Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0008-1087-1009

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Yaron Raviv

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© 2025 Nico Peerenboom

Abstract

This thesis tests whether a simple “fade the hype” strategy is profitable on a retail player-prop platform (Sleeper Pick’em). I construct a hand-collected dataset across MLB, NFL, WNBA, and NCAAF props, measure media hype largely through social media, and compute both the popularity gaps and the realized returns from staking one unit on the contrarian side of each prop. I estimate linear regression models with sport fixed effects and clustered standard errors. Higher media hype is strongly associated with wider popularity gaps, with average crowd skew rising by roughly 25.5–30.2 percentage points between props with low/no hype and those with moderate/high hype. However, larger gaps do not correlate with the fade side winning more often. The relationship between gap size and fade hit rate is small and statistically insignificant. After controlling for implied break-even probabilities and basic characteristics, larger gaps predict lower fade ROI. In this sample, hype does not provide an exploitable strategy.

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