If an abundance of choice when it comes to top football betting sites is the first bit of good news, the second is that we’re here to help. We’re about to tell you not only which ones we consider to be of the highest quality, but which features each one boasts and how good they are for each of those features. That way, you can choose which site(s) is tailor-made for you to bet on football.
Football is the most popular sport to bet on in the UK, accounting for roughly 40% of all money wagered across all the different sports. And it’s a similar story for most other countries. So, it’s no wonder that hundreds of football betting sites are out there competing against each other to attract new customers and retain existing ones, rather than letting their business go to their rivals. All of this means that you, as a new customer looking for the best betting sites for football, are spoilt for choice when it comes to which one, or ones, you want to open an account at, which is not the case when you wish to place your bets on volleyball, for example. But how do you know which ones are the best?
How We Rate Online Football Betting Sites
There are dozens of different criteria we could consider before deciding how good each of the different online football betting sites really is. But some factors are more important than others in our opinion and you surely don’t want to be reading about every last one. So here are the ones we consider to be the most crucial.
Reputation
We look at reviews written by customers who have played at those betting sites for football and who give their honest opinions on their experiences while playing there, which are published right here at AskGamblers. We also look at the Customer Complaints section of our site and see how many times a particular site has featured there. The fewer times, the better. But we also look at whether the complaint was adequately resolved, or not. Across the two, we form an opinion about the online football betting site in question.
Security
Does the site have the relevant certificates when it comes to security? Has the site been involved in cases of customer data being stolen or funds going missing? Can the site be trusted when it comes to paying out winnings and not being involved in criminal or unethical practices? All important considerations.
Odds
At worst, the site has odds that are in line with what the rest of the market is offering. But what sets some of the best bookies for football apart from the rest is consistently offering better odds than their competitors across most of their markets. Consistently better odds mean consistently higher payouts on winning bets and this is the key factor in terms of showing a long-term profit.
League coverage
In general terms, it’s a case of the more leagues the site offers, the better. And hopefully, that includes leagues from all around the world, women’s football, youth football and even semi-professional football. But perhaps more importantly, the Sportsbook offers the leagues that you want. If you only like to bet on football games from say Chile, it’s more important the site offers betting on leagues from there than hundreds of others that you’re not interested in.
Range of betting markets
Again, the more the better. It’s not enough these days to just cover the obvious betting markets like match winner, over/under 2.5 goals and correct score. Football punters also want to bet on such things as the number of corners, offsides, yellow cards, fouls, shots on target and much more. Given the huge rise in popularity of Bet Builders among football betting fans and it’s imperative that football betting sites offer a good product when it comes to those.
Best football offers
Let’s put these into two categories. The first are such bonuses as free bets, risk-free bets or reload bonuses. They allow you to place bets you wouldn’t normally get to place when funds are low or give you extra money to bet with when you make your next deposit.
The second kind are bonuses where you get extra payouts on winning bets. These include the best football betting sites boosting their odds on particular markets or giving you extra payouts as a percentage of your winnings if you add more legs to your football accumulator. Again, it’s a case of the more (offers) the better, but it’s also the case that the offers need to carry real value.
How to Bet On Football?
If you’re new to all this, here’s your guide on how to bet on football online from the very first stage to placing your first-ever bet.
- Read our reviews of the best football betting sites: Create a shortlist of four or five of the ones that most appeal to you.
- Choose two or three: Based on what your own needs and preferences are for online football betting, choose two or three from your original shortlist. You can always open accounts at more in the future if necessary.
- Open an account: Go to the ‘login/open account’ section of the football betting site. You’ll need to provide details such as your name, postal address, date of birth, e-mail address and mobile number. You’ll also need to choose a unique username and password, which you’ll need to enter when logging into your account.
- Check out the welcome offer: Every online football betting site will have a welcome offer of sorts. You should read the terms and conditions of the offer(s) carefully as they dictate such things as what deposit method you can or can't use to claim the welcome offer.
- Make a deposit: Choose a deposit method from the ones available to you and make your first deposit.
- Claim the welcome offer: Again, read the Ts and Cs carefully so that you know what you need to claim it, how to use any free bets they may offer you and any wagering requirements you may need to fulfil. Be aware that some welcome offers may result in your own deposited money having wagering requirements; so think long and hard as to whether you want that.
