be 0.0, even when checking a market which is Inplay - can anyone verify if this is because football markets do not in fact support starting price?

If this is the case, can anyone advise/outline a basic strategy for capturing a 'close to' starting price for eg. a Match Odds market - would getting the prices say 5 minutes before scheduled kick-off be close enough for markets which have plenty of liquidity (eg. Premier League)?

[wotsisname]

As far as I know, BSP is not available on football matches (yet). I'd probably look at getMarketTradedVolumeCompressed() and then calculate a weighted price. Saying that, the overrounds are tight and money amounts are high, so the current average price ( (back_price + lay_price) / 2 ) will be very close to the "true" price.

[feilimb]

As far as I know, BSP is not available on football matches (yet). I'd probably look at getMarketTradedVolumeCompressed() and then calculate a weighted price. Saying that, the overrounds are tight and money amounts are high, so the current average price ( (back_price + lay_price) / 2 ) will be very close to the "true" price.

Thank you sir! I'm not sure how one calculates a weighted price based on traded volume but I'll see if I can research it.
Edit: oh wait, is that what you are referring to in ( (back_price + lay_price) / 2 ) ?

[kungfujam]

Thank you sir! I'm not sure how one calculates a weighted price based on traded volume but I'll see if I can research it.
Edit: oh wait, is that what you are referring to in ( (back_price + lay_price) / 2 ) ?

Hello,

Apologies for resurrecting this but I'm doing something very similar to you. Did you manage to calculate the starting price for Football odds in the end? If so, please can you provide some example code?