There is no shortage of football betting sites for UK punters. But are all of them equally good? How do you sort the likely league winners from the relegation contenders? Here’s what you should be looking for if you want to start betting with the best bookies around.
Betting on football is always popular. According to Statista, twice as many people bet on football than on horse racing. And while there are still plenty of people who like to get their bets on at high street betting shops, the majority now prefer to get the job done at online football betting sites. Here are several good reasons why:
Leaving the house to walk to the local betting shop and place a bet isn’t always pleasant. It takes time, effort, and in many cases, an umbrella. Football betting sites are, by comparison, a lot more convenient. Simply open your laptop or launch the browser on your mobile phone and you can make your bets at football betting sites in a matter of seconds. There’s no walking, no time wasted and no need to brave the great British weather. And let’s not forget that online football betting sites are open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round.
Your local independent bookie might have a great range of prices on the English Premier League or midweek Champions League matches, but can he give you odds on the upcoming matches in the Bolivian Primera División? Football betting sites can. As you’ll see later, online bookmakers excel at providing more global football coverage than any betting shop. And even if your local shop will give you a price, the chances are he’ll do so by going online to get it for you. So why not go straight to the source and bet online in the first place?
Because the best soccer betting sites provide truly global coverage of the sport, there’s always a match or two to have a bet on. Even when the domestic and European leagues grind to a halt for Christmas Day, there are still plenty of games being played elsewhere that you can look at. How about Sudan vs Ethiopia in Africa or Pyramids vs Pharco in Egypt? Odds for these matches are easy to find when you visit football betting sites.
It’s a similar situation when it comes to the range of markets that you can choose from. Football betting sites win, hands down. As well as being able to bet on the match result and almost any correct score you can think of, you’ll also be able to get odds for the double result, both teams to score, which player will score the first goal, and more. Even better, if the football betting site that you use doesn’t have odds for an outcome you want to bet on, you can often ask for a price to be offered for your desired bet.
Placing your wagers online with top football betting sites is just as safe and secure as making purchases from your favourite online store. In addition, you won’t have the dangers of carrying cash to and from a local betting shop. Thanks to the strict security standards that online bookmakers employ to keep their customers safe, your money is always locked away in your betting site account until you need it.
There are so many football betting sites around that they go out of their way to attract customers. One way in which they do that is by giving new customers generous bonuses for signing up and making a first deposit. The best sites also try to keep existing customers happy by running a variety of valuable promotions. You won’t often get that kind of thing from a high street bookie, so online betting sites win hands down here.
One more advantage of using football betting sites instead of old-school betting shops is that online betting sites give you a variety of ways to pay for your bets. With a betting shop, your only real options are cash or a debit card. When you bet online, however, you’ll be able to make deposits to your account using several other methods. We’ll discuss the main ones later.
Separating the best football betting sites from their non-league counterparts is pretty easy. All you have to do is check a few key areas to see how a site performs in each one. If a football betting site ticks all of the boxes outlined below, you can be confident it’s one worth using.
The first thing you need to check is that the bookmaker is properly licensed and regulated. All football gambling sites worth their salt will have a licence from a trusted regulator, and details of that licence should be visible at the bottom of the home page. If a site is unlicensed, then we can’t recommend that you use it for the simple reason that you’ll have nobody to complain to if something goes wrong. Remember, some parts of the internet are still like the Wild West, so avoid unregulated betting sites and only use those that operate under a valid licence.
Next, have a look at the small print at the foot of the home page to see the name of the company that operates it. The best football betting sites are those that are operated by companies with plenty of experience in the industry. A quick search on Google (or the UKGC Public Register if licensed by that regulator) should be enough to tell you a little about the operator. If you can’t find any information about the operator or you find out that they are brand new, then you might want to proceed with caution.
The whole point of looking for reliable football betting websites is to bet on soccer, so that’s what you should look at next. Navigate to the football section of the site and make sure that it covers all the nations, leagues and competitions that you think you might want to bet on. Also, check to see what betting markets are available for a typical league match. Your aim here is to satisfy yourself that the site will be able to accommodate all your football betting needs and more.
