When bettors talk about a team “making money,” they mean something very specific: backing that club repeatedly at available odds would have produced a positive return across the season. In 2022/23, that story did not belong only to Manchester City, even though they won the league, but to a cluster of sides whose results outperformed how markets priced them for much of the campaign. Understanding who those teams were, and why they became profitable, helps turn one season’s experience into a more systematic approach for future betting decisions.
Why It Makes Sense to Ask Which Teams “Made Money”
The question is reasonable because odds encode expectations, so comparing those expectations with actual win outcomes tells you whether loyalty to a team would have beaten the house or not. Analyses of 2022/23 that simulate staking the same fixed amount on every team in every league match show that only a handful of clubs produced a net gain, while many others—especially fashionable names on short prices—delivered losses. This makes the season a clean laboratory: the fixtures are finished, the prices are known in retrospect, and the relationship between performance and profitability can be measured rather than guessed.
How Profitability Is Usually Measured Over a Season
Profitability studies typically assume you place a constant unit stake on a team to win in every league match and then calculate the overall return based on the closing or average odds. One published analysis of 2022/23, for instance, looked at what would have happened if you had bet £10 on each club to win all 38 of its Premier League games, then compared the total staked with the returns. Teams that regularly won at prices bigger than their actual chance—often underdogs or underrated mid‑table sides—rose to the top, while big favourites with cramped odds, even if they won often, struggled to generate meaningful percentage profit.
This method reveals something important: a team’s profitability is not the same as its league position. A mid-table club can be more lucrative than the champions if its odds underestimate its true strength, while a high‑finishing side can still lose money for loyal backers if every win was priced too short.
Brentford: The Standout Money-Maker of 2022/23
From a pure profit perspective, Brentford emerged as one of the clearest “cash machine” clubs for the season. Betting data shows that a hypothetical bettor staking £10 on Brentford to win every Premier League game in 2022/23 would have finished with a profit of around £234.70, thanks to a string of victories delivered at generous odds, including home wins over Liverpool at around 6.10, Manchester United at 4.55 and Manchester City at 3.35. Their final record—15 wins, 14 draws, 9 losses, 58 goals scored and a +12 goal difference—placed them ninth in the table but much higher in profitability rankings because markets often priced them as clear underdogs against big names.
The cause–outcome–impact chain is straightforward: Brentford’s compact structure, effective direct play and Ivan Toney’s 20-goal season allowed them to beat sides the odds said they would rarely defeat. The outcome was a pattern of big‑price wins and relatively few collapses; the impact for bettors was that a simple, mechanical strategy—always backing them—would have outperformed doing the same with more glamorous clubs.
Aston Villa, Brighton and Everton: Quietly Profitable Profiles
Beyond Brentford, profitability tables for 2022/23 highlight Aston Villa, Brighton and even Everton as teams that, under a flat‑stake approach, ended the season in the black. According to one analysis, staking the same amount on each of Aston Villa’s league wins would have produced a total return of about 7.3% on turnover, with Brighton around 6.3% and Everton near 7.8%, all positive figures despite very different league positions. Villa finished seventh with 61 points, Brighton sixth with 62 and a +19 goal difference, and Everton survived in 17th with 36 points and a −23 GD.
Their profitability came from different causes:
- Aston Villa’s mid‑season surge under Unai Emery, after a poor start, created a period when odds still reflected earlier underperformance while results already reflected improved structure.
- Brighton’s long‑term underlying numbers overtook their mid‑table reputation, leading to wins where markets still treated them as only modest favourites or live underdogs.
- Everton, despite a low finish, registered some key wins at sizeable prices in matches where relegation anxiety pressured opponents or distorted expectations.
For bettors, the impact is that profitability often clusters where team trajectory and odds are out of sync—not simply where the table says “good” or “bad.”
Comparing League Position and Betting Profit
To see how performance and profit diverge, it helps to set the top-earning clubs against their final standings.
| Team | League position / points | Flat-stake profit rank (example study) | Key profitability drivers |
| Brentford | 9th / 59 | Among top profit makers | Big wins at long odds vs top clubs. |
| Aston Villa | 7th / 61 | Positive, around +7% return | Late-season surge under Emery. |
| Brighton | 6th / 62 | Positive, around +6% return | Strong underlying play, modest pricing early. |
| Everton | 17th / 36 | Positive, around +8% return | Occasional high-priced wins in a relegation battle. |
| Man City | 1st / 89 | Often near break-even or modest loss | Many wins but at very short odds. |
This comparison shows why bettors who only followed the top of the table may have missed value. Manchester City’s dominance still left little room for long-term profit on straight win bets because the market priced that dominance aggressively, while clubs in the second tier (or even near the bottom) had more room to surprise. In other words, profitability often lives where the market is least certain.
How “Money-Making” Teams Look From a Value-Betting Perspective
From a value-based betting standpoint, profitable teams tend to share two traits: they perform slightly better than the public expects, and they do it in situations where prices are meaningful rather than minimal. Brentford’s home wins over Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City combined those traits perfectly—each match saw them widely viewed as inferior, but their tactical plan and execution turned that status into outsized returns. Brighton and Aston Villa, in contrast, created value through sustained improvement over dozens of matches rather than a few dramatic upsets, gradually turning modest odds into a steady edge.
In practice, value-driven bettors in 2022/23 paid attention to underlying metrics—goal difference, xG trends, defensive solidity—and noticed when those metrics outpaced market sentiment. They did not need clubs to win the league; they needed them to be slightly undervalued over and over again. The impact is that “money‑making” becomes an emergent property of many small mispricings, not a single heroic forecast.
Integrating Profitable-Team Insights Into a Sports Betting Service Context (UFABET)
When these observations are transferred into real betting behaviour, the way bettors navigate digital environments becomes critical. Suppose someone has internalised that 2022/23 rewarded loyalty to certain mid‑tier and underappreciated sides—Brentford’s structure, Brighton’s attacking quality, Aston Villa’s surge, Everton’s occasional high‑price wins—more than constant backing of fashionable favourites; the next time that bettor logs into a sports betting service such as ufabet168 and scans Premier League coupons, their selection bias naturally shifts toward fixtures where those types of teams are again modestly underrated rather than automatically focusing on short‑priced giants, effectively using last season’s profitability map as a filter for where to invest attention and units. Over time, this shift in focus can matter more than any single pick, because it keeps the bettor operating in parts of the market where mispricing is historically more likely.
How “Profitability Mindset” Interacts With casino online Behaviour
Thinking in terms of long-run profitability also changes how bettors approach other gambling products. In league football, repeated underestimation of clubs like Brentford or Brighton allowed careful bettors to build a positive expectation over 38 games, grounded in odds and results. In a casino online setting, however, the built-in house edge on games does not shrink just because a player believes they have found a “team” or pattern to follow; past outcomes do not create the same exploitable structure as the evolving story of a football season. Recognising this distinction helps bettors avoid importing a profitability mindset from sports into spaces where, mathematically, consistent “money-making” is much harder to sustain and often impossible without structural advantage.
Summary
Looked at through a bettor’s lens, the 2022/23 Premier League’s most profitable teams were not only the champions but also mid-table and struggling sides whose odds undervalued their actual performance. Brentford stood out by turning a ninth-place finish into substantial hypothetical profit thanks to big wins at long prices, while Aston Villa, Brighton and even Everton delivered positive returns under a flat‑stake approach. For anyone planning future Premier League bets, the season’s main lesson is that “money-making” usually emerges where perception lags behind reality, not where the market already treats a club as untouchable.