- See what football competitions are available: Navigate to sports, then choose football. The site will display all the competitions and leagues it offers betting on, normally divided by country, starting with the top league and then going down to the lowest league.
- Pick your match: There will be some outright markets to bet on such as who will win the Premier League or who will be the top goal scorer in Serie A. But most football betting is done on individual matches. In this case, pick the match you want to bet on.
- Pick your bet and stake: Choose the single market you want to bet on, such as match winner or Asian Handicap. Alternatively, navigate to the Bet Builder section and pick the different selections you want in your Bet Builder.
- Odds and stake: Once you’re happy with your selection(s) at the odds displayed, pick your stake for that wager and confirm the bet.
Football Betting Offers
Football offers are a good way of the best betting sites for football attracting new customers and making existing customers feel engaged and valued for their loyalty. Here are some of the best ones.
- Free Bet: The football betting site will award you with a free bet that you can place using their money, rather than yours. The bet can sometimes be used on any betting market on any football match. Other times it has to be used on a particular league, a particular match, or even a particular betting market within a particular match. Sometimes it can be used on a pre-match market only, sometimes on a live betting market only, other times on either. All this information is available in the terms and conditions.
- Risk-free bet: All of the above is generally true for risk-free bets, as well. The key difference with this one is that you’ll need to use your own funds to place the bet. If the bet wins, you’ll be paid out as normal. If it loses, the online football betting site will refund the stake, either in cash or as a bet to use in the future.
- Buy One Get One Free: This is somewhere in between the two just mentioned. In this case, the football betting site will tell you that if you place a particular type of £5 bet, they’ll give you another one for the same value in the future. The reason it’s not a risk-free bet because you’ll be awarded the free bet whether your first bet wins or loses.
- Odds Boosts: In a bid to attract more business, betting sites football boost odds on certain football markets. For example, rather than Kevin de Bruyne being 2.5 to score a goal against Arsenal, the site may boost his odds to 3.0. There are generally no wagering requirements on the (extra) winnings. Odds boost offers may be saved for special games but many sites have four or five of them available on a daily basis.
- Cashback: This isn’t specific to a particular bet but rather to your overall betting over the course of a week, or month. If you have a losing month, the sportsbook may decide to give you back 10% or 20% of your losses as a goodwill gesture. That would normally include losses incurred across all sports and not just football.
- Reload bonus: The sportsbook will give you extra funds to play with if you choose to make a deposit. For example, you deposit £50, and the top football betting site will give you a 50% bonus, meaning you have a total of £75 to play with. The bonus will almost always have wagering requirements, so make sure to check the bonus terms and conditions before claiming it.
Football Betting Odds and Payouts
Ask any professional gambler what the single most important factor is when they bet on football, and the answer will often be the same: the odds.
For all the extra features and frills that football betting sites boast such as livestreaming, bonuses and novelty markets, the generosity of the odds trumps most of them.
Let’s start by explaining that we’re not talking about a betting site boosting odds on a handful of markets as per Odds Boost in the section above, even if that’s on a daily basis.
Those are one-off bets where, apart from anything else, it’s the betting site rather than the customer who determines which selections have boosted odds. Rather, we’re talking about the odds offered on an ongoing basis across all markets over a year.
And now, let’s take the following example.
Mark and James are friends and every week they meet up and decide on the five best bets to place on the Premier League that upcoming weekend. Once they’ve agreed on those five bets, they both place the bets, each bet for £10, the only difference being that they use different online football betting sites: Mark uses Soccerpunts, James uses Footballflutter. These are the bets they place ahead of the upcoming weekend at the respective odds:
Arsenal to beat Chelsea
- Mark - 2.2
- James - 2.4
Fulham to beat Liverpool
- Mark - 4.5
- James - 4.5
Draw in Everton v Brentford
- Mark - 3.8
- James - 4.0
Over 2.5 goals in Newcastle v Manchester City
- Mark - 1.8
- James - 1.9
A red card in Liverpool v Nottingham Forrest
- Mark - 3.5
- James - 3.8
Now, let’s say that bets 1,3 and 5 won, making bets 2 and 4 irrelevant for the purposes of the example.
