Football betting - is there any point to it?

[Maxi Stavros]

Well it is coming up to the end of the European football season, luckily we have the Euros to look forward to this summer. 

For me it has been a really poor season, I ended the season £900 down, I usually bet £20 on a Saturday, £20 on Sunday and maybe £10 on midweek days where there are plenty of fixtures.

I usually bet on team goals, sometimes singles, other times fivefolds, sixfolds. I started betting on these type of bets as the win bets have got harder and harder over the years IMO.

Over the years I have focused on BTTS bets, over 2.5 goals, over 0.5 first half goals, teams to score over 0.5 or 1.5 goals. I cannot get any of these to be profitable long term.

I followed some of the online tipsters on Twitter this season, not to place my bets but to record how they do. The annoying thing with these tipsters is that they never keep profit/loss records, they make a big song and dance when they win but barely mention a bet when it losses. The tipsters I followed had very poor seasons too.

IMO football betting is not beatable. I have bet for the last 20 years, I love football, I know so much about football, I watch loads of football, it's why I bet on it, I feel like when I look at a fixture I can predict how it may go. But it doesn't seem to go like that. I mean take Man Utd v Arsenal today, I fancied Arsenal to score over 1.5 goals, the odds were only 1.44 but United who have been awful this season and with so many players out injured looked like they would really struggle today. Arsenal had managed over 1.5 goals in 7 of their last 8 away games, only failing to do so at Man City. But it failed. In recent weeks matches like Leeds at home to Sunderland, Leeds at home to Blackburn looked like home bankers but Leeds failed to score in both.  Who would have though Liverpool would lose at home to Palace, at home to Atalanta? Who would have thought Aston Villa would lose home and away to Olympiacos? The annoying thing is, when I go for larger price bets they never seem to win. A few weeks ago I had a bet on Chelsea over 1.5 goals at Arsenal at what seemed very appealing odds of 4.80. I had watched Arsenal lose at home to Villa 0-2 the previous week and had seen Chelsea score 2 or more in their previous 6 league matches. Of course it ended up 5-0 to Arsenal.

Anyway, you don't need me to go on about my losing bets but what I am trying to get at is that football matches are so unpredictable but at the same time so hard to win longer odds matches. 

The reality is that the odds on any outcome on a football match are so brilliantly set, the exchanges are of course the best odds and where to bet to maximise value but the fact that they are so accurate means that in reality long term you will only ever break even. If the odds are set accurately then aren't you basically just betting on luck? There is a match about to kick off shortly, Strasbourg v Metz, I fancy over 2.5 goals in this match. It is a game Metz have to win, a draw is no good. Both teams are far from solid, both teams seem to let goals in but seem capable of scoring too. Odds on the exchanges are 1.96 on over 2.5 goals. If these odds are very fair and accurate, what is the point betting on it? These odds suggest that 51% of the time you will win, 49% of the time you will lose. The odds seem fair. The chances of me winning is the same as having a bag of 100 balls, 51 being winning balls and 49 being losing balls and picking one out at random. If I win it is purely luck. What is the point of betting on luck? Would I bet on a coin to be heads at 2.0? Would I bet on picking out a heart from a deck of cards at 4.0? Would I bet on black in roulette for 2.0 if there was no zero? What is the point?

Obviously the only way to make profits is to find value but if the odds are set accurately then there can never be any value. If you do find value, can you find value thousands of times over to make it worth your while? How do you know if you even have found value and that you can find an error in how all of the bookies and exchanges have set the odds? 

Football betting is nothing more than betting on luck. If you cannot make money from it, what is the point?

 

[Data]

30 minutes ago, Maxi Stavros said:

sometimes singles, other times fivefolds, sixfolds. I started betting on these type of bets as the win bets have got harder and harder over the years IMO.

Football betting is nothing more than betting on luck. If you cannot make money from it, what is the point?

 

If win bets have got harder and harder as you say here, then multiples will have got harder too, but to a greater degree.

If you cannot make money from it, what is the point?
If your sole aim is profit, then of course there is no point.

My advice, FWIW is stick to single bets,
bet for enjoyment,
limit yourself to one bet per betting day,
If you're struggling to find a 'best bet', don't bet that day at all.

Most hobbies cost money, collecting stuff, subscriptions, club memberships, etc. Enjoy pitting your knowledge & skills against the available odds in a limited way, you may find your hobby costs very little, could break even, or you never know it might start to pay if you can be disciplined.

Profiting from football win singles is possible, and very enjoyable. There can be a point.

[harry_rag]

I’m getting a huge sense of Deja vu around you posting along these lines! 

31 minutes ago, Maxi Stavros said:

Football betting is nothing more than betting on luck. If you cannot make money from it, what is the point?

