Both teams to score betting, priced and explained for 2026

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

A both teams to score bet — BTTS in the betting shop’s own shorthand — is the simplest question a football price can ask. Yes or no. Both sides put the ball in the net, or one of them does not. Three outcomes on the coupon cover most matches, and the binary shape of BTTS is part of why punters reach for it when other markets look cluttered. It also hides something most casual readers never look for: the margin baked into the two prices, and the settlement rule that decides what “yes” actually counts as. This page is built around what that market costs the punter who backs it — what the margin takes before kick-off, what the settlement rule takes after it, and which licensed bookmakers in Great Britain offer the market on terms a punter should read before staking.

A worked note on the data: figures and operator details are current as of October 30, 2026 against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each bookmaker’s own published terms.

How a both teams to score bet works

A BTTS bet asks a single question of one football match: will each side score at least once, including own goals credited to the tally, in the regulation ninety minutes? Bookmakers usually price three selections: Yes (both teams score), No (either or both fail to score), and on bigger matches a third line settles whether both teams score in each half. Where only Yes and No appear, both are settled on the same condition — the standard regulation ninety minutes plus any additional time added for stoppages, and not the extra time or penalty shootout a cup tie may run to.

That distinction matters more than it looks. A 1–1 draw in the first ninety minutes that goes to extra time and a 2–2 result on the night still settles BTTS as Yes, because the regulation window already produced a goal from each side. A 0–0 match that finishes 1–0 in extra time settles as No, because the regulation window itself failed the test. A cup-tie rule that drops a goal scored in extra time from BTTS settlement can flip a winning selection into a losing one. Punters who back BTTS on knockout football without checking how their bookie handles extra time are the ones most exposed.

A BTTS selection is also settled independently of the match result. A 4–2 home win settles the same way as a 1–1 draw: both teams scored, so Yes wins. The price on Yes does not move because the favourite wins by three goals. The price does, however, shrink if the favourite looks likely to win without conceding, because then the bet has only one side left to find the net — and a 2–0 scoreline at any point before full-time turns BTTS into a loser.

The second question a BTTS selection raises is what counts as a goal for its purposes. The market treats a goal scored by either team, including an own goal forced by the opposition, as a goal for the team credited with it — which is the side that the goal counts against. There is one corner case worth noting: an own goal scored early in a match does settle BTTS in the scorer’s favour for that side, because the side credited with the goal has put the ball in the net. A punt that hinges on which side concedes the first own goal should be left alone; the rule is consistent, and the argument comes when the rules are not.

How a BTTS bet is built into a coupon

BTTS is sold three ways. Stand-alone, it is a single match selection priced Yes or No. As part of a same-game multi, it is added to other selections from the same match — the result, the total goals, the first goalscorer, a handicap — into one combined price. As a leg in a traditional accumulator, it is one of several independent matches whose results must all land.

The same-game multi is the version that has changed most in the last few years. Where once a punter had to back BTTS as one of three or four unrelated fixtures, the bet builder market now lets them combine BTTS with goalscorer, total goals and result from the same match. The price on each leg is usually worse than the same selection priced on its own, because the bookmaker is correlating the legs: a match expected to end 2–1 carries a lower BTTS Yes price inside a bet builder than it does as a standalone, because the bet builder already prices the probability that the favourite win and both teams score. The headline price still looks generous; the embedded margin is the part the punter pays.

A traditional accumulator that includes a BTTS leg works differently. Each leg is priced independently and multiplied into one combined price. The product reads as a single number, but the margin is the product of the margins — five legs at roughly five per cent apiece compound into a margin closer to twenty-three per cent on the combined price. A bookmaker that looks cheap on a single bet can look anything but once three or four legs are stacked. Punters who read only the combined price miss that the edge compounds faster than the price.

