Football Betting Tips and Resources

Introduction to football betting/trading on Betfair

The beauty of football betting on Betfair, apart from the obvious advantage of being able to lay bets, is that there are so many more markets to bet on than traditional bookmakers. This is particularly true of live TV matches, where you can find any bet you could possibly want such as asian handicap, corners odds, half-time/full-time, next goalscorer, over/under 2.5 goals, and so on. Also, if you enjoy in-play betting you have more flexibility with Betfair because you can bet right up until the final whistle, unlike the mainstream bookies who usually suspend betting with about ten minutes to go.  

However, when I do have the occasional bet on football, I don't do it for the enjoyment, I do it solely to make money. In my four years as a full-time Betfair trader, I identified three main ways to profit from football betting and trading:

1. Trading the odds before a match starts

When I first started out on Betfair, my only goal was to build my bank up gradually, with the minimum of risk. By studying the odds available on Betfair and comparing them with the bookmakers' odds, I quickly spotted some excellent profit opportunities. A very useful site for odds comparisons is oddschecker. This site compares odds from many bookmakers, as well as Betfair, and displays them on a single screen. It also tells you where the odds are shortening or lengthening, and with which bookmaker.

You will immediately see that Betfair's prices are a lot more generous than the traditional bookmakers (but we knew this anyway). The key to profiting from this tool is to find matches where the odds on Betfair differ significantly from the average of all the bookmakers' prices. For example if you think that Betfair's odds are slightly too high, you can back that selection and aim to lay it back at a lower price and guarantee yourself a risk-free profit when Betfair's price, as expected, moves in towards the average bookmakers' price.

Let's demonstrate by giving a real-life example to demonstrate this point. At the time of writing, I believe I've found a good trading opportunity. The match is the upcoming FA Cup match in two days time (at the time of writing) between Chelsea and Colchester. Looking at the bookies' prices, the odds on Chelsea currently range from 1.07 to 1.1. Betfair's price on Chelsea is currently available to back at 1.14. Now this to me seems very generous. You'd expect slightly better odds, but at the current price of 1.14, it's approximately double the odds of the current lowest bookies' price of 1.07. Another useful tool is to look at the historical betting chart (click on the selection - ie Chelsea in this case), to see what odds have previously been taken. It currently shows that the majority of the money has been staked at 1.13 and 1.14, with some bets being placed down to 1.09. This suggests that the current price is likely to be the highest price that Chelsea will be available at for the near future. I could try and get 1.15 but there's currently about £15,000 queued up. I would have to wait ages for it to be taken, and would probably be lucky to get it matched at this price at all as there is currently just £1500 available to back at 1.14.

I decide to go ahead and back at 1.14 for £1000, with the target of laying it back at around 1.12 or possibly 1.11 if I'm lucky. Remember there's still a few days left before the match, so I've decided to leave a lay of £1030 at 1.11 in the system. If it doesn't reach this point, then I'll up it to 1.12, or higher if I really have to. The £1000 bet sounds like a large sum but remember that it is a trade, so whatever happens, I will definitely lay this back before the match starts in a few days. The worst case scenario is that Chelsea's price to lay drifts out to say 1.17 and I have to lay back the £1000 at this price, which simply won't happen in my view based on the bookmakers' odds, but would still only result in a loss of £30 if Chelsea won and £0 if any they drew or lost.

The following morning, still a day before the match, I load up my Betfair page and see that thankfully Chelsea's price has come in and is now 1.11 to back and 1.12 to lay. Unfortunately not much as been matched at 1.11 looking at the historical data, and my £1030 is in a queue of around £80,000 waiting to lay with just £3000 waiting to back at 1.12. This to me indicates that we're unlikely to go any lower than 1.11. In this case I decided not to be greedy and risk waiting patiently for my 1.11 to be taken, which may never happen, and increased my offer to 1.12 which was instantly matched. Before I did so I dropped my stake to £1018, for a nice even profit of around £18 whatever the outcome:

If Chelsea win, profit = (£1000 * 1.14) - (£1018 * 1.12) = £17.84

If Draw / Colchester win = (-£1000) + (£1018) = £18.00

I usually trade in sizes of at least £3000 or £4000 and make pretty consistent profits, but even so you won't make a fortune from doing trades like this. However it is a nice, low-risk, supplementary income, and you will come across a few decent opportunities every week. For example, the following day I noticed that Real Madrid (v Arsenal) were available to back at 1.86 (had been as high as 1.9), when a lot of bookies were as low as 1.62 and generally as high as just 1.67. You would expect a slightly higher price on Betfair of around 1.75-1.80, but at 1.85 this was an excellent trading opportunity. In this case, I managed to get my entire stake matched at 1.85 and layed it all back later in the day at 1.79 for a very nice profit.

