Live Football Betting

Football has without doubt one of the biggest betting markets in world with millions wagered on major events such as the World Cup, European Champions league and English Premiership. As a global brand, football is a multi billion pound business and its viewing figures around the world are phenomenal. If you’re a recreational gambler looking to try your luck with live football betting, there’s no better site than www.Bet365.com. In this article I’ll cover the reasons for this, introduce other betting sites, cover the football market and then conclude with some advanced football betting strategy.

Live Football Betting Sites

Bet365 Live Football Betting

• A generous 100% up to £200 welcome bonus.
• High value promotions including an accumulator bonus, a refund on all nil-nil football ties, and a second chance refund on all first goal scorer wagers.
• More options for betting football than any other site, this includes both number of leagues and matches, as well as total number of wagering opportunities for each match.
• Advanced live in-play wagering platform, which also allows you to watch football matches online via high quality live streaming feeds right on their website.

Bet365.com has a 37-year history in the UK, is owned by the Coates family, has never missed a payout and today boasts over 5 million customers, 1,400 employees and has a betting site available in 17 languages and 29 currencies, you’ll see this is the perfect website for betting football online.

If you’re wagering on the most popular football leagues and competitions, using several betting sites simultaneously will get you the best odds. Prior to getting into that let me establish which football wagering options I’m speaking of.

Popular Football Competitions

The pinnacle of football comes in the form of the World Cup. A reported 715 million people around the globe watched the 2006 world cup final alone, making it the most widely viewed sporting event on the planet. The current holders of the Jules Rimet Trophy are Spain who won the World Cup in 2010 for the first time in their history.

Bookmakers have obviously taken advantage of football’s pulling power and offer an array of markets catering for a host of betting formats including fixed odds, spread betting and live in-play markets.

The highlight of the European domestic season is that of the European Champions League. The best teams from around Europe do battle in a grueling mid week league then a knockout format before the final taking place on a Saturday evening. The final, hosted by UEFA, draws in a TV audience of over 100 million making it the largest European based sporting event in the world. Real Madrid has won the Champions League a record 9 times, but it’s their bitter rivals Barcelona who currently hold the trophy after beating Manchester United in the 2011 final.

The English Premier League is the fastest growing, richest and most exciting domestic league in the world. The 20 teams that participate in the league recorded a massive £2 billion in revenue for the 2008-09 season comfortably surpassing many of their other high profiled European counterparts. Manchester United is the current Premier League Champions and just missed out on a famous domestic and European Cup double.

The Spanish league (La Liga) closely follows the English Premier League and is another high quality league punters can place bets on. Bookmakers such as Bet365.com offer extensive markets and the popularity of the Spanish game across Europe continues to grow. It’s argued that La Liga have the two best players in the world, in the form of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

One of the better markets to bet on in football is that of the international junior markets. Often events such as the Euro under 21 and U21 World Cup can offer up some shock results meaning you get some excellent value bets made available to you from online bookmakers. Due to the vast coverage available on both the internet and satellite television, many games offer a comprehensive in-play betting market to take advantage of.

Shopping for Value in Live Football Betting

When wagering these leagues, shopping multiple betting sites makes complete sense. The big UK and European bookmakers tend to mirror one another’s odds so you need only one UK/EU account which Bet365.com is our recommendation. From here you want to shop Bet365’s odds against odds offered outside of Europe.

We suggest looking to North America betting sites that specialise in the other sport called football (gridiron) not actually played with ones foot. At these large and trusted sites, football (which they call soccer) is a much smaller market. This creates unique moves and shifts that in times result in vastly different odds than what the UK/EU bookmakers are offering. Our advice is to choose www.bodog.eu as a North America brand which also has football coverage via their .co.uk subdivision. You should also take a glance at what Asian bookmakers are offering for odds on any match you’re about to wager; SBObet.com is by far the most popular Asian betting site. Make sure to look though the full list of top rated Asian bookies for a few more options.

