Plenty of people love to blow off steam by watching a front-room game or placing bets. Putting both of those together is a whole other level of thrill. Educate yourself on the variety of options you have for betting on football and what determines how much you stand to win.

Understanding Odds in Football Betting

Football is the most popular sport on Earth, and for that reason has the most loaded and extensive betting markets as well. So you’re going to have no shortage of options. You can bet on your favorite player or your hometown squad, even whether they’re going to kick a corner kick this period. You can combine a bunch of different variables together for a parlay. It’s enough to give you a whole hoot of a time. Being a die-hard fan of a particular club is one thing, but then actually having some personal gain at stake for your finances just adds a whole extra dimension to the adrenaline. If they win, you win.

The options on Odds96 are really endless, but if it’s your first time, the formulas you see will likely depend on the region you’re betting in.

How Football Odds Are Calculated and Winnings Are Awarded

The most common type of bet placed on football, or soccer, matches is the old “Pick the winner.” Now obviously, certain teams are known to be more potent than others, so at first blush it seems like “Easy money, I’ll just pick the high-octane powerhouse. They’ll win, no doubt.” But in that case, all the money would be banked on that team, and they’d be no money to pay out those bets. 

For that reason, a handicap is placed. If you bet on the clearly advantaged team, you don’t get as much as if you wager on the underdog and win. There are 3 different widespread systems to know about, depending on where you are.

Fractional Odds

This system is used in the UK and Ireland. Basically, the numerator indicates how much of a profit you’ll make should you win. The denominator, meanwhile, is the amount required for you to stake to place that bet per GBP.

If your odds are 6/1, that means you must stake a pound to make six pounds in profit, along with getting your original pound back. Decimal Odds

This is the easiest system to understand, which is why it’s customary in Canada, Australia, and Europe. They tell you how much you can multiply your bet by to calculate your winnings on a per-euro basis. It’s like the UK system, but you use a decimal point instead, and you add your original stake to the decimal (1 euro). So if your odds are 10.0, then you will get 9 euros back plus your original euro for each euro that you bet.

Moneyline

This one is the most complex, however, it’s likely you don’t live in the United States, where this system is mainstream, since in USA you’d probably be watching baseball, basketball, or American football. The way bets are phrased is based on the rate of a 100-dollar wager. They are expressed as either a positive number if you’re taking the underdog bet or a negative one if you bet on the favorite. The only difference in the amount of your bet will be whether it’s positive or negative.

If your odds are -200, that means you have to bet 200 dollars in order to win 100. If your bet is +500, you only have to bet 100 dollars to win 500. 

The Vig

Bookies don’t just offer bets out of the kindness of their hearts. They’re in it for a profit after all. For that reason, they charge you some “juice” – a particular profit margin to support themselves, which is usually 3-6%. You might think that’s a bit of a raw deal, but it’s pretty standard in the business world. You also do have the alternate option to just go through a betting exchange, where you and another person are linked together via a platform facilitating peer-to-peer bets. 

Asian Handicaps

Suppose you don’t want to only win some paltry amount when your team wins, even though it was the team expected to win anyway, or if, conversely, the team you like best is the underdog, but you don’t want to lose. That’s where Asian handicaps come into play, which originated in that continent, hence the name. In this case, a bet on a favored team would require not just a win, but a bigger win, and the payout would also be even. Conversely, if you bet on the underdog, they could still lose but not lose by too much, and you’d still win the bet.

These come as positive or negative numbers ranging from -2 to 0 to +2, sometimes using increments of 0.25. Your outcome could result in a win, a loss, a draw, a refund, or a partial win or loss, depending on if you’d like to hedge your bet.

Additional Bets Besides Winner-Loser Bets

Besides the dry old “Who’s gonna win?”, there is a whole plethora of other ways you could wager, especially if you feel like you have some clever insight. On top of that, you can render your bet a surer bet with a smaller potential payout, or you can totally yolo a massive long-shot bet that could net you a fortune. Just like in casinos, sportsbooks serve all appetites.

Over-Under

Here, you’re betting on whether or not a particular total will eclipse or fall short of a particular number. If you think there will be more than 5 goals scored and the line is 4.5, you bet the over. If you think it’ll be less than that, you bet the under. The same also applies to the number of corner kicks, assists, or yellow cards.

Prop Bets

With these, you bet on something happening within the game, usually tied to a particular player. You can bet whether Messi will have a corner kick or an assist. You can also bet whether Ronaldo will get a yellow card in the game. Or they could be team-based, like whether a team scores a goal this period.

Parlay

In this case, you combine multiple bets into one. You win depending on whether all of your bets end up being correct. So it’s unlikely that you’re going to win; however, if you do win, you’re in for a serious haul. 

Teaser

This is a variation of the aforementioned bet type. You get to alter the point spread or in other words, the odds required in order to win. So if you bet on the favorite, you could get even odds of winning instead of having to win by extra points. The catch? Your potential payout reduces accordingly.

How the Bookies Set Odds So Precisely

This business requires an incredible amount of data and technology to prosper, so such organizations crunch numbers that would absolutely fry your brain. They actually don’t completely rely on themselves for the data. They use their own software, but more importantly, they rely on specialized data providers. Oftentimes, many different contours get their info from the exact same providers, so often their odds can be identical. The leading data providers in the world right now are Sportradar, Stats Perform, and Genius Sports.

Professional analysts and even mathematicians play a role too. Data analysts are employed to come up with fantastic tools and algorithms, and all of this work ends up producing dumbfoundingly accurate odds that split outcomes more or less right down the middle, allowing the organizations to take bets on both sides.

Beyond that, these bookies have to come up with cash forecasts to predict how much money they think is going to come in based on histories of past events in every single market. This helps them take care of their funds on hand and prevent overly large losses. If they project not a lot of money coming in for a particular market, they’ll entice more betters by sweetening the odds.