Betting On Football - A Simple Guide from The Sportsman

Summary: Ed Pownall writes about football betting and the incredible rise of this sport over the last 10 years.

Football betting has seen an incredible rise over the last 10 years as the bookmakers have opened up the sport by offering a myriad of markets to bet on from the obvious to the ridiculous. With the World Cup round the corner and the Premiership, SPL and National Leagues following on soon after you might like to be armed with a bit of the basic knowledge so that you can get involved too! The Sportsman is the UK's newest daily newspaper and website devoted entirely to sports betting and racing so who better to guide you through the basics? Betting has an awful lot of jargon but it's not nearly as complicated as you might think. The most popular bet in football outside of the straight forward who will win the World Cup or Premiership itself is the match betting. The first thing to remember when betting on a football match is that it's not a two horse race! A lot of people think that you are betting on, say, England or Sweden to win the match - which, of course you can but forget the draw at your peril. Bookmakers pay out on matches on the score after the first 90 minutes so extra time is not included and anybody who knows football knows that there are plenty of draws so don't be afraid to back the draw. Another very popular bet is who will score the first goal. Now whilst this is an obvious and appealing bet it is very hard to get right. Most bookmakers now offer a slightly different bet that gives you a much better chance of backing an all important winner, namely your chosen play to score at any time during the match. With the first scorer option your bet can be finished in the first minute whereas with the 'to score during the match' you can win at any time until the final whistle. Predicting the correct score is another very popular choice though again not as easy thing to get right and again for an easier option most bookmakers now bet on the number of goals there will be in a match. So if you get the right number of goals but they don't have to be the actual correct score, i.e., Liverpool 2 Spurs 1. The other factor that often confuses those new to betting is the odds themselves - what does 6/4 mean? Basically, 3/1 most understand - you place