Find the Perfect Football Betting Site For You

In the UK, football betting is a competitive & active market filled with a mind-boggling number of odds, options, bonuses and offers which makes the choice of where to bet not always as straightforward. This national passion for football betting is no surprise when you consider the UK’s historical fanaticism with the sport. After all, we did invent the whole thing and bring it to the world!

With the popularity of football betting increasing every day and millions of people now able to bet on football in loads of different ways, the industry and the act of putting a quick bet on has become something of a national pastime. Especially now with the internet involved.

Today, punters across the UK can bet on football matches going on all around the world. Football betting, as one of the driving forces behind the gambling industry today ensures that regardless of how, when and where you want to bet on a match, there’s something out there for you.

Because of the size of the market, the big-name sportsbooks are constantly improving their user experience in an effort to be the biggest and best betting sites. Great news for us punters as it means new offers, better bonuses, crazy enhanced odds and a huge array of fixtures and markets!

Ranking the UK’s Football Bookies 2020

With such fierce competition amongst gambling sites, every new – and established – betting company is fighting for your weekly betting budget! This might make the decision on whom to bet with feel rather overwhelming. In addition, not every betting site is created equal and the operator offering the biggest bonus is not always the best choice.

Fortunately for you, we’ve placed our fair share of bets and claimed even more bonuses. This makes us – in our minds at least – uniquely qualified to know precisely what factors constitute a decent football gambling site.

We believe that finding the ultimate place to bet on football fixtures in the UK comes down to a few different factors:

LICENSED GAMBLING: Other than how long a brand has been around and how famous it is, another integral method of measuring quality, and something we always recommend looking for, is an official gaming licence. For UK football betting sites, a seal of approval from the UK Gambling Commission is an absolute must have before you consider placing any bets.

THE ODDITIES OF ODDS: Finding the best odds for a fixture isn’t always an easy task. Doing some research is really key here. Have a look at the biggest sports betting sites and see what odds they’re pushing for the fixture you want to bet on. Additionally, looking for a ‘best odds’ guarantee or ‘enhanced odds’ is a sure-fire way of getting a great deal.

PLAY IN-PLAY: Most high-quality football betting sites will offer a substantial in-play betting service, providing in-play betting on multiple different markets, a cash out feature and in a perfect world, bet editing.

LIVE STREAMING: Another staple of a quality footy betting site is the option to livestream the fixture that you are betting on to any device, whether that’s your phone, tablet, computer or laptop.

BONUSES & PROMO’s: It’s not uncommon for sites to offer a generic free welcome bet or something similar to a matched bonus offer, but the top football betting sites offer a little bit extra, and that’s what we love. We’re looking for sportsbooks that give their customers more and offer football specific promotions in the forms of bonuses like price boosts, ACCAs and enhanced odds on all the main upcoming fixtures.

Betting Options & Odds

Regarding actual play, checking that a brand or betting site actually provides the sports, markets, odds and offers that you are after is arguably the most important element. There is very little point in doing tons of research into a betting site and vetting it, just to find out you have no interest in playing there anyway.

For total player convenience and to ensure that punters keep coming back, betting sites should try to ensure that, whatever it is, their target market is covered with all matches and odds displayed on in an organised and clear manner on a single, easily accessible page. Upcoming fixtures and future events should be well documented and showcased visibly with their predicted odds and other details so that players are aware of exactly what’s going on.

Choosing to play on a football betting site that has all of the features listed above, will definitely ensure a safer and much more exciting betting experience. After all, if all the worrying is taken care of by the bookie then all that’s left is the fun!

Another feature that has become a must-have for the best betting sites is live match updates. Live match updates and in-game options will allow the players bets to placed while the game is being played. This feature naturally requires the site to be updated and provide extremely accurate information on all fixtures. With odds always changing depending what has just happened in the match, sometimes down to the second, having a site that provides up-to-date odds is integral and using the right methods to place bets will ensure you get the best deal whilst you are playing.

It’s important to be aware that occasionally, online bookies may try to increase their edge. This means the player may end up taking on more risk for no additional pay-out. Obviously as punters we want to avoid this as much as possible. With most major sportsbooks fair spread is automatically implemented, therefore ensuring you can get legitimate, fair deals.

Selecting and playing with a betting site that has as many features as possible, especially markets and events will grant you the ability to have a punt on multiple games using one account. There are sites out there that only allow a user to place a small amount of wagers at once.

This usually means that players have to create accounts with additional sportsbooks just to bet on all of the events they want to wager on. Avoiding this is important to a serious player as more sites and accounts means additional banking costs and additional stress, both setting up and maintain the account. Playing on one bigger site, also means that your accounts bonuses can occasionally get applied to multiple relevant wagers and will cut down time and costs.