The first statement is untrue (at a wider level; it may be true for you). The answer to the question is “for entertainment”. The vast majority of people who bet will lose (out of necessity or bookmaking wouldn’t be a viable industry) but do it because they enjoy the challenge and it enhances their enjoyment in watching an event. If you can’t accept losing and end up not enjoying betting as a result then don’t bet.

It sounds like you know a lot more about football than me but are unable to profit from applying that knowledge to your bets. If I was going to blow my own trumpet slightly I’d say I know more about the way selected markets work and are priced, and that’s more useful when it comes to profitable betting. Don’t bet on what you think is going to happen, that’s what pretty much all losing punters do, bet on the prices you believe are wrong whether you fancy the outcome or not. You’re more likely to win if you can price the event up first than if you go to the market wanting to back a particular outcome as long as the price looks “ok”.

Either accept the losses as the price of your entertainment, stop if you’re no longer enjoying it or try different markets. There’s some guy on here who’s always banging on about spread betting and anytime goalscorer betting! The former is the closest thing to a “can’t lose” proposition you will ever find (plenty of what amount to even money shots willingly priced at 5/4 because “no one” bets them) and the latter benefits from only being priced one way by the bookies (they rarely price up not to score) so there’s more scope for inaccurate pricing. And there’s also a viable exchange market which often offers even more value.

[harry_rag]

On 5/12/2024 at 7:59 PM, Maxi Stavros said:

For me it has been a really poor season, I ended the season £900 down, I usually bet £20 on a Saturday, £20 on Sunday and maybe £10 on midweek days where there are plenty of fixtures.

I'd be intrigued to know what your ROI is on that betting history.*

Looking at 3 markets for tonight's Prem game (12X, < /> 2.5 and btts) the best bookies price overround (on Oddschecker) ranges from 100.88% to 103.75%. If you consider the exchange (after 2% commission) no market has an overround bigger than 101.14%. It's hard to see how anyone betting in those sort of markets should have a significant negative ROI and, if they do, it suggest they'd be better off picking bets out at entirely at random than applying whatever logic they do.

No doubt the closer you get to kick off the more accurate those markets are so you'd probably need to bet early with a genuine edge to have any chance of showing a profit. But you're starting from a position of a very modest overround to try and overcome and you need to ask questions of your approach if your return is much worse than -4%.

I'd say the advantage of the anytime goalscorer market is that it's actually multiple markets (20 starting outfield players in every game) and there's a far greater chance of finding prices that offer a degree of value.

* Obviously if you are making a loss backing singles then your ROI will end up worse as a result of combining said singles into multis, reinforcing the point made by @Data about sticking to singles at the moment.

[Maxi Stavros]

Hi Harry, thanks for your posts, I like your posts and will reply later. 
I am trying to rush this as I am so confident on Madrid v Alaves over 3.5 goals at 2.32 on the exchanges. Do I fancy this bet? Yes very much. Do I think 2.32 is good value? Definitely. So I’ve put just £10 on. I do however feel after placing it that I wish I didn’t. I’ll explain in my next post. 

[harry_rag]

As it helps your bet I'll cheekily AT that I took Bellingham at 2.5! (Son my only other bet in play, lost a couple on the early Spanish game so still down on the day).

He was just shy of being an automatic bet but he's one of those players who tends to outperform his odds even if he's not quite as hot as he was early on in the season so I asked for my target price and got it. (Was less fortunate with Junior so I'll hope your remaining 3 goals come from other sources.)

[Maxi Stavros]

Just read your post fully. It’s a really interesting point and one I ask myself. If the odds are set fairly then why does anyone show quite significant losses? I did do a lot of £10/£20 fivefold/sixfold teams to score bets this season and I only remember winning a couple of times. I think that’s where most of my losses occurred and I think it proves your point that placing bets needing 5 or 6 outcomes all the be correct has an added difficulty on top of the accumulated odds. I did have a spell betting on bet builders as William hill have a 50% bet boost on these once a week, however bet builders are just awful, I don’t think I’ve ever won one which had 4 or more selections. Multiples clearly are what the bookies like most and hard to win on. 
As you say, singles appear to be the best way to go to get value and to try and limit losses but is it really possible to make any significant profits on singles when the odds are set so well? Surely it’s not possible over hundreds of bets to get more than 3%. You get better returns on the premium bonds that that. 
As for my comment about wishing I didn’t put the Real Madrid bet on, I was keen to resist putting bets on as I am really feeling what is the point but then I look at the evenings fixtures and check out the odds and I couldn’t resist. 

[harry_rag]

6 minutes ago, Maxi Stavros said:

I think that’s where most of my losses occurred and I think it proves your point that placing bets needing 5 or 6 outcomes all the be correct has an added difficulty on top of the accumulated odds.

It's not so much that there's an added difficulty as that, if you can't make a profit from singles, then you multiply that "negative edge" by combining your selections in bigger multiples. The more legs, the worse the expected return. If you do have an edge on singles then you multiply it by doing accas. But you have to be sensible as the bigger the odds the greater the variance. If you only punt 1000/1 shots then you're going to have to endure very long losing runs and would need a huge sample to know whether you're beating the odds or not. At the other extreme, there's more value in the 3/1 double than two even money singles that should be a shade of odds on so it is a viable approach.

