How to Bet on Soccer
Betting on soccer has been a huge market since the beginning days of sports gambling. Soccer is massive in European and South American countries, but has been growing exponentially in the United States. With huge National soccer championships occurring like the FIFA World Cup and the Euros, sports bettors around the world tune in to place bets on soccer events.
The first step you need to take if you want to start betting on soccer is to learn how to bet on soccer. While it’s not very complicated, and not a whole lot different than other sports, it’s important to know a few key betting types, and how to place a wager using these types.
Soccer Three-way Moneyline
You might be familiar with the regular moneyline wager where you have two options – Team A and Team B and your job is to pick a winner. With soccer, it’s customary to use the three-way moneyline.
The three-way moneyline has the same principle, but where soccer games can end in a draw, that option is added in. The draw is unlikely in most cases, and the odds will be quite risky. But, it does affect the team’s odds because your 50% chance of winning will turn into a 33% chance.
The draw will include the extra time after the 90-minutes of regulation is up. So if your game goes into extra time, your bet will still cash. If a team scores during extra time, it’s still considered a draw in terms of betting.
Here’s an example of a three-way moneyline:
- England -140
- Croatia +220
- Draw +400
In this example, England is favored to win the game, Croatia is the underdog, and the draw is fairly unlikely to occur. A $140 wager on England would win $100, a $100 wager on Croatia would win $220, and a $100 wager on the draw would win $400.
Soccer Spread Betting Odds
Soccer spreads tend to be called goalline wagers, as they are similar to hockey in the sense that they track goals instead of points. A goalline wager or spread in soccer is also extremely low due to the low-scoring aspect of the game. Higher scoring games can occur at the national level, but in professional leagues like the MLS or Champions League, you don’t see many blowout games.
You might see a spread of +1.5/-1.5, which means the oddsmaker is expecting the favored team (-1.5) to win by 2 or more goals. If you were to bet on the underdog(+1.5), you would need them to win the game outright, or lose by one goal.
These are great options as you are given a slight margin of error if you like an underdog team but aren’t sure if they will win outright (moneyline).
Soccer Totals Betting
Totals wagers allow you to bet on the total collective goals in a given game. If a total is set at 3, and your job would have been to predict if you thought the total would be above or below three goals for both teams. If the score ends in a 2-2 draw, the total is four and you would lose your wager.
While soccer totals follow the same general principles of other professional sports, the low-scoring nature of the game makes it difficult when totals of soccer games can oftentimes end up being 1 or 2 goals. Soccer totals tend to be in multiples of .25, so you might see totals of 2.5, 2.75, 3.0, 3.25, etc.
Soccer Odds Prop Betting
When it comes to betting on soccer props, there are a number of instances within any given game that you can bet on. You could place a wager on the first player to score in the match, or an over/under on how many goals a certain player might score, for example.
There will be plenty of team related props, which include instances that could occur in the game that relate to a team, or player props, which revolve around player statistics or rare occurrences that might happen in the match.
There will also be plenty of soccer prop bets on the major events, including the championships for all leagues, national championships and tournaments. There are usually a huge slew of props that would involve something occurring in the tournament like who will win the Golden Boot at the FIFA World Cup or Euros.
Soccer Futures Betting
Futures are wagers you can place on a tournament or league winner, months or even a year in advance. They have huge payouts if you are correct as they are highly risky.
Each professional soccer season will end in a tournament or playoff. Futures allow you to try to predict the winner of the season, or championship tournament months in advance. Sometimes you can even bet before the gameplay for the season begins. In addition, and probably a more popular option, major tournament futures are released.
Odds to win the FIFA World Cup, Euros, Copa America, etc are all released once the previous season wraps up, and you can try to predict the next to win a title. All teams will have odds that reflect how likely it is that they’ll win the tournament, and all you do is bet on the team you like to win, and wait for the championship! You can cash out your futures bet at any time during the season or tournament if your team isn’t quite performing up to your expectations, but you will only receive a portion of your wager back as the odds will have moved to reflect their likelihood of winning.