How a BTTS bet is settled

Three rules govern nearly every BTTS settlement on a UK bookmaker. The match must be played to a conclusion under the bookmaker’s own football rules — Sky Bet’s published terms settle football, the standard regulation ninety minutes, and rule out extra time and penalty shootouts unless a specific extra-time market is offered. A match abandoned after kick-off leaves already-decided BTTS bets standing and voids all others, unless the restart is announced within three hours of kick-off and occurs within three days of the original abandonment. First-goalscorer bets, a related goalscorer market rather than BTTS itself, are settled on the result after ninety minutes including injury time, with extra time and penalty shootouts discounted.

The pattern of those rules is consistent. UK bookmakers treat the regulation ninety minutes as the relevant window for almost every football market, BTTS included, and treat a postponed, abandoned or curtailed match by leaving resolved bets to settle and voiding the rest. That last point is the one worth carrying forward: a BTTS bet that was winning when the match was abandoned is paid out as a winner; a BTTS bet that was losing at the moment of abandonment is voided and the stake returned. Punters who treat an abandonment as an automatic refund on every selection are surprised to learn that some of their bets have already paid.

Punters who back BTTS in a cup competition with two legs should check the bookmaker’s cup rules. A goal scored in extra time may or may not count for BTTS, depending on whether the bookmaker prices BTTS on the regulation ninety minutes or on the full result. Where the BTTS market is priced on the regulation ninety minutes only, the extra-time goals do not count. Where the market is priced on the full result, they do. The two versions carry different prices and a different margin; a punt on one when the bookmaker is pricing the other is a punt with the wrong number.

The cost of a BTTS bet: margin and payout

Every price a bookmaker prints carries its margin, and BTTS is no exception. The margin is the slice of every pound wagered that the bookmaker keeps on average across the market, and it is calculated from the prices themselves rather than stated by the operator. Punters who know how to do the calculation can read the margin off any two-way market in seconds, and what they read is what they pay before the football is even kicked.

The calculation is mechanical. Take the decimal prices on each outcome of the market, take the reciprocal of each, and add the reciprocals together. The sum is the implied payout share — the fraction of every pound wagered that the bookmaker returns to customers on average. Subtract that from one and the remainder is the margin. The smaller the margin, the better the price for the punter, and a margin of two to five per cent is the band that sharpens an outright market, while anything over eight per cent starts to feel expensive even before the football begins. Football matches at the bigger bookmakers tend to sit between four and seven per cent on the main markets, with BTTS usually priced tighter than the outright result.

Take an illustrative two-way BTTS at decimal odds 1.90 on Yes and 1.90 on No. The reciprocal of 1.90 is 1 ÷ 1.90, which is roughly 0.5263. Adding the two reciprocals gives 1.0526, and 1.0526 minus 1 is 0.0526, or about 5.3 per cent. A 1.90 / 1.90 BTTS market carries roughly a five per cent margin, and a £100 stake across both outcomes of a perfectly judged market returns £95 on average, leaving the bookmaker with £5. That five per cent is the book’s expected take, before any settlement edge, before any promotion, and before the punter’s own selection skill.

Where the same market sits at 1.80 / 2.00 — a slightly stronger favourite on Yes — the reciprocal sum is 1 ÷ 1.80 plus 1 ÷ 2.00, which is 0.5556 plus 0.5000, or 1.0556, and the margin is 5.6 per cent. The takeaway: as the prices on a market move further apart, the margin tends to grow, because the favourite’s shorter price carries a larger reciprocal contribution than the outsider’s. A bookmaker that prices the favourite at 1.50 and the outsider at 3.50 carries a margin closer to seven per cent, and the punter pays for the popularity of the favourite in a tighter reciprocal on that side. The shorthand version of the rule is that a balanced market — both sides priced close to even money — carries the lowest margin the operator can write without giving the bet away.

Punters reading the margin should look at the band it sits in rather than the precise figure, because the operator’s prices shift from minute to minute and the margin moves with them. A market that opens at 1.91 / 1.91 will close at 1.85 / 1.96 once the team news is in, and the margin moves between five and six per cent over that window. The number that matters is the band, not the moment.