It’s unrealistic to expect even the best betting site for football to offer the most generous odds in all markets for all games. What you should expect, however, is for the odds being offered to be consistently competitive with the prices quoted by other football bookies. As well as looking at the odds in the main betting markets, also look at whether or not the site gives enhanced odds, bet boosts, and similar valuable promotions. If so, be sure to that them into account.
The modern bettor wants more than simply to bet on which team will win a football match. We want to be able to bet even after the match has kicked off, to cash out part of all of an existing bet before the final whistle, and to put together our own bundle of bets with a Bet Builder or similar feature. Your own shopping list of desired features might differ from ours, so just make sure that the site has all the features you want to be able to make use of when betting.
While the best football betting sites work around the clock to keep things running smoothly, that doesn’t mean customers don’t sometimes need support. You might have an administrative question about a banking issue or want to query how a certain betting promotion works. In these and other instances, you need to be able to speak with someone. For that reason, check to see that customer support will be available when you are most likely to need it. If a site offers support on a 24/7 basis and lets you obtain it immediately via live chat, so much the better.
All properly licensed betting sites should be safe, but we always like to check to see what measures a site has in place to keep our data and cash secure. You’ll find this information on the Privacy Policy page or similar. We like to see that data is fully encrypted during transmission and that any information that needs to be retained is kept behind a secure firewall.
Being able to bet on football using a smartphone or tablet takes online betting to the next level as far as convenience is concerned. If a betting site has its own app for your device then download it and take it for a spin to see how it performs. If not, simply visit the site on your mobile web browser and check out how your device handles it. In this day and age, there’s no reason to use any football betting site that doesn’t perform well on our trusty smartphones.
When you’re satisfied that a football betting site passes muster in all of the areas mentioned above, the last thing you should look at is what it offers in the way of bonuses to new and existing customers. These don’t need to be outlandishly generous, as massive bonuses tend to come with fairly demanding terms and conditions. Just make sure that any welcome bonus that’s available will be genuinely useful to you and that you’ll also be adequately rewarded for your custom if you decide to stick around for the long term.
The best online football betting sites will provide coverage of more leagues and competitions than we have room to mention here. For that reason, we’ll simply give you a brief overview of some of the most popular leagues and competitions you can bet on with the majority of sites. Rest assured that there are many, many more!
The World Cup is probably the most famous football competition of them all. Played every four years (the next one will take place in Canada, Mexico and the USA in 2026), this tournament is a massive event for betting purposes. As well as being able to bet on which nation you think will win the coveted trophy, you can bet on every match just as you would any other. Look out for plenty of World Cup bonuses and promotions, too.
More often referred to as the Euros, the European Championship is another competition that takes place every four years. It was first staged in 1960 and is scheduled to occur between World Cup tournaments, with the next Euros coming up in 2028. Under the current rules, 55 teams can participate in the qualification stage, and 24 go forward to compete in the Euros proper.
While the World Cup and European Championship concern national teams, the UEFA Champions League is an annual tournament between domestic league champions. This is where teams such as Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid compete against each other, giving football bettors hundreds more betting opportunities each year.
Our own Premier League season starts in August and ends in May, which means that matches take place midweek and every weekend for around two-thirds of the year. The Premier League is very popular not just in the UK, but worldwide, so you can expect full coverage of its matches to be provided by virtually all self-respecting football betting sites.
The Bundesliga is Germany’s equivalent of the Premier League. The season starts and ends around the same time. Bundesliga matches are played on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Bayern Munich is the most successful team in this league, having won 32 titles since it was founded in 1963.
Serie A is Italy’s top professional football league. It was founded in 1898, and today, it has a similar format to the Bundesliga and Premier League, with the season starting in August and running through to May. The Serie A team with the most title wins at the time of writing is Juventus, with 36 victories.
Portugal’s equivalent of our Premier League has existed since 1934, and once again, the season runs from August to May. Benfica is the top team in this league, as far as most title wins are concerned, with 38 victories.
As we said earlier, there are many more competitions and leagues that we could mention here, but by now you should get the idea. You’ll never face a shortage of opportunities to strike a wager at top football betting sites, and if you’re willing to look at matches taking place outside Europe, there will be games to consider every day of the year.
What kind of bets can you make at the best soccer betting sites? The exact lineup of bets can vary from site to site, but there are several key markets that should be common to most. Here are the main markets to expect when football betting online.
