Football betting guide

One of the big success stories of online betting’s impressive growth over the last few years has been football betting. The emergence of what has become one of the biggest betting markets in sport is hardly surprising given football’s enduring global popularity and it now ranks as one of the biggest draws on sports betting sites like Blue Square and Ladbrokes.  

There are many different ways to place a bet on a football game, and the lingo can be a little intimidating. But, if you strip away the slang and the statistics, you’re left with some pretty simple premises that I’ll summarise here:

The football accumulator is the term for placing several bets on the outcome of several games at the same time. It’s a good way of increasing the odds against what you might see as a sure-thing. However, be careful betting on too many matches – it only takes one to be wrong to negate all the others. If in doubt, bet individually.

Something to be particularly wary of when betting on a football match is Normal Time. This is the normal time of a match, which EXCLUDES extra time and penalties. This might be particularly important to remember if you’re betting on an important cup-tie. Normal time is 90 minutes and no more.

The ‘under/over’ bet is a very popular bet in football. It’s a good way of increasing your chances of a win, particularly if you’re confident of a rather dramatic win or loss. For example, placing a bet on Crewe top score over 2.5 goals against Arsenal (!) means that you’ll win if Crewe scores over 2.5; lose if they score under.

‘Correct Score’ betting is the most obvious, but also one of the most treacherous. Guessing the final score (after ‘normal time’) means that you will only win that bet if you are entirely right. Anything else is a loss.

A ‘Half-time/full-time’ bet is where you guess the score at half-time and at full-time in the same bet. This is quite an attractive proposition, as you can do pretty well by betting on a draw at half-time and a win at full-time, without specifying the score. The rewards will be lower, but the regularity of winning can be higher.

Other bets focus on the finer points of the game, such as the last or first goal scorer; how many goals a player will score, and so on – including a double bet, where the better combines any of these single bets into a double.

Finding the process of betting daunting is a common off-putting problem, but online – and following some of this guidance – it really couldn’t be easier. Football betting has come of age in terms of its ease and variety.