What a winning BTTS bet returns

The return on a winning bet is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A BTTS Yes seat at 1.90 is essentially the “nine-to-ten” market in fractional, and a £10 stake returns £19 if it lands, of which £9 is profit and £10 is the returned stake. The net profit is the stake multiplied by the odds minus one, which is the difference between the return and what was risked in the first place. A punt at 2.50 returns a £25 stake as £62.50, of which £37.50 is profit, and a punt at 5.00 doubles the stake plus a third.

A combination bet multiplies the legs into one price before any stake is applied. Two legs at 1.80 and 2.00 combine into 3.60, three legs at 1.50, 2.00 and 3.00 combine into 9.00, and a £10 stake on either returns £36 and £90 respectively. The punter reads one number on the coupon, but the calculation is mechanical and the margin compounds leg by leg, which is why an accumulator of four modest favourites can carry a larger margin than a single outsider at the same combined price.

Where the punter backs a free bet, the stake is usually not returned with a win — only the profit lands. A £10 free bet at 2.00 returns £10 in profit, not £20, because the stake was never the punter’s to begin with. That is the mechanism behind every “free bet” headline a bookmaker prints, and the worth of the offer is the profit alone, not the headline number. A £10 free bet at 1.90 returns £9, and the operator’s “£10 in free bets” line on the welcome page is best read as £9 in expected value before the bet is even placed.

The rule that bites: minimum price and the bonus cap

A free bet or a bonus comes with terms, and the terms vary enough between operators that the punter who reads only the headline misses the figure that decides whether the offer is worth anything. Two clauses carry most of the cost.

The minimum odds on a qualifying bet are the first. A welcome offer that requires a first bet of at least £5 at minimum odds of evens — 2.00 in decimal, 1/1 in fractional — restricts the qualifying bet to selections priced at 2.00 or above, which excludes the favourite on most BTTS markets and forces the punter into a less probable selection. The headline price the offer appears to grant is usually earned on a selection priced somewhere between 2.00 and 5.00, and the average price of a welcome qualifying bet is meaningfully longer than 2.00 in practice. The wider the gap between the qualifying minimum and the actual qualifying selection, the more the operator keeps.

The wagering requirement on a bonus is the second. A bonus carries a turnover multiple — a £10 bonus at 10x wagering needs £100 of qualifying bets before the bonus balance becomes withdrawable. Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements at 10x, so the operator cannot impose a 50x or 60x rollover that was once routine. Mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types, such as a free bet tied to a slot spin — are banned under the same rules. The cap closes off some of the worst offers, but a 10x rollover on a £50 bonus still needs £500 of qualifying bets before the bonus is clear, and the margin on those bets is what the punter pays to clear the offer in the first place.

The two clauses are not the only ones worth reading. The expiry on the free bet is the third: a 7-day or 14-day window is normal, and a free bet left unused is forfeit. The cap on free-bet winnings is the fourth: some operators cap the return on a free bet at a stated multiple of the stake, and any profit above the cap is forfeit. The payment method restriction is the fifth: a welcome offer open only to debit card deposits excludes e-wallet and prepaid funding for the qualifying deposit, and credit cards are banned for gambling in Great Britain, so the deposit choice narrows automatically. None of these terms is hidden, and a punt that ignores them is a punt that pays the operator’s margin twice — once on the qualifying bet, and once on the bonus clearing.

What the law and the regulator actually require

Football betting is licensed in Great Britain under the Gambling Act 2005, and the regulator is the Gambling Commission, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The Act covers Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales — and Northern Ireland is outside it, so a GB licence is a GB licence and not a UK-wide one. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based, and a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute for a GB licence where British customers are served.

