Football betting is among the most popular activities worldwide, making up over 30% of sports gambling revenue. While traditional land-based bookies offer simple betting markets like total result or goal scorer, online sports betting sites cover loads of bet types to entice bettors.
As such, you’ll find sports betting sites offering 100+ betting markets on high-profile football tournaments like the World Cup, The Champions League, and The Premier League. Even lower-level leagues, especially those in the UK, feature 50+ betting markets at popular sites like BetVictor. Some platforms even go as far as to reward users with enhanced odds on specific events.
The problem with this is if you’re a beginner, you could get overwhelmed by the multiple options. You want to concentrate on markets that feature across numerous sites to compare the odds and know if you’re getting the best value. Also, the market has to have huge amounts of statistics and analysis that you can use to make informed decisions on the results of your chosen bet.
As you can see, there are several crucial factors you need to consider when deciding whether a bet is favourable or not. With this in mind, we’ve listed some markets below that are great for beginners, as they all present good value for your bet and can easily be researched.
- Both Teams to Score
As the name suggests, betting on both teams to score involves predicting if both teams will score in a match. It doesn’t matter who wins or the total score because you only get to choose if you think both teams will get one or more goals or if you think they both won’t score.
You can increase your winning potential with this market by placing it when the best teams in a league or championship are going against each other. In this case, your bet has less risk since the chance of both teams scoring is higher.
- Over or Under Goals
You’ll find the over or under market on pretty much every online sportsbook on all matches. The bet aims to predict if a game will have more or less goals. So, why is this among the easiest bets on football?
Well, the main numbers you’ll see on this market are 2, 2.5, 3, and 3.5. If, for example, the number is 2.5, you can wager under 2.5 if you think there will be two or fewer goals or go for over 2.5 if you predict the match will have three or more goals. Since only two outcomes are possible, your winning chances are especially high.
- Asian Handicap
With the Asian Handicap, you bet on the margin of victory in a match. Online sports betting sites typically give favourites a ‘spread’ to cover while the underdogs are given a head start. That means if you wager on the favourite, the team must win by more than the spread for your bet to be successful.
There are a couple of things to note about this market. For starters, it eliminates the chance to wager on a draw in a match, so there are only two possible outcomes; a win or a loss. Also, the minus symbol (-) is given to the favourite team, the one with the handicap, while the positive sign (+) is assigned to the underdog with the handicap advantage.
Lets say, for example, Manchester City has a handicap of -1.00 while Bournemouth has an advantage of +1.00. If you bet on Manchester City to win, your wager will only be successful if the team beats Bournemouth by 2 or more goals. Your wager will be refunded if Manchester wins by one goal and you’ll lose incase there’s a draw or the team loses.
Reduce The Risk With These Football Betting Markets
Even though betting on the final result (win or not) is the most common market for beginners, there are many more options available. As shown above, you can diversify your bets by wagering on both teams to win, over or under goals, and Asian handicaps. The good thing is all these markets are easy to wager on, even for beginners, which is perfect for increasing your chances of placing winning bets.