An additional consideration when betting matches is to wager with Betfair.com or Pinnacle Sports. Here you won’t find the same frills such as accumulators and vast proposition coverage, but you will find incredible odds on their 3-way, Asian handicap and 2-way head to head markets.

If you have a very strong lean, meaning you don’t expect the game will be close, consider sports spread betting. This is a method of betting that rewards punters based on how correct they are; the more the team you backed wins by, the larger the payout becomes (more on this in a few).

In-Play Football Betting Markets

We’ve already mentioned how popular football is around the world. To cover the ever increasing popularity, bookmakers are offering up more markets and more football betting offers to accommodate that of their punters. Let’s take a look at some of the better markets to wager on.

Back and Lay the Draw

The Betfair betting exchange allows you to become your own bookmaker. To take advantage of this factor, its backing and laying options mean that you can lock in profits no matter the result or outcome of a football game.

One of the most popular betting strategies is laying the draw and backing it off. The theory behind this strategy is that most football games have at least one goal. Say you lay the draw on a game at 3.0 on Betfair. As the game goes on without a goal, the odds of the draw will decrease. It’s for this reason that we want to see a goal (from either team). A goal means the draw becomes less likely so the odds will increase dramatically. Once they have increased we can then back the draw at odds which are greater than our original lay to make a profit on any result.

In-Game Football Spread Betting

One of the most unique football betting opportunities is spread betting. Don’t confuse this with “point spread betting”, sports spread betting is an entirely different concept that works much like financial trading. When spread betting football, punters are not rewarded based merely on win or loss, but rather how much they win or lose by. Whilst there are dozens of football spread betting markets let me just cover one the popular markets (supremacy betting) so you can gauge how this works:

Supremacy Betting – This form of spread betting is offered on all live matches. In-play opportunities exist on televised games where non televised matches are open for pre-match trades only. Let’s take the case of 19 June, 2011 Euro 2011 under 21 match between England/Czech Rep, where England was the favourites and offered at 0.30 – 0.50 goal over Czech Republic. If you decide to “SELL” England supremacy at 0.30 for say £100 per goal it would take England winning the game for you to lose money. Basically what you have is wager on Czech Republic and you’ve been spotted a 0.30 goal head start. If the game ends in a draw you would win 0.3 x £100 = £30.

The payout at the end of the match is determined by how much Czech Republic wins or loses by. If they win by one, you’re getting the 1 goal, plus the 0.3 goals you started with so your payout is 1.30 x £100 = £130. If they lose by two you’re paying for the two goals, less than 0.30 spread you started with, so your loss is 1.70 x £100 = £170.

Backing up to the beginning, you could have alternatively decided to “BUY” England in which case the spread is 0.50 so you’re behind 0.50 goals to start. You can wager any stake you wish (within the sites limits) per goal in supremacy wagering.

Supremacy is only one of the many football spread betting opportunities online, others include corners, bookings, goal times and this names just a few. Perhaps the best site for sports spread betting is ExtraBet.com as they offer both a spread wagering platform as well as traditional fixed odd betting licensed the UK Gambling commission.

Best Football Live Betting Odds

I mentioned in the intro of this article that Bet365 is the best betting site for recreational punters wagering on football. One area I didn’t focus… Bet365 is also one top betting websites for low to mid stake professional punters. If you’re betting $500 or less per match, than hands down no question about it Bet365 offers the best odds a good 70% of the time. I illustrated this and compared them to Pinnacle and Betfar in my article titled Best Football Betting Odds which is a near must read for any serious low to mid stake punter.

Outside of Bet365.com your top choices are Pinnacle Sports and Betfair.com, though do be sure to shop any odds you’re betting against www.bodog.co.uk. Frequently enough you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find Bodog offers the best football odds on a given match. This concludes our article on football betting sites, no matter where wager and who you back this betting season, we at Live Betting wish you the best of luck.