Here are their respective payouts:
- Mark - £10 @2.2, 3.8 and 3.5 = £65 profit, minus £20 for the two losing bets = £45 profit for the weekend.
- James - £10 @ 2.4, 4.0 and 3.8 = £72 profit minus £20 for the two losing bets = £52 profit for the weekend.
Now, that may not seem like much difference but it’s actually a difference of 10.7% between what Mark won and what James won.
Assuming that every week FootballFlutter goes bigger on odds across all Premier League markets than Soccerpunts does, and you can see what a difference that will make over the course of the season to their respective P and Ls.
And that’s precisely why the generosity of a football betting site’s odds makes such a difference.
Best Football Leagues to Bet On
This will obviously vary from one country to another, but these tend to be the most popular leagues to bet on football games across the board:
Premier League (England)
The most popular of all. Made up of 20 teams, the all-action, never-give-up nature of Premier League football makes it a favourite across the world. It’s been dominated by Manchester City over the last few seasons but aside from top spot, there’s always plenty to play for elsewhere.
Serie A (Italy)
Also made up of 20 teams, gone are the days when it had a reputation for a defence-first approach where 1-0 wins and 0-0 draws were the name of the game. More technical and tactical than the Premier League, it’s produced four different winners in the last four seasons.
La Liga (Spain)
Another 20-team league, it’s dominated by the Barcelona v Real Madrid intense rivalry but recently, Atletico Madrid have also joined the party as title contenders. It’s famed for high levels of skill as well as high counts of yellow and red cards.
Bundesliga (Germany)
It may often be dominated by Bayern Munich but record attendances at grounds and a sky-high goals-per-game average make it extremely popular to watch and bet on. Even more so now that top-class foreign imports have decided to play in it, none more so than England skipper Harry Kane.
Saudi Pro League (Saudi Arabia)
This league probably won’t have featured in the Top 20 most popular football leagues to bet on a year and a half ago. But the arrival of Cristiano Ronaldo in January 2023 followed by the likes of Neymar, Ruben Neves, Karim Benzema, and Aleksandr Mitrovic among many others, changed all that. The cash-rich league has quickly attracted huge interest and lots of wagers in the process.
Popular Competitions for Football Betting
The above leagues are domestic leagues that generally run from August to May each year but here are a few other tournaments- at both club and international level- that are extremely popular for betting purposes.
Champions League
Europe’s elite compete in this one for the right to be crowned Kings of Europe at club level. There’s a Group Stage followed by a series of knockout rounds before we find the winner and there are tens of millions of Euros in prize money to play for in each round.
European Championships/Euros
In the Euro 2024 edition held in Germany, there will be 24 teams competing for the right to be the top international side in Europe. It’s been going since 1958, held every four years, with Germany and Spain the only teams who have won it on three occasions.
Copa America
The South American equivalent of the Euros but it’s far older, having first been played back in 1916. It’s normally held every two years and has between 12-16 teams per edition. Argentina and Uruguay are the most successful teams in its history, with 15 wins each.
FIFA World Cup
Arguably the best and biggest football competition in the world, full stop. Or at least the most-watched worldwide. First played in 1930, the number of sides competing to be the best in the world has steadily risen over the decades and will increase further from 32 to 48 when it’s held in the USA/Canada/Mexico in 2026. Brazil have won it a record five times; Italy and Germany four times.
Where is Football Betting Legal
This is something of a complex question because ‘legal’ can mean different things.
In the following countries, players can bet on any football they wish and will be doing so completely legally in a regulated market: UK, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Australia (except the state of South Australia)
In New Zealand, you can legally bet on football with the state-owned TAB, although betting with foreign sites isn’t, strictly speaking, illegal. In the Philippines, India, and Brazil, online betting on football is a grey area, meaning it’s not currently fully regulated. Again, punters can bet at foreign sites but do so at their own risk.
The USA is a complex case where, in some cases, you can legally bet on football, but in others, you can’t. It all depends on the state in which you reside. So if you live in New York or Nevada, you can bet both in-person and online, in Montana and New Mexico, you can bet in-person only, while in Tennessee and Wyoming, you can only bet online! In 12 other states, including California, Hawaii and Georgia, it’s completely illegal to bet on football and any other sport.
