How To Make A Good Bet On Football
Build your betting bankroll, steadily increase the amount you bet on each game, and soon enough you'll find you're making some decent pocket money on the side, and maybe, just maybe, if you stick with it long enough, you can make a living wage out of it. Never forget: Betting, like any other form of serious investment, is a marathon, not a sprint. Football is one of the most bet sports in North America and its popularity is at an all-time high, especially the NFL.Every Sunday, Monday, Thursday (and some Saturdays), people across the world are studying statistics, matchups and trends to get an edge on betting lines from various sportsbooks that offer NFL markets. It could be a single game, a player betting prop or NFL futures odds.
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Betting on the NFL isn’t necessarily easy, but making smarter bets is always possible for those motivated to learn a bit of new strategy.
Try these nine thoughtful tips when wagering at online football betting sites and watch your bankroll grow.
1. Bet With Your Head, Not Your Heart
It may sound obvious, but avoiding emotion when wagering remains a challenge for many bettors. We all have our personal biases. Whether it’s a favorite team or one we despise, putting aside these preferences isn’t easy.
But here’s the thing: becoming more objective towards NFL betting online is literally the easiest way to make smarter bets. It doesn’t require a detailed strategy on mathematical analysis, it just requires common sense.
Cheering on your favorite team (at least) 16 times per year is a lot of fun, but losing money in the process is not. To become a smarter bettor, be aware of your biases and try to avoid decisions based solely on favoritism.
2. Pay Attention to Where the Game Is Played
Home-field advantage matters, and it matters more at certain stadiums. For example, the New England Patriots, went 42-6 straight-up (32-14-2 ATS) at home from 2014-2018. The Seahawks also perform exceptionally well in Seattle: they are 92-31 at home since 2003.
But they’re not the only two teams with such an advantage. Do your research by comparing each team’s home vs. away record when handicapping for home team advantage.
West Coast teams traveling to the Eastern Time Zone tend to have less difficulty overcoming the time change, but East Coast teams are at an inherent disadvantage when forced to play on the Pacific Coast, three hours later than they’re used to.
There are also teams who don’t travel well. From 2014-2018 (a five-season span), the San Francisco 49ers were a terrible 9-31 on the road, third-worst in the league. They weren’t much better against the spread, going 16-22-2 (fourth-worst in the NFL). The Texans also struggled to cover the spread on the road in 2016, posting a 2-6 record ATS.
Knowing where and when the teams played the previous week is also an important factor to consider. Some teams suffer from real disadvantages. West Coast teams traveling to the Eastern Time Zone tend to have less difficulty overcoming the time change, but East Coast teams are at an inherent disadvantage when forced to play on the Pacific Coast, three hours later than they’re used to.
Lastly, certain dome (indoor) teams can struggle to perform outdoors. For example, Drew Brees’ passer rating drops from 102.5 in a dome to 90.3 when playing outdoors. And this is all extremely useful information for bettors.
3. Know the Individual Matchups
Football is often referred to as the ultimate team sport, but there are certain one-on-one matchups that can dramatically affect the outcome of a game.
For example, a weak offensive tackle should not be expected to perform well against the premier edge-rushers in the league. Pay attention to major skill discrepancies between players who will be going head-to-head.
Coaches are perhaps the most significant head-to-head matchups that bettors should consider. Every coach uses recurring strategies that fare very well against some opponents and flop against others. Coaches get to know each other’s approaches to the game, and some are better at responding to these strategic considerations.
A great example of this is Tom Coughlin and Bill Belichick. The Patriots have been dominant since Belichick has been steering the ship, but he was 2-5 when coaching against Coughlin following the 2018 season.
4. Know More than Just the Trends
When it comes to betting on NFL games, following the trends isn’t a bad idea — patterns sometimes provide valuable information. For example, from 2010 to 2018, the Bears went 12-5 ATS when coming off a bye week, while the 49ers, on the other hand, were just 5-11 ATS in that same time frame.
The sharpest bettors always look at the context behind the numbers when evaluating statistical trends.
Noticing that a team just scored 49 points the previous week doesn’t necessarily mean that their offense is firing on all cylinders. Go back and look at how all the points were scored. Maybe a defensive back fell down to allow a long touchdown pass. Perhaps the defense scored a couple of those touchdowns. Maybe they were just playing the Browns.
The sharpest bettors always look at the context behind the numbers.
5. Check the Injury Reports
As we mentioned, football is the ultimate team game, and small changes can throw off the entire unit. Make sure you know which players have missed practice during the week, what their status is for the upcoming game, and what role they play on the team.
Team injury reports can be a little vague, so it’s always a good idea to check the Twitter accounts of beat-writers for each team. Often, they will provide a little more detail.
6. Take Caution with Divisional Matchups
Teams that play each other twice per season get to know each other very well, and even bad teams tend to dig a little deeper when they are battling a division rival.