The Commission’s public register lists every licensed operator and can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. It is the whole test of whether a brand holds a GB licence, and any quoted figure — there are hundreds of remote betting licence holders — must carry the date the register was consulted or it is a number with no meaning. Licensed operators use .com as well as .co.uk, and the domain alone proves nothing; what proves the licence is the register entry, not the address bar.

There is no statutory list of permitted markets. A bookmaker holds a licence for a category — remote general betting standard real events, remote general betting standard virtual events, remote pool betting, remote betting intermediary, remote general betting limited — and offers markets under its own rules and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP). BTTS falls inside the real-events category for any licensed operator, and a bookmaker that holds only a virtual-events licence cannot legally offer BTTS on a real match. The licence category matters for what markets a brand can write, not for how it markets them.

The minimum age is eighteen. Name, address and date of birth are verified before a customer can deposit or gamble, and the verification rule has applied to free bets and bonuses since 7 May 2019. A licensed bookmaker cannot offer anonymous play; a punt without verification is a punt at an unlicensed site or not at all. The point of the rule is anti-money-laundering, and a punter who passes verification on a regulated site has at least one protection an offshore site cannot give: a British regulator to complain to.

The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently fifteen per cent, and from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of twenty-five per cent applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at fifteen per cent. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at fifteen per cent, and whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established — the punter’s take-home on a winning bet is the full return quoted on the coupon, with no tax withheld. A professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser; a casual punter’s position is unchanged.

What protection a GB licence buys

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme, and a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. A punter who self-excludes through GAMSTOP is barred from every GB-licensed online operator for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate service. A self-exclusion that bypasses the GAMSTOP registration — by signing up to an unlicensed site — bypasses the only national barrier that holds across the licensed market.

A financial vulnerability check applies to licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling thirty days, and the rule has applied since 28 February 2025. It is a public-record check — bankruptcy, county court judgments, similar registers — not an income check and not a credit reference check. Financial risk assessments — the affordability checks of the press — are announced in a staged plan, with no start date. A punter whose rolling deposits have passed £150 should expect the operator to run a public-record check before the next deposit; the check is the regulator’s response to harm patterns in the data, and it is a friction the punter pays for the protection the licence confers.

Deposit limits are the operator’s own product and the customer’s own choice. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting; the limits a punter sets on the operator’s site are the limits that apply. The first changes to the deposit-limit framework have applied since 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether it is live is not established. A punter who wants a hard ceiling sets it themselves on the operator’s safer-gambling page; the regulator’s framework governs how the operator offers the limit, not what the limit is.

Offshore sites and what is lost by using one

A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption. Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 — aimed at the operator, not the customer, and no offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site was found. The framing matters: the punter who uses an unlicensed site is not committing an offence, but the punter loses the protection of the licence the moment they sign up.

The lost protections are specific. No GAMSTOP coverage, because GAMSTOP is a licence condition and an unlicensed operator is not bound by it. No Commission complaints route, because the Commission does not regulate what it does not license. No approved dispute-resolution body, because the dispute-resolution route is another licence condition. No British consumer redress if funds are withheld, because the operator is outside the British courts’ regulatory reach. The £150 vulnerability check, the 10x bonus cap, the credit-card ban — none of these apply on a site outside the British regime. A punter on an unlicensed site accepts every one of those absences by signing up, and the absence is the operator’s business model.

Enforcement is disruption rather than blocking. The Commission issues cease-and-desist notices, refers unlicensed sites to search engines, and works with registrars, hosts and payment providers to take sites offline. Court-order DNS blocking powers have been given or are about to be given, but no statement that ISP blocking is in operation should be written; the framing is that enforcement exists and acts at the operator level, not that the customer is barred. A punt at an unlicensed site is a punt the Commission cannot help with, and the framing is honest about what is and is not protected.

