Understanding Football Betting: The Basics

 

Football betting is an integral part of the football industry, and thousands of people bet on every single football – from the small, obscure matches through to the massive events like the Premiere League. Knowing about the different types of football bets and markets and how football betting works can be interesting – and we’ve outlined some of the key points about football match betting as follows.

 

The Basics of Football Betting

If you’ve been looking to find out more about football betting and how it works, then today’s guide will help you find out more about how football betting works and the different features of football betting.

 

In-Person vs. Online Football Betting

One of the first things we should cover to help you understand how football betting works is the differences between in-person and online football betting. These two betting styles differ somewhat, so it’s worth considering the key differences between in-person and online football betting.

First, let’s consider in-person betting. In-person betting can sometimes be carried out on the match day itself, or otherwise, you can head down to a local store to place a bet. Typically, in-person betting doesn’t offer quite the same level of selection as online football betting, but otherwise, the experience is largely the same.

With online football betting, you can bet on your chosen team remotely, and there’s typically a larger selection of markets available online. For all other intents and purposes, though, online football betting is largely comparable with in-person betting overall.

 

The Different Football Betting Markets

At this point, we’ve outlined the main differences between in-person vs. online football betting, but what are the different markets? Not every bookmaker will necessarily offer the same markets, but some of the most common football betting options include the following:

• Match winner or draw
• Final score
• Half time score
• Players to score

In summary, there are numerous options for betting on football games. Common options such as the match winner market will be available in all betting facilities. Other options, such as whether a certain player will score a goal, will not necessarily be available with every bookmaker, and they’re most likely to be available with online football betting. By comparison, in-person betting markets may be more limited.

 

How Football Betting Odds Work

While they can be a little confusing to start with, generally speaking, football betting odds are quite straightforward to understand, and are usually presented as either a fraction (e.g., 3/2 or 4/1) or adecimal (1.5 or 4.0). Betting odds determine the potential prize winnings based on a bet, with smaller odds relating to smaller prizes and vice versa.

Let’s briefly consider an example match with the three match winner markets as follows:

• Team A: 3/2
• Draw: 20/1
• Team B: 80/1

From these odds, we can see that the bookmaker assumes Team A is far more likely to win the match, and as such, the payout for this bet would be much smaller. Meanwhile, the chances of Team B winning the match are predicted to be a lot lower, and so the payout would equally be lower.

Now, taking the above example again, let’s assume a £10 bet was placed on the match with an online football betting provider. In this case, the payouts would be as follows:

• If Team A won as anticipated by the odds, the payout would be £15
• If the two teams drew, the payout would be £200
• If Team B got lucky (despite the odds) and won, the payout would be £800.

Evidently, there’s a large difference between the payouts, since the two different teams in the example above were unevenly matched. As such, it’s far more likely that Team A would win the match – but the lower payout reflects this. If the two teams had been more evenly matched, the odds would likely be closer, and the payouts would hence be a lot more similar.

We should also point out here that the odds offered by bookmakers can change at any time. For example, in the above example, let’s assume the star player for Team A was unable to play at the last minute; this would likely make the two teams more evenly matched, and so the new odds would change to reflect this. So, if you notice that the odds of a match have changed throughout the day, that’s quite normal.

 

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been looking to find out more about football betting, then hopefully, today’s article will have given you a little more information about how football betting works. But, if you have any further questions about football betting that we’ve not outlined today, feel free to ask in the comments, and we’ll do our best to help you find the answers you’ve been looking for!