Looking to 2016, the Jacksonville Jaguars, Chicago Bears, and San Francisco 49ers were three of the bottom-four teams in the NFL, but they all posted a 4-2 record ATS within their respective divisions.
Even though one team may appear superior on paper, divisional matchups are often much closer than anticipated. This makes the great choices to bet on the NFL point spread, but they can be risky choices on the moneyline.
7. Don’t Fall in Love with Value
Betting the underdog on the moneyline can certainly pay off, but you need to consider why long odds are so long in the first place. Make sure you have very specific reasons and logic behind taking a +800 underdog on the moneyline, because you can be sure the sportsbook used reason and logic to set that moneyline in the first place.
We strongly recommend limiting parlays and teasers to 2-5 events when betting on the NFL.
You also need to be careful when constructing parlays and teasers. Don’t load them up with too many events. NFL teams are generally closely-matched compared to other sports, and it’s far too difficult to correctly predict the outcome of more than a handful of games. We strongly recommend limiting parlays and teasers to 2-5 events.
8. Monitor the Lines Throughout the Week
Monitoring the betting lines throughout the week is a big part of maximizing your chances. Some online books may provide more favorable NFL odds, and as the week progresses, you may find the odds change.
It’s important to keep in mind the influence of public perception here. Popular teams like the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, and New England Patriots will always have loyal supporters betting with their hearts. They’re often referred to as public teams, and it’s very likely they’ll be more heavily favored than the statistics suggest they should be.
If you’re planning on betting against the public, wait around and let emotional bettors drive the odds in your favor. Conversely, if you’re planning to bet on a public team, jumping on an early line is likely the best decision.
9. Diversify Your NFL Bets
There is success to be had betting on the moneyline, the spread, and game totals. But to maximize your success, it’s crucial to know all the alternative bets you can make.
Many sportsbooks will allow you to bet on alternate spreads or buy and sell points. Instead of settling for a -3.5 spread that makes you a little uncomfortable, you can opt for a -2.5 spread with a more modest payout.
Enjoy the Action this NFL Season
The strategies above are great to keep in mind while wagering this football season, but they’re only a start. In the end, finding success is all about putting in the time and effort to research your pick and manage your bankroll effectively.
If you’re looking to for more football action than the NFL can provide, open up your Saturdays and take a look at our intro to betting on college football for more helpful tips and tricks.
This is a beginners guide to football betting, written by a beginner!
You might not know this about me, but whilst Ian is a football betting expert with a long history of placing football bets, I am not! I know the web and how to make things on it, but I don’t know a lot about football.
I do love this site though, so I wanted to learn more about football betting so that I can better contribute to the conversations on it. I have been researching things for some time and thought I would write them up as a guide to football betting.
You might wonder why I didn’t ask Ian to write this guide, him being the expert, the truth is I thought it would be better coming from someone picking up the ropes. Ian knows so much he might assume you know something you don’t, I don’t know anything so that can’t happen!
Something that you might benefit from is ourfree tipster email course. It is a free email course that takes 7 days to complete and by the end of it you should be a bit of an expert!
Some Football Betting Terms
I figured I would start off with some football betting terms.
- Stake – This is the amount of money you place on a bet, in other words the amount of money you stand to lose if you don’t win.
- Accumulator – A football accumulator is a series of single bets grouped together, if each of the bets comes off then the odds accumulate together. Normally when you hear of people putting a fiver on something and winning a couple of thousand it is because of accumulators. Because each bet needs to win though they can be risky.
- Handicap – This is a bet that is offered when one team is the clear favourite – Think Brazil vs your local old boys team! The handicap gives a small advantage to the underdog. For example, there may be a one goal head start given to the underdog. I am going to explain Handicapping more later in this article.
- Half Time/Full Time – This type of bet is split into two, when you predict the winner of the first half then of the entire game. So you could predict a draw at half time but for the home team to win by full time.
- Banker – This is basically the closet thing to a certainty as you can get, the tipster is very sure that the bet will land if they consider it a banker. For example we give banker tips to our members.
- Scorecast – This is when you bet on a player to score the first goal along with predicting the correct score.
- Wincast – Very similar to a scorecast but you bet on a player to score and then predict the winner of the game.
- 90 Minute Betting – This is mentioned a lot when people bet on individual players (maybe as goal scorers) normally if the player doesn’t make an appearance the bet is called off, but if the player appears during the normal 90 minutes of the game they are eligible for the bet.
- 24 Hour Rule – Most betting websites have a rule like this where if a match is postponed the bet only becomes void if the match doesn’t get played within a 24 hour period. So for example if a match was just put back 2 hours the bet would still stand.