Safer gambling on a BTTS market

Safer gambling on a BTTS market looks much like safer gambling on any other market, with two specific habits worth forming. The first is the staking rule: a BTTS market is a coin-flip-with-margin in shape, and the punter who treats it as a coin flip and stakes a fixed percentage of bankroll per bet has the same edge they would on a coin flip — zero before margin, negative after. The punter who treats it as a value bet, with a stake proportional to the edge the price implies, has a model that pays the punter only when the price is wrong.

The second is the market’s own temperament. BTTS prices are set by traders who watch team news and the betting flow, and the closing price on a BTTS market is usually sharper than the opening price by one to three per cent of margin. A punter who places the bet early pays the wider margin; a punter who places the bet late pays the tighter margin and accepts that the price may already have moved. The choice between early and late is a choice between two margins, and the right answer depends on whether the punter has information the market does not.

GAMSTOP, deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion are the four levers every licensed operator offers, and they are the levers the regulator requires. The punter who sets a deposit limit on sign-up, a 24-hour time-out on a long losing run, and a six-month self-exclusion on the point of chasing losses has used the regime as it was designed to be used. The punter who uses none of them has the same protection the regulator requires, which is none at all. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline, GambleAware funds treatment and education, NHS gambling clinics run regional services, and Gamblers Anonymous runs peer support; the help exists, and a punter who wants it has four routes into it.

A BTTS market is also a market the punter can lose on without ever having a “betting problem” in the diagnostic sense. The margin pays the bookmaker before the football is kicked, and the punter who loses ten bets in a row has not lost anything they could not afford to lose at the start. The diagnostic question is not whether the punter lost but whether the punter kept staking at a level they had decided not to stake at. A “deposit limit on sign-up” answers that question before it is asked.

Predictions, tips and what to do with a tipster

Search interest around both teams to score is heavy on the word “tips”. Punters search for tips, tipsters sell tips, and the BTTS market is the most tipped of any football market because the binary shape is easy to write about. Three rules apply to using a tipster on BTTS.

The first is that a tip is a prediction, and a prediction is a statement of what the tipster thinks will happen, not a statement of what will happen. The punter who treats the tip as a price target — the punter who backs only when the price on the tip is longer than the tipster’s implied probability — is the punter who can find an edge in a tip. The punter who treats the tip as a stake recommendation — the punter who backs the tip at any price because the tipster said so — is the punter who pays the tipster’s commission plus the bookmaker’s margin, and the tipster’s record rarely survives the second test. The records tipsters publish are records of selections, not records of profit at the prices the punter could take.

The second is that BTTS tips cluster around team news, fixture density, and managerial priorities. A team that has rotated heavily midweek and faces a Saturday BTTS match has a different scoring profile than the same team at full strength; a team playing a dead rubber midweek before a cup tie has a different scoring profile than the same team chasing a result. The tipsters who price these moves well are the tipsters whose tips add value to the punter who reads the team news themselves.

The third is that no tipster can know a result. The punter who treats any tip — free, paid, social-media — as a stake recommendation is the punter who can lose more than the tip cost. The data that drives a tip is the same data that drives the bookmaker’s price, and the price is what the market says the tip is worth. Where the tip and the price disagree, the punter has an opinion on which is right; where the punter takes the tip on faith, the punter has not made a betting decision at all.

Selection, staking and the punter’s own routine

A BTTS selection is one of the easier markets to form a routine around, because the binary outcome lets the punter measure their own record at the end of every match. Three habits separate a routine from a flutter.

The first is to record the price. A punt at 2.00 on BTTS Yes and a punt at 1.50 on BTTS No carry different prices and different margins, and the punter who records the price on every bet has a record they can measure. A running spreadsheet of stake, price, result and closing price is the minimum a serious punter keeps, and the punter who keeps it is the punter who can tell whether the record is the result of skill or the result of luck.