In the old days, not only did bettors have to walk to a betting shop to get their bets on, but they also had to do so before the match kick-off time. Things are very different these days because the best football betting sites UK punters have access to will let you place bets during the match, too. Simply look for the Live Betting or In-Play Betting areas at the site you are using.
Being able to bet in play can be advantageous for a couple of reasons. First, it lets you make a bet even if you miss the start time for some reason. You can also choose not to bet until you’ve seen how your preferred team fares for the first five or ten minutes, or even longer. Another advantage is that if you’ve already made a bet that isn’t going so well, you can bet on a different outcome in play to try and limit your potential losses. Or, if your bet is going even better than you expected, you could stake more to take advantage of the situation.
While many betting sites proudly offer live sports streaming, top-flight football matches are rarely streamed live due to commercial restrictions. Fortunately, the best sites have come up with a useful alternative, and that is to provide a play-by-play graphical representation of the game. This isn’t quite the same as watching a match live, but it will at least let you see how the game is unfolding, making it a great tool for betting in-play.
Most UK football betting sites that allow in-play betting will also let you cash out part of all of your bets before the match has ended. One reason why you might want to do this is to lock in profits that your team is making due to their impressive performance so far. For example, if your team is a goal ahead, you could cash out before the other team gets a chance to equalise. Similarly, you can cash out if your team isn’t doing so well and you want to cut your losses rather than wait for the whole of your bet to go down.
The amount of money that you get back from a bookie for a winning bet will depend on two things – the sum that you choose to stake and the odds that the bookie gives you for your selection. For example, if you bet £10 at decimal odds of 2.5 and your bet wins, you’ll get £25 back, for a net profit of £15.
Football betting odds are compiled by experts to broadly reflect the odds-maker’s estimation of an outcome taking place. A team that the odds-maker believes has a 50% chance of winning would therefore be offered at slightly less than 2.0 (1/1 in fractional odds). We say slightly less because the bookie needs to give himself a profit, so he shaves a little off the odds in any given market to give himself an edge, or what’s known as an overround. In the US, this is referred to as the vigorish or vig.
It can sometimes be useful to use the bookmaker’s odds to calculate the implied probability of an outcome taking place. To do this, divide 1 by the decimal odds, then multiply by 100 to get an implied probability percentage. For example, if a bookie has Real Madrid priced at 2.74 to win a particular match, the implied probability of the bet succeeding would be 36.49%.
Below is a handy table showing common fractional and decimal odds, along with their implied probabilities. Referring to this table can be a quick way of estimating what your chances of success are according to the odds the bookie is offering.
| Fractional Odds | Decimal Odds | Implied Probability % |
| 1/5 | 1.20 | 83.33 |
| 1/4 | 1.25 | 80.00 |
| 1/3 | 1.33 | 75.02 |
| 2/5 | 1.40 | 71.43 |
| 1/2 | 1.50 | 66.67 |
| 4/7 | 1.57 | 63.65 |
| 4/6 | 1.66 | 59.99 |
| 4/5 | 1.80 | 55.56 |
| 10/11 | 1.90 | 52.38 |
| 1/1 | 2.00 | 50.00 |
| 11/10 | 2.10 | 47.62 |
| 5/4 | 2.25 | 44.44 |
| 6/4 | 2.50 | 40.00 |
| 7/4 | 2.75 | 36.36 |
| 2/1 | 3.00 | 33.33 |
| 5/2 | 3.50 | 28.57 |
| 3/1 | 4.00 | 25.00 |
| 4/1 | 5.00 | 20.00 |
| 5/1 | 6.00 | 16.67 |
We explained earlier how the best football betting site operators offer a variety of bonuses and promotions in an effort to attract new customers and retain the loyalty of their existing ones. You shouldn’t expect every site you visit to have all types of bonuses, but here are the ones you are most likely to encounter on your betting journey as a whole.
The welcome bonus is the one that tends to make headlines. It’s designed to give potential customers of new football betting sites – and more established ones – every incentive to sign up and make a deposit. You can expect this bonus to be a fairly generous one, with many sites giving customers £30, £50, or even more for a deposit of just £10. The bonus is usually awarded as one or more free bets that you can use on the site, although certain terms and conditions (normally around the minimum odds at which you can bet) will apply.
