Closing Line Value (CLV)

Closing line value, or CLV, measures whether a bettor consistently gets better odds than the final price available just before an event begins. The closing line is widely considered the most efficient point in the betting market because it reflects the collective wisdom of all bettors, including sharp professionals, who have had maximum time to analyze and wager on the event. If you regularly place bets at odds that are better than where the line closes, it strongly suggests you are identifying value that the broader market has not yet priced in.

CLV has become one of the most respected indicators of long-term betting skill. Unlike raw win rate or profit, which can be heavily influenced by variance over short periods, beating the closing line over a large sample is extremely difficult to achieve through luck alone. Sportsbooks themselves use CLV to identify sharp bettors, and many will restrict or limit accounts that consistently beat the closing number. For the bettor, tracking CLV provides a more stable and early signal of whether a strategy is genuinely profitable, even before the results of the bets are known.

Example

You bet on a football team at -3 (-110) early in the week. By kickoff, the line has moved to -4 (-110). Because you locked in a spread of -3 while the market settled at -4, you received a better number. Your bet needs the team to win by more than 3 points, while anyone betting at the close needs them to win by more than 4. That one-point difference is your closing line value. Over time, if you are consistently getting numbers like -3 when the line closes at -4, or taking underdogs at +6 when the line closes at +5, you are demonstrating a real edge in timing and analysis.

Key Points

• Strongest predictor of long-term profit: Research has shown that beating the closing line is more predictive of future success than simple win-loss records over comparable sample sizes.
• Market efficiency matters: CLV is most meaningful in liquid, well-bet markets where the closing line is genuinely sharp. In obscure or lightly traded markets, closing lines may be less reliable as benchmarks.
• Bookmakers track it closely: Sportsbooks monitor which accounts consistently beat the closing line and often restrict those accounts, making CLV a double-edged signal of skill.
• Encourages early betting: To capture CLV, bettors typically need to place wagers well before game time, when inefficiencies are more likely to exist.
• Not about single bets: A single instance of beating the closing line means little. The value of CLV as a metric emerges over hundreds or thousands of tracked bets.