Tips for Football Betting

Just like any other gambling there’s no guaranteed way to win at football betting. This is simply the nature of any game of chance, as the odds are always against you in some way or another. Maintaining a positive win to loss ratio requires a number of things, predominantly you need knowledge, timing and a little bit of luck. Some people say you can make your own luck and honestly, by working on the other two factors you basically can. Here’s how we recommend you improve your chances to win:

What’s In Form:

In football, form is an incredible indicator as to the way a match is going to go. If you’ve got amazing game sense and knowledge from being a fan, then this might just be second nature to you, however if you’re not quite as well versed, or are looking to improve even more, then you should be able to identify the teams that are in form and therefore most likely to win, by using a good blend of post-match reports, recent results, player stats and even some analysis from football tipsters. Now naturally, if you have access to these resources online, then so does the rest of the savvy betting community and the odds makers themselves over at the betting sites. That’s why keeping up to date is so important in beating the competition.

Think On It

Now we all love football as much as the rest of you, especially here in the UK where we’re bred to love the game. But Sometimes you have to switch off those emotions a little bit. Not to a robotic level but to a rational one. Never put a serious bet on team just because you support them or have a feeling in your gut. Do some research and bet with your head, it’ll save you a lot of money in the long run.

Acca Acceptance

As exciting as an acca is every now and again, especially when you see those insane odds, they’re really not a great way to make money on sports. Regardless of the recent increase in promotion of acca-insurance and early cash outs, accumulators are one of the harder forms of betting to make a profit from.

If you are going to place this type of bet, limit yourself to no more than three fixtures as any more than that, the chance of it coming in is just too small.

Acca-ternatives

To give you an alternative to accumulators, our recommendation would be making what’s known as parlay bets. Although you’re still getting the thrill and hopefully the payoff from betting on multiple games, you’re much more in control of what’s going on with your money. An example of this would be the following. You start by betting £10 on Spurs to beat Man United at the odds 2:1. Spurs win and you use your returns, which would be £30 to bet on Arsenal beating Chelsea at 2:1. Now let’s say you win this bet as well and now you have £90. A mix of £60 profit & your £30 stakes so far. To keep going with the parlay system, you take your £90 and put it on another match and rinse and repeat until you either lose or decide to stop. Either way, your initial risk form the first bet of £10 will stay the same, allowing you to make more money from the same low cost bet.

Guess The Odds

Instead of just jumping into random bets each week, pick out a few fixtures and try to guess semi accurate odds for each of them. Try out your own knowledge and research in conjunction with recent form and team news. Once you’ve made your predictions, You can basically compare your odds to the real odds being offered different online brands and see how close you were. This is a gradual slope to getting good, but this process will massively help you understand the markets better and, more importantly, spot a bet that looks like it could prove to be great value.

Stick to Your Limits

The savviest and the best football bettors keep good track of their finances . As a rule of thumb, you never want to stake more than around 2% of your bankroll on a single bet. So, if your total bankroll for example is £2,000, the most you should be betting on a game is £40. Naturally like most things, there are betting sites which specifically cater to this self imposed regulation. Some sites have more offers for smaller bets.

If you’re still hungry to improve your betting game further than the above tips have allowed, then there are several other strategies you can employ to maximise your win chance. The following methods however are slightly more intense than the above tips and require a lot of awareness and know-how, especially in the numbers department.

Back and Lay

This strategy, despite it’s name is not particularly laidback and involves going beyond the usual mentality of how you think a matches result will work out. This method is much more about playing the numbers against themselves, and stacking the odds in your favour, the perfect end goal would be to create a risk-free bet, but unfortunately for us punters, that’s almost impossible in the majority of cases. It does however allow you to reduce the scope of potential losses if things don’t exactly go your way. The strategy revolves around backing and laying the same outcome, and a lot of monitoring in order to take advantage of changing odds. This strategy is probably familiar to you if you have ever placed any punts on the races.

Let’s say you spot an opportunity where a bets outcome has been priced more than where you think it should. Seeing this, you bet on Team A to win. Following that, when the odds move, you then bet on Team A to lose at a different bookmaker, effectively hedging your bets for both outcomes.

As Stated previously this requires a fair chunk of prior working knowledge of odds, and lets be honest unless you’re a maths whiz probably a calculator, You can find one on your smart phone! Despite the clear challenges, once you’ve mastered this tactic, this can be a strong strategy for maximising the differentials between competing odds on the same event and making decebt winnings..

Value Betting

Making a value bet involves you being able to find & identify opportunities for betting where the odds available are more generous than the team’s actual chances of winning. This often feels like it could be a huge mistake, however it is actually a very good way to utilise your maths skills and turn probability in your favour over longer periods of time.