- Over/Under – Overs and Unders are when you bet on the amount of goals being scored, normally it will be over or under an amount, for example over 2.5 means if there are 3 or more goals. Under 2.5 would be 0, 1, or 2 goals being scored.
- DNB – This stands for Draw No Bet. What this means is if the score is a draw you get your money back for your bet. This can be seen as a safer option but you should understand that the odds are usually lower when this is selected.
- Double Chance – A Double Chance bet is one where you pick a winner and if they win OR it is a draw, you win the bet. If the team you pick loses then you lose the bet. Like DNB the odds are generally lower but it is a safer bet as a result.
- Bankroll – how much money you have to bet with. We’ve written more about what the bankroll is.
Handicaps
Handicaps are something that confused the heck out of me for the longest time, so I want to spend a while looking at them in detail. This is such a common question that I have written up a guide to the Asian and European handicapping.
Want to learn how to be an expert football bettor for free?
Accumulators Vs Singles
These are the two most common way to place bets these days so I wanted to cover them in a little detail. We don’t hide that fact that Ian prefers singles but that doesn’t help you if you don’t know the main differences.
When you bet with an accumulator, all your bets need to win in order for you to be able to claim the money. This makes it much harder to win but of course the reward is far greater. As a new football bettor it is very tempting to bet on accumulators because you could see your £10 stake spiral into big bucks pretty quick.
Singles on the other hand are not effected by other bets. So if I place £10 on three different matches as singles and 2 of them come in, then I make money on those two bets. The odds aren’t as good if I was to role up all my bets into an accumulator, but the odds of me walking away with some money are much higher.
The main advice here is to find what it right for you. Just because some people swear by accumulators and others swear by singles doesn’t mean you should listen to the loudest voice. Do some research, maybe put some small stakes on a few different ways and see what felt good and what had a good return on your investment.
Getting your way with the bookies
Something you will encounter when you start football betting is a range of different online and offline bookmakers. All will have their own way of dealing with things and all will want you to work with them differently. This can seem daunting but we’ve written up a guide on what to look out for and how to state your case if you think a bookmaker has wronged you.
Generally accepted good tips
A guide to football betting wouldn’t be complete without sharing some good tips! Here are some generally accepted good tips that I have gleaned from my research and also from interviewing football tipsters!
Don’t bet with your heart, bet with your head
This means don’t bet because you want a team to win, bet because you think they will win!
Likewise don’t bet against teams you don’t like just because you don’t like them, bet against them because you think they are going to lose.
Try not to get greedy
There are two things I have caught myself doing related to being greedy, the first is adding extra teams into an accumulator just because it will bump up my maximum payout. This is almost always a terrible idea!
The second thing I have done is bet more money on a team than I initially was going to. You should have a plan for how much you are going to bet and stick to it.
Have patience
You are not going to win every bet, if you want to become successful at betting on football you need to be patient and pick the right bets for you.
Never bet more than you can afford to lose
Before I place a bet I always think about the money I am going to be placing on it and think, if I were to lose this money right now would I be OK with that. If the answer is no I won’t place the bet.
Seek help if football betting is becoming a problem
If you think gambling might be becoming a problem for you then my advice is to seek help. GambleAware might be worth a visit!
Don’t bet on friendlies
They are too unpredictable, you don’t know how much effort the respective teams are putting in and reserve players may get an outing that you weren’t counting on.
If the friendlies are before the start of a new season (they often are) players will be very aware to not pick up any injuries so might not play as hard as they normally do.
Football Betting Strategy: Win Football Bets Every Time
Know Team Motivation
What I mean by this is that two teams can look a certain way on paper, but if one of those teams has already won the league and the other is fighting to stay in the league there is a very good chance that the team good on paper will be on auto pilot whilst the team playing to stay out of relegation is going to be fighting for their life!
Some North American football betting terms
If you’re visiting our site from North America then some of the terms I highlighted at the start might be confusing. Here is a quick translation.
- Locks – are what we call “bankers”
- Parlays – are what we call “accumulators”
- Straight Bets – are what we call “singles”
- Wagering Event – are what we call “fixtures”
Questions about our guide to football betting?
If ever there was a post to comment on with your questions this would be it! The only stupid question is the one not asked.
We’re also really keen on hearing where we can improve this article, so if you still have questions or something wasn’t clear, it was because we’ve done a bad job and we would love you to tell us how to do better.
If you’re hungry for more, I can highly recommend our free email course.
Know someone who would benefit from a beginners guide to football betting?
Unfortunately a lot of money is wasted because people place bets without really knowing too much about what they are doing. If you know someone like that please feel free to share this with them. The social media share links are below if you’d like to share on Facebook etc.
Next Steps
How To Bet On Nfl
If you feel confident enough to start actually betting on football matches, then might I suggest you sign up as a member, or perhaps register with a good online bookies.
You can get a sample of our free tips here.