Betting on Football Matches

Football is one of the UK's popular sports both in terms of the number of people who play it and those who watch, and as a result, football betting is becoming more and more widespread. Having a bet on a football match can add a whole new element of excitement to watching the game.

You can generally place bets on games in English Premier League, Divisions 1-3, Champion's League, UEFA Cup, Scottish Premier League, International football plus much, much more. Domestic leagues from across the world provide plenty of betting action, and ensure that there's always something to look at even when the UK teams are enjoying their off-season break.

You have a wide range of types of bets to place, such as:

Full Time Result

The most common bet; you can choose one of three options - a win for the home team, a win for the other team or a draw.

Half Time Result

Similar to the Full time result, but based on the result at Half Time, including first half injury time.

Half Time / Full Time (HT/FT)

In this bet, you aim to predict the result at half time AND full time - often called a 'double bet'. There are nine different combinations of results to choose from. For example, if England were to play Germany, there would be three possible results at half time: England winning, Germany winning or a draw. Then for each of these three results, there are another three possible results at full time.

The options are printed on the bet form as "half time result - full time result", so if you think that the two teams might draw by half time, but England will pull through to win by the end of the match, you would bet "Draw - England".

Correct Score

With this bet, you are predicting the score at the end of normal time. Scores will usually be quoted as "Home Team Score - Away Team Score", so make sure you get things the right way around.

As they are many different final scores possible, the odds are usually quite high; however, this also means that the chances of winning quite low.

Total Goals

In this bet, you typically choose whether the game will be a high scoring one (more than 2.5 goals) or a low one (less than 2.5 goals) by the end of normal time.

First Goal Scorer

A bet on who will score the first goal. This is not usually a good value bet, but if you do fancy having a go, make sure you know who the penalty takers are.

You should also check the bookmakers policies on own goals - most will discount them.