The second is to stake a fixed percentage of bankroll on each bet, and to size the bet to the price. A 2% bankroll stake on a 2.00 bet is a different exposure from a 2% bankroll stake on a 5.00 bet, and the punter who stakes a fixed unit on each bet has a record whose return is driven by the strike rate, not the stake. Those who choose percentage sizing see their return determined by their edge, with the strike rate influencing the outcome. Both are valid routines; the choice between them is a choice between the punter’s appetite for variance.

The third is to set a session limit before the session starts. A punter who decides to back three BTTS selections on a Saturday afternoon and stops regardless of result has a session that ends; a punter who keeps going because the morning’s winners feel like an edge is the punter most at risk of the Saturday-afternoon chase. The session limit is the punter’s own deposit limit on the day, and the punter who sets it on the betting app’s safer-gambling page has set it where the operator can enforce it.

A BTTS market rewards patience. The closing price is sharper than the opening price, and the punter who waits for team news before placing the bet pays the tighter margin. The punter who waits for the team news and finds the price has moved against them has still paid the tighter margin on what they backed, and the move is information rather than frustration. A two-minute wait for the price to settle is the most valuable two minutes the punter spends on the bet.

How the BTTS market sits in the wider coupon

BTTS is one of three related markets on a modern football coupon. The match result (home win, draw, away win) is the three-way market with the longest pedigree and the widest margin. The total goals market (over 1.5, over 2.5, over 3.5) is the cousin market that asks a slightly different question of the same match. BTTS sits between the two and asks a binary version of what the totals market asks continuously.

The three markets are correlated but not identical. A match expected to end 2–1 has a strong BTTS Yes lean and an over-2.5 goals lean and a home-win lean, and a same-game multi that prices them together carries a tighter combined margin than the three singles. A match expected to end 1–0 has a strong BTTS No lean and an under-2.5 goals lean and a home-win lean, and the same coupling holds. The punter who backs all three singles has paid three margins; the punter who backs the bet builder has paid one combined margin, and the combined margin is the lower of the three.

The bet builder is the version of the same-game multi that has changed most in the last few years. Sky Bet, Betway, BetUK, Midnite, DAZN Bet, Betboro, DragonBet and Copybet all offer bet builders on Premier League and Championship matches, and the prices inside a builder are usually slightly worse than the singles on the same selections. The punter who reads only the builder’s combined price has not seen the singles; the punter who reads both can tell whether the builder is worth the convenience.

The accumulator is the version of the same-game multi that is older, wider, and more punishing on the margin. A four-fold BTTS accumulator carries a margin closer to twenty per cent, and a six-fold closer to thirty per cent, and the punter who stacks legs to chase a headline price is paying the bookmaker more than the combined price implies. The headline price is real; the embedded margin is the part the headline never mentions.

Ten UK-licensed bookmakers for both teams to score

The ten operators below each hold a Gambling Commission remote licence for general betting standard real events, and each appears on the Commission’s public register against the licence and account number shown. The order is not a ranking by BTTS price — the BTTS market is a market, not a brand differentiator, and every licensed operator that offers football carries it on similar terms. The order is a ranking by what each operator brings to the punter beyond the BTTS market itself: the cash-out, the bet builder, the in-play depth, the welcome offer and the safer-gambling tools.

1. Sky Bet — the football-rules benchmark

Sky Bet’s published football rules are the cleanest statement of how a UK bookmaker settles football markets in 2026, and Sky Bet’s terms are the reference a punter can read before placing a BTTS bet anywhere. Sky Bet settles football on the regulation ninety minutes, as extended by the referee’s stoppage time; extra time and penalty shootouts do not count unless an extra-time market is specifically offered. A match abandoned after kick-off leaves already-decided bets standing and voids all others, unless the restart is announced within three hours of kick-off and occurs within three days of the abandonment. First-goalscorer bets are settled on the result after ninety minutes including injury time.

