Football bets are the most popular among clients of bookmakers. Millions of people place wagers daily in pre-match and live betting. There’s nothing surprising about this, as football is the #1 sport worldwide. Therefore, football predictions for upcoming dates are always relevant. Let’s learn how to accurately predict events in football matches and how to profit from bets in the long term.
What are football predictions?
Today, the internet is full of various sites with sports predictions for betting at bookmakers. Naturally, football analysis is the most common. Typically, predictions for upcoming matches follow a standard template. Such materials usually include information like this:
- Descriptions of the teams’ previous games;
- Statistics and results of their latest head-to-head encounters;
- Information on injured players;
- Details about their standings in the tournament;
- Predictions with bookmaker odds.
Generally, in football predictions, readers find bets on match outcomes, less often on totals and handicaps. Unfortunately, there are very few bets on additional markets like in-game halves, individual totals, intervals, or combined bets. You can browse different betting sites, and essentially, you won’t find anything new in terms of predictions.
In other words, football predictions have long become something standard and familiar. Yes, some resources spice them up with opinions from well-known experts – former players, coaches, commentators… But in the end, even with them, we get a standard football prediction.
What predictions are useful for betting?
Clearly, most bettors don’t want to just enjoy reading or fancy phrases in bookmaker predictions. They need practical value to add the found bet to their betting slip and make money at the bookmaker. And they want this to happen as often as possible, not just occasionally.
So, what makes a football prediction useful and worth paying attention to? First and foremost, it should have a good odds value. At least not below 1.8, and preferably close to 2 or even higher. Why? It’s easy to guess. It’s much simpler to predict a favorite’s win or a strong team’s victory, but the payout from such a prediction is minimal. You might win a few such bets, but one loss will wipe out the profits.
Predicting events with high odds is harder, but the earnings are greater. Which predictions should you focus on? We’ve selected the following:
- On underdogs;
- Totals in halves;
- Favorite’s win with a handicap;
- Draw.
Let me explain why we chose these online football bets.
On underdogs. It’s easy to see that odds on the weaker team are always high. This makes sense, as most people bet on favorites. The more money goes on the strong team, the higher the odds on their opponent. Bookmakers maintain balance between odds and the money allocated to each team this way.
How profitable are underdog bets? We’re talking not just about a draw or win, but mainly about positive handicaps. Even for those, bookmakers offer good odds.
The reader’s task is to find a resource that publishes quality predictions on football underdogs. You need to carefully read the material, check for logical insights, and see how authors analyze chances and consider team motivation.
It’s not necessary to win every bet based on predictions with high odds. If you choose bets with odds above 2 and get at least 50% right, you can profit over the long run.
Totals in halves. Notice that predictions usually focus on full-match events. There are hardly any bets on halves. It’s odd, since bookmakers accept wagers on the scoring in the first and second halves. The standard total here is 1.5. For example, if the odds for a total of 2.5 are below 1.6, then for individual halves, they often exceed 1.8.
There are statistics on team scoring for each half. So why not use them to make a profitable bet on football with attractive odds? Always remember that odds for bets on totals in halves are generally higher than for the full match.
Favorite’s win with a handicap. No need to reiterate how popular bets on strong teams are. But bookmakers won’t operate at a loss, so they lower odds on straight favorite wins. What’s the obvious solution? Bets with negative handicaps and high odds.
Find a favorite that dominates opponents with a big score. For instance, Bayern Munich, which crushed rivals in the 19/20 season in the German championship and Champions League. You can bet on such teams with handicaps like -2.5 or even -3 at home. Naturally, you can also bet in away games with handicaps of -1 or -1.5. The key is that these teams stay motivated, have no major injuries, and aim to build their lead in every match.
Draw. It’s rare to find draw bets in football predictions. That’s a shame, as odds for this outcome in bookmaker lines often reach 5 or even higher. Say, what’s stopping you from finding a match between teams that regularly play to low scores? There are plenty of such clubs in Europe.
You could look at leagues with low scoring – Russia, Greece, Ukraine, Portugal. There, results like 1:1 or 0:0 are very common. It’s ideal when mid-table teams, focused on defense, face off. Then, the chance of a draw increases significantly. Of course, only bet if the odds are at least 3. But the hardest part is finding a draw prediction. In the worst case, you can refine the prediction yourself; the main thing is to spot a potentially low-scoring match.
Paid and free football predictions
Probably, all bookmaker clients know that there are paid and free analytics for football and other sports for betting. And not every paid football prediction is useful, while not every free one is bad.
What does paid mean? It’s when a bettor buys a prediction from a tipster for an upcoming match. What can you find in such materials? The buyer expects some exclusive information not available online. Maybe details on key player injuries that greatly affect the team’s results. Perhaps this tipster knows inside team info and can predict not just the outcome, but the game flow, which is also very useful. These tipsters sell in-depth analysis backed by reliable facts, not generic content.
Unfortunately, not all paid football predictions are truly useful. There are so-called tipsters who make money without providing value. They just send ordinary predictions that don’t differ from free ones. It’s hard to spot these «experts» at first. Only with experience, and often after losing money, do you realize the mistake in choosing a tipster.
How useful are free predictions? Well, first, there are many of them. So, bettors have a good selection. There are plenty of sites to choose from. Plus, they now cover not just top leagues, but lower-tier ones too. Second, free predictions are good because they make the player think about what they’ve read and select only useful info. Third, with careful selection, you can find a really solid resource with quality football predictions.
Conclusions
We’ve figured out what football predictions entail. We’ve confirmed that you can use both paid and free materials. The key is to find non-generic content with a solid analytical base. Don’t trust fake tipsters who profit from naive and inexperienced bettors.