The name of the game with value bets isn’t to find a winner with every single bet. Instead it’s finding a balance between a bet with better odds than it should have, yet still a comfortable chance at success. Basically what you’re looking for is a football favourite, the upset. If you find odds on a fixture which are great but not that likely, however your prior knowledge is telling you that an upset is very much possible, as they usually are in Football then place a smaller, calculated bet and see if it comes in.

Let’s go into specifics using a current example: We’ll use Everton and Liverpool. So the majority of odds for Everton to beat Liverpool in the upcoming game are sitting around 13/2 on most bookmakers, but after a bit of searching, you find a few other bookmakers that have it at 55/1. Not only is it very clear that this is a huge improvement on odds but at 55/1 this feels like an incredibly solid value bet. The possibility of an Everton win, which would definitely be an upset, are surely greater than 1.8%, This plus the fact that other bookmakers are pricing the probability at around 13% means that those odds are incredible value. The difference here is how we gauge the value, and planning your bets around great value odds like this can be a sure fire way to deposit small and win big. Now this strategy doesn’t really increase your chances of winning more often, instead it increases the amount of money you can make from single bets. Of course it’s possible to just bet on instinct and still get a lucky upset, but with a little research you can minimise the chances of wasting any of your hard earned cash.

In-Play Strategies

As with most betting methods there are tons of in-play strategies that can be utilised while football betting, this means you can choose what method is the most relevant. When it comes to getting started in the world of football betting, the simplest to explain is most likely laying the draw. Essentially, you wait until a game starts, and while the score is still 0-0, you lay the draw, while anticipating the first goal. When that goal comes, you can then place another bid on the winning team, or if you so choose and are a tad bit more experienced, cover all outcomes at a profit where differing odds allow, which will guarantee a win. The important thing is that win covers everything you’ve put on.

Another alternative is a similar strategy but wagering on the correct score as well. Using a combination of these different betting strategies can allow you to use the fluid, constantly changing nature of in play odds to your advantage, meaning you can make more money that the average player.

Over/Under Goals

An alternative to simply backing the outright result of a match or even trying to gamble on the exact score is Over/Under Betting. As far as maximising win/loss ratios this is a great way to wager. You bet on whether or not there will be more or less goals scored than a certain range which is obviously simpler to predict than an exact score. The usual range is 2.5 goals, and you can bet over or under this amount.

Opting for under 2.5, means you’re placing your bet on their being 0, 1 or 2 goals, while three or more goals would pay out for a bet placed on over 2.5. This type of betting can be used very effectively when you see footy fixtures with 0-0 written all over them, or when the top teams in a league are playing against their smaller, much less likely to score rivals. Instead of backing the outrights results or an exact score in either of these cases, going for an Over/Under goal bet can often provide better value, and can easily become a staple for a winning punter’s repertoire.

Avoiding Dodgy Sites & Staying Safe

Avoid the Scams!

Absolutely nobody likes getting mugged off, especially when it’s something that’s supposed to be fun and involves your hard-earned cash! It’s pretty fair to say that we need security in most aspects of our lives, so why should that cheeky punt on the sports betting site be any different?

When you’re trusting a website and brand with your hard-earned cash you need to be 100% sure that the operator is credible!

As of early December 2014, a change in UK legislation was introduced in an effort to add additional transparency into how offshore companies serve UK customers. Whereas previously companies could be licensed and regulated in a different country (the main examples being Malta and Guernsey), this new legislation from the 2014 changes means that all sportsbooks that served UK customers had to be licensed by the standalone UK Gambling Commission, ensuring consistency regarding the quality and safety of any UK brands.

Transparent regulations mean that when you win that bet, you will genuinely be paid your earnings. Besides that, the privacy of your personal data is fully guaranteed. None of your information will be sold or passed on to any third parties, so you can sleep easy at night.

Finding out about the security of a football betting site is quite simple once you know how. Typically if you scroll down to the footer of any decent betting site, you’ll be greeted with a list of, or at least the logos of which testing agencies provided certificates for said site and what other services have been used. We’ve prepared a reliable guideline that will show what you should look for on any betting site in question.

What can you do if something does go wrong? Well frankly, you’re not likely to have many, if any difficulties with any the major top tier bookmakers and household names.

Though if a disagreement does arise, you should seriously consider contacting IBAS. IBAS are just some relatively scary letters, it actually stands for Independent Betting Adjudication Service.

For over 15 years now this service has mediated between punters and bookmakers in case involving both minor and major complaints. So if you do happen to have any troubles with a betting site, let the great people over at IBAS know.

As much as it’s nice etiquette and important to be aware that it’s always better to try to settle any disagreement with the bookmaker before you resort to IBAS. But sometimes there just isn’t another option. If you’ve been trying for weeks to communicate with the sportsbook relevant to your particular disagreement and are either making no progress, or sometimes yet to even have a response then at least now, you know who to get in touch with.