Closing line value (CLV)
Closing line value measures whether a bet was placed at a better price than the market offered at close.
In plain English
Beating the closing line means you bought at a price the market later judged too generous. Because it is measurable immediately and does not depend on whether the bet won, it is a far faster read on process quality than results are.
Example
Backing a side at +3.5 that closes at +2 captured positive CLV, whether or not the bet won.
Why it matters
Results take hundreds of bets to become meaningful. CLV starts being informative much sooner, so it is the better early signal that a process is real.
How V8 uses this term
V8 publishes CLV as an aggregate performance statistic. Exact per-pick closing prices and row-level CLV are deliberately withheld.