We’ve just mentioned free bets, as they are often given as part of a welcome bonus. However, free bets can also be given to existing customers for any number of reasons. It could be to reward a bettor for their ongoing loyalty, for example, or to promote engagement with a particularly high-profile event, such as the Euros or the World Cup. Whatever the case, you can use the free bet to make a wager, and if your selection wins, you’ll get to keep the profit. The free bet stake itself, however, won’t be returned to you.
A risk-free bet shouldn’t be confused with a free bet. When you are given a risk-free bet, you are effectively being invited to make a bet with your own money. If that bet loses, your stake will be returned to you – usually in the form of a free bet. When a risk-free bet is offered, it will be subject to a maximum stake, and your selection will need to be priced at certain minimum odds or better. Fortunately, the minimum odds are usually quite modest, so risk-free bets are often worth taking advantage of.
When a bookmaker wants to showcase a particular selection in an event, he might offer enhanced odds to those who want to bet on it. For example, in a local derby, a bookie might offer odds of 5/1 about the underdog instead of the 3/1 generally available. You probably shouldn’t bet on a selection just because the odds are enhanced, but if you were considering siding with the selection anyway, enhanced odds could be worth their weight in gold.
Those of you who like to put several football selections into an accumulator bet in an effort to win big from a modest stake will love acca boosts. These offers will boost your payout should your accumulator bet win. In most cases, the more legs your winning accumulator has, the greater the boost will be. You can get acca boosts worth 20%, 40% or sometimes even more if your bet has enough legs.
Sticking with the topic of accumulator bets, an increasing number of football betting sites are offering something called acca insurance. This will refund your acca stake if just one leg lets you down. Your bet must have a minimum number of legs at minimum qualifying odds to be covered by this offer, and any refund will usually be awarded as a free bet.
Some of the best football betting sites now settle match result bets as winners if your chosen team goes two goals up at any point. This is a superb offer because it means that your bet is a winner even if your team goes on to concede and ends up drawing or even losing the match.
A growing number of betting sites now have loyalty programs in place. These are aimed at existing customers, and they work by giving a reward to bettors who achieve a certain level of activity per week or month. For example, you might be given a free bet worth £10 when you make 20 or more bets with your own cash in a calendar month. These loyalty programs don’t require you to lose money, but simply to place bets, so you could have plenty of winners and still pick up a handy reward on top.
We only ever recommend using football betting sites that are properly licensed and regulated. There are quite a few reputable regulators operating in the industry, and they all have their own way of doing things. Here’s a quick overview of the most common regulators you’re likely to come across when football betting online:
Before you can start making good use of even the best football betting site you’ll need to put some cash in your account to bet with. You’ll normally be given several ways to do that, and while the exact options offered will vary, the most common ones are as follows:
When you use a debit card to make a deposit, the cash will be taken straight from your bank account. No fees are usually charged, and deposits tend to be immediate. You can also make withdrawals via the same debit card, and your cash will get back into your bank account within a few working days or less.
eWallets such as PayPal act as a middleman between you and the betting site. You load the eWallet with funds (via a debit card, for example) and then use your eWallet details to pass cash onto the bookie. The advantage of this method is that the betting site never sees your card details. The main disadvantage is that eWallet deposits might not qualify for bonuses.
The UKGC banned credit cards for gambling purposes in 2020, but football betting sites that are licensed by other regulators will often be perfectly happy to accept credit card deposits. They can be just as convenient to use as debit cards, but some card issuers treat gambling site deposits as cash transactions and could, therefore, charge a fee for them. Check with your card issuer first if you ever consider using this method.
This is another payment method that you won’t find at UKGC betting sites. Not because they’ve banned it but because it’s very difficult for a betting site to meet the criteria the UKGC has set for crypto processing. Fortunately, not all regulators are quite so strict, so you’ll be able to deposit using Bitcoin, Ethereum and other popular cryptos with other licensed sites.
Bank transfers are often used only as a last resort due to their slowness. They take cash directly from your account and send it to the betting site’s account. Most people who use bank transfers do so when their deposit method doesn’t also accept withdrawals. In those cases, the betting site will usually let you withdraw via bank transfer, but you might have to wait a week or so before you see the money land in your account.