14 minutes ago, Maxi Stavros said:

I did have a spell betting on bet builders as William hill have a 50% bet boost on these once a week, however bet builders are just awful, I don’t think I’ve ever won one which had 4 or more selections.

Bet Builders are just multiple bets with the added restriction of having to be on a single event. It's harder to find multiple value selections on a single event and harder to work out fair odds where there are related contingencies at work. So they're like multis but even harder. I only tend to play them where I can get two value goalscorers in the same game and try to make use of any available boosts. I made a decent profit on them last year but am only just in front this year. I don't do too many and only build them around goalscorers where I believe I have a bit of an edge.

21 minutes ago, Maxi Stavros said:

Surely it’s not possible over hundreds of bets to get more than 3%.

I managed 3.05% from 1645 anytime bets last year but it seems to be trending upwards. It's 8.67% this year and now 5.1% from 2524 bets in total. We'll see how it goes but it's reasonably encouraging, There's a tipster I'm aware of who just does that market and he was running at around 9% last year but fell of a cliff and is down to around 2% now. His ROI over the last 12 months has been so bad I could have beat it by betting blindly!

26 minutes ago, Maxi Stavros said:

You get better returns on the premium bonds that that.

Your missing something here. £50k locked away for a year at 3% would earn £1500. I could have made that last year (when my ROI was around 3%) with a much smaller betting bank. Even without a progressive staking plan compounding the growth you're turning the same stake over repeatedly so you wouldn't need a £50k bank to have staked £50k over a year. 3% betting ROI generates a better return on capital than 3% simple interest.

[harry_rag]

15 hours ago, harry_rag said:

It's 8.67% this year

In the interests of transparency, that was at the end of last month. YTD currently running at 6.46% as this month a losing one so far.

 

15 hours ago, harry_rag said:

Your missing something here. £50k locked away for a year at 3% would earn £1500. I could have made that last year (when my ROI was around 3%) with a much smaller betting bank. Even without a progressive staking plan compounding the growth you're turning the same stake over repeatedly so you wouldn't need a £50k bank to have staked £50k over a year. 3% betting ROI generates a better return on capital than 3% simple interest.

The more concise way of saying that was you're mixing up the ROI with the bank growth. I could have given myself a 1000 point bank for the year and the profit would have represented a return of over 50% on the starting bank. You could have stuck £1k in a bank at 6% and made £60. You could've had a £1k bank to back the same selections as me and made over £500 from an ROI of 3%.

A long term, sustainable ROI of 3% is nothing to be sneezed at and is far better than a much higher rate of interest on money in the bank.

[Maxi Stavros]

Hi Harry, I will get round to responding to your reply at some point but I’m looking at tonight’s matches and I can’t find any ‘value’. But what is your opinion on the following bet if you have one please? Brighton v Chelsea: Joao Pedro, Cole Palmer, Mudryk and Nicolas Jackson all to score. William Hill give 75/1 for it to happen? 

[harry_rag]

26 minutes ago, Maxi Stavros said:

what is your opinion on the following bet if you have one please? Brighton v Chelsea: Joao Pedro, Cole Palmer, Mudryk and Nicolas Jackson all to score. William Hill give 75/1 for it to happen? 

I'd say that was way too short. Barring Mudryk they all got included in my data. The other 3 were around 16/1 if you multiply their best price or 18/1 at my fair price. Being generous to Mudryk and making him a 7/2 shot would give more than 75/1. (You'd need more than the multiplied fair odds given that you're betting on at least 4 goals in the game. Almost certainly more than a 100/1 shot.)

[harry_rag]

On a reasonably interesting and relevant note, all 4 Celtic goalscorers were captured in my data. 2 of them were flagged as bets and mentioned in the thread I've just started.

At best accumulated odds they would have paid 82.3, at my "fair" odds 95. I suspect the true odds would be quite a bit bigger due to the requirement for 4 goals.

I generally take the view that I'm happy to back 2 players to both score where I can get close to the multiplied odds. It should probably be slightly higher but as I'm betting at odds perceived to be value as singles there should be enough edge on the double. Next time I record 4 players in one game I'll see what odds are actually offered for all of them to score. My instinct is that you might get value on a double but are unlikely to do so on a fourfold.

Such are the perils of betting on bet builders if you haven't got a good handle on how related contingencies affect the probabilities.

I had a quick look at Celtic and Rangers games this season; they've played 105 games with 16 where they scored 4 or more goals. In only 4 of those games did 4 different starting outfield players score (as a result of braces, sub goals and own goals). So (simplisticly) that suggests you'd want better than 25/1 to be betting that 4 different starting players score before you start trying to name the 4 players.