How to Make Money from Betting on Football

There are more ways to bet on football (soccer) than just picking the favourite or slapping a few notes down on a heavily unfancied underdog. Value betting, arbitrage betting, and using a tipster are all essential ways to help footy fans maximise their returns when betting on the beautiful game.

If you’re not a regular bettor, the chances are that you won’t be familiar with these terms. Fortunately, throughout this short article, we’ll introduce you to them. By using these three methods when betting on football, you will surely see a significant improvement in your ability to pick winning football matches.

Value Betting Remains a Secret Known Only to a Few

Sportsbooks and land-based bookies absolutely hate it when you discover value betting. The tactic can smash apart the bookie’s strategy. Ordinarily, the bookie relies on many punters not being aware of this strategy and merely placing bets on their favourites. As a result, they can afford to offer exceptionally short odds on favourites. However, with value betting, you’ll be able to see through the bookie’s strategy.

Value betting is when a punter only wagers money when there is a substantial difference between the odds they have calculated (using value betting strategy) and the odds offered by the bookie.

For instance, using a value betting formula, you might decide that Manchester United should have odds of 1.50 to beat Tottenham Hotspur, who should have odds of 3.00. If a bookie offers 2.20 odds for a Man United win, you’re getting better odds than your valuation. However, if the bookie offers odds of 1.20, these are not as decent as the value you have put on them. At the same time as a bookie offers 1.20 for a Man Utd win, they might offer 4.00 or 5.00 for Tottenham win. That is substantially better than the figures expressed in your value bet. Therefore, it may be worth having a punt on an away win in this case.

“Arbing” Gives You a Wide View of the Market

Arbitrage betting (also known as “arbing”) is another way you can get value out of betting on football. In short, Arbitrage betting involves scanning the various markets (different bookmakers) and placing bets at several of them. Most of the time, you are likely to end up with a profit. The way it works is simple enough:

Every bookie has its own odds on football matches. Some bookies feature longer odds for a team to win than others will. What you want to do is browse the markets and find the bookie which offers the longest odds on a home win, and the bookie which offers the longest odds on an away win, for the same match. You then place a punt on the home team and the away team winning, but at different bookies. Provided the game doesn’t end in a draw, you will have maximised your chances of landing a decent win. You will surely land a profit somewhere.

Follow a Good Tipster

The chances are that you’re unlikely to want to sit for hours studying how value bets are constructed. Professional sports bettors use highly complex strategies and mathematical models to come up with their value bets. Similarly, it can take a decent chunk of time to scout all the markets to find the longest odds on home and away team wins.

While there are tools out there which you can use to find the value in bets, and tools which allow you to compare numerous markets at once, there is a better way to go about it. Tipsters are professional predictors, who use both value betting and arbitrage to come up with the best way to make money out of football.

Tipsters can offer their services for free, or they can charge you for it. While the latter may sound counterintuitive, you can still make quite a decent chunk of change, even when paying for such a service.

Each tipster will have their own area of expertise or aspects of markets which they are knowledgeable about, and you can definitely thrust them!