Now that we’ve given you an overview of the main payment methods you will be able to choose from at football betting sites, here’s a table showing how they compare:
| Method | Deposits | Withdrawals | Payout Speed | Fees |
| Debit Cards | Yes | Yes | 0-5 Days | None |
| Credit Cards | Yes | No | N/A | Sometimes |
| eWallets | Yes | Yes | 0-3 Days | Sometimes |
| Cryptocurrencies | Yes | Yes | 0-1 Day | None |
| Bank Transfer | Yes | Yes | 3-7 Days | Not Normally |
It isn’t always convenient to boot up a computer every time you want to place a bet, and thanks to tablets and smartphones, it isn’t actually necessary. The best football betting site operators have created apps that you can download to your mobile device and launch at the tap of a fingertip.
These mobile apps are commonly available for both iOS and Android devices and can be obtained from the usual app stores. In that case, all you have to do is visit the app store and tap to download the app you want. Installation usually takes place automatically when the app has finished downloading. You can then launch the app, sign in with your username and password (or sign up for a new account if you don’t have one) and start betting.
The best apps are just as fully featured as the football betting sites themselves. They will give you access to the exact same matches and markets, allow you to make deposits and withdrawals, and even obtain customer support right from your smartphone. We sometimes wonder how we used to manage before mobile betting got this good, but there’s no denying that football betting apps have made the hobby easier and more convenient for all of us.
When you’ve found a football betting site that you like the look of, you’ll want to open an account so that you can start using it. This is a very straightforward process, and we’ve summarised it for you here as a simple step-by-step guide:
You now know how to spot the best football betting sites, what they offer and how to sign up. Probably the only thing we haven’t discussed is how to land winning bets. Well, we don’t have any secrets to guaranteed success in football betting, but we can give you a few tips that might come in handy.
First, we strongly suggest that you establish a bankroll specifically for football betting. This is a sum of money that you can afford to lose, be it £50 or £500. Whatever the sum, consider betting no more than a fixed percentage of your bankroll – perhaps 5% or 10% – on any given match. This will eliminate the possibility of you blowing the whole lot on one of those matches that ends up surprising everyone.
While you can have a great time betting randomly on whatever match catches your eye, if you want to stand a chance of winning over the long term, you need some kind of strategy. This could be as simple as only betting on home teams that are favourites to win and which also won their previous two matches. Or you might decide to always bet on the team that’s ranked higher in the league table. There are plenty of strategies you can adopt, and we’ll leave you to choose one that makes sense to you. But don’t expect to get anywhere significant by betting blindly.
Before making any football bet, consider the recent form of the teams involved. Even the best teams can go through rough patches, and sometimes the most average teams can have a nice run of results. Make sure that your selected team is currently playing well and isn’t going through a bad patch due to injuries, sickness or poor management.
As you’ve seen in this guide, there are many more football leagues and competitions around the world than any of us can ever hope to keep up with properly. For that reason, our next tip is to become a specialist in one or two leagues or competitions that you’re particularly interested in. Learn all you can about those areas until you become something of an expert in them. This will allow you to bet much more effectively on matches relating to those leagues and competitions.
The best football betting site odds-makers aren’t idiots. They remain in business because they get things right more often than not when pricing up the chances of an event occurring. While they aren’t right every time, you should learn to respect the odds and only take a completely opposing view if you have a very good reason for doing so.
All forms of betting involve risk. Surprises can occur in even the most “nailed-on” match (even in the World Cup), with a team priced at excruciatingly short odds sometimes being overturned by what, on paper, looks certain to be a lacklustre opposition. Always remember this, and only stake cash that you can afford to lose when things go against you. If football betting were an easy way to riches, the bookmaking industry would have collapsed – or at least stopped offering football odds – decades ago. Accept this and do the sensible thing by betting cautiously and responsibly.
UK bettors have no shortage of bookmakers to choose from, and new football betting sites are being launched all the time. Fortunately, you now know how to spot the sites that are most likely to be safe and trustworthy, and that will give you the markets, odds and features you want. All that remains is for you to bet wisely and enjoy the football!
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