The best time to find potential trades is a few days before the match starts when the market is still fairly illiquid, and wait for the prices to correct themselves as the match draws close. You should always look to close out before the day of the match, as this is when the big money enters the market, which often results in price changes of both bookies and Betfair, and messes up the system. This method of trading is based on the assumption that the bookmakers prices will remain relatively stable in the days leading up to the match, which they do in the majority of matches.

You could in theory apply these methods to other sports as well (I used a similar method to trade horse racing), but I like the football because there's always a lot of money staked on them, therefore it's always easy to close out a position.

2. Find a specialist market and research it thoroughly

A market which I've consistently made money from in the past is the bookings odds markets on live premiership matches. The market is based on 2 points for a yellow card and 5 points for a red card. It offers three possible outcomes:

5 points and under  

6-8 points

9 points and above

The selection I always looked to lay was the 5 points and under. In other words, I'm always looking for matches where there will be at least three bookings in order to win the bet. As this market is generally only available for live matches you have to be very selective, and for that reason I usually only found one or two solid opportunities per week. However, I'm constantly amazed at how low the prices are for this selection, as I think the price available is often a lot more generous than it's true probability. The average price you can lay this selection at varies, but my selections are usually around 3.5-4.5. On that basis if you use the same stake every bet (I generally staked £150 for each match), then on average you need to have a 75% success rate to make this system profitable. This may sound high, but if you do your homework then it's remarkably easy to achieve this, and again make a nice little income. My record was seventeen successive winning lays stretching over about three months.

Look at any premiership match nowadays, and you'll see that very few matches have less than three bookings. This is because referees are now extremely fussy and just the smallest of mistimed tackles often results in a booking. Also, there is a lot of diving and simulation in our game at the moment, which is now finally being clamped down on with an instant booking in most cases. The prices offered on Betfair, in my opinion, don't reflect this and are still very generous.

Those matches that do finish with less than three bookings are often very easy to predict either because they have a soft referee in charge, or they're between two mid-table sides with nothing much to play for, or two well-disciplined sides with excellent disciplinary records, such as Chelsea or Liverpool (two teams I like to avoid).

Two essential tools for identifying suitable matches are the fair play league table and the referee league table. These are good starting points for identifying ill-disciplined teams and card-happy refs, but I like to analyse the two team selections as well. Most of my bets are therefore placed close to the kick-off when the two line-ups are announced. Ideally I want to find matches involving tough combative central midfielders who like to get stuck in, tricky wingers who can draw fouls, and no-nonsense central defenders. Two of my favourite teams who meet this criteria are Blackburn and Everton. Both have no-nonsense managers in Mark Hughes and David Moyes at the time of writing, and boast several hard-working, determined, tough-tackling players in their team.

There are a few other teams, such as Arsenal and Bolton, who rarely let me down either, but it's important to take each match on it's merit. For example, Blackburn v Everton may look like a banker bet, but if, let's say, it's near the end of the season and both teams are comfortably in mid-table with nothing to play for, then neither side will be as committed. Therefore the odds of getting at least three bookings are seriously reduced. In my experience relegation scraps often produce a lot of bookings, because both teams are so desperate for a positive result and fully commit to tackles, often mistiming them.  

In my experience the matches to avoid are those matches hyped up by the media that have a history of bad blood and aggression from previous encounters. This attracts a lot of casual punters who don't normally bet on this market, who subsequently over-inflate the price to something silly like 7 or 8 or even higher.

To conclude, the ideal match to lay under 5 points would obviously be one refereed by one of the strictest refs and between two teams with a poor disciplinary record. It is important, however, to also look at the two line-ups and make sure that all the notoriously tough players are playing, and both teams should have something to play for, so they're fully committed.

3. Lower league matches

If you support a lower league team, or simply follow lower league football, you can potentially earn nice profits from Betfair by simply using your superior knowledge to generate profits. Most odds compilers spend most of their time analysing and pricing up premiership matches, meaning less time is spent on lower league matches. Because Betfair's prices are closely linked to bookmakers' prices, it's therefore possible to get very good value, as well as being given the option to lay your side if they're not very good, like my team at the moment, Bristol City.

I have to admit I've never used this tactic myself as I can't bring myself to bet against my own team. However I know a good friend of mine, who also supports Bristol City, has made a lot of money this season laying us to lose, particularly in the first half of the season. This is because right at the start of the season we were second favourites to get promoted, but it was patently obvious to any City fan attending the opening matches that we had a poor manager and a poor team, and we were going to struggle this season. However, because we are a big-name club for the division we are in, and we started this season as strong promotion candidates, most bookies, and subsequently Betfair prices, still reflected this in their odds. Therefore shrewd City fans, like my mate, not only profited from laying us for a lot of matches, but also got very generous prices as well.

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