Sky Bet’s welcome offer is £30 in free bets, credited as three £10 free bet tokens after a deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at odds of 1/1 or greater. The 5p minimum stake is the smallest qualifying bet a UK bookmaker offers, and the 1/1 minimum odds pushes the qualifying selection away from the shortest-priced favourites. Sky Bet’s free-bet terms are stated on the operator’s own support pages, and the punter who reads the terms before placing the qualifying bet has read the reference every other operator’s terms should be compared against.

For BTTS, Sky Bet’s pricing sits in the middle of the UK market, with margins on the bigger Premier League matches in the four to six per cent band and margins on the lower leagues running wider. The bet builder is available on Premier League and Championship matches, cash out is offered on the bigger markets, and the in-play product is among the deepest in the licensed market. Sky Bet is the bookmaker to read before placing the bet, whatever bookmaker the bet is placed with.

2. Betway — the bet builder and the welcome

Betway’s welcome offer for new UK and Ireland customers is £40 in free bet tokens, credited as four £10 tokens on settlement of a first bet of at least £10 at minimum odds of 2.0, with a seven-day expiry and debit card deposits only. The 2.0 minimum price (evens in fractional) is the standard welcome-offer floor, and the seven-day expiry is tight enough to push the punter into staking the free bets quickly. The debit-card restriction narrows the qualifying deposit to debit card funding, which excludes e-wallets and prepaid cards.

Betway’s BTTS pricing on the bigger matches sits at margins in the four to six per cent band, similar to Sky Bet, and the bet builder is offered across the Premier League, the Championship and the European cups. The bet builder’s combined price tends to read a few percentage points inside the singles, and the punter who backs the singles has paid the singles’ margins; the punter who backs the builder has paid the builder’s margin. Either is a valid routine.

For a punter who wants the welcome offer and the bet builder on the same bookmaker, Betway is the more generous of the two at the headline level — £40 in free bets against Sky Bet’s £30 — but the headline is the headline. The £10 qualifying stake and the 2.0 minimum odds are the terms that decide whether the offer is worth the qualifying bet, and the punter who reads both books of terms has the comparison.

3. Midnite — the smaller welcome, the bigger minimums

Midnite’s sports welcome offer is £25 in free bets and 50 free spins for new customers who bet £5 or more on pre-match odds of EVS (2.0) or greater within fourteen days of sign-up, with the free bets valid for seven days. The £5 qualifying stake is the lowest of the three welcome offers covered here, and the fourteen-day window is the longest, and the punter who wants time to think has it. The 50 free spins are on casino games rather than BTTS, and a mixed-product promotion of the kind that became prohibited after 19 January 2026 is not what this is — the free spins are an additional product on the welcome offer, not a condition for the free bet.

Midnite holds Gambling Commission licence 101839 and shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. The acca builder is Midnite’s name for the bet builder, and the popular-accas section is Midnite’s curated list of pre-built accumulators. The price-boost section is the market most relevant to a BTTS punter: a price boost on a popular BTTS selection can lift the price from 1.91 to 2.10 and shift the margin from five per cent to a tighter band. The boosts are time-limited and stake-limited, and the punter who waits for a boost on a fixture they were going to back anyway has paid the tighter margin without changing their selection.

For a punter who wants a low-stakes welcome and a bookmaker that publishes its own licence on the front page, Midnite is the smaller of the three welcome offers but the more transparent of the three on what the licence covers. Midnite’s BTTS pricing sits in the four to six per cent band on the bigger matches.

4. DAZN Bet — the cash-out product

DAZN Bet offers cash out, bet builder, daily bet boosts and in-play betting, with cash out availability not guaranteed and bets standing if it is unavailable. The cash-out clause is the line worth reading: a bet that DAZN Bet declines to cash out at a particular moment is settled on the original selection at full-time, and the punter who has not seen the line should not assume the cash-out button is always there. The daily bet boosts are price boosts on selected fixtures, and the bet builder is offered on the bigger football matches.

DAZN Bet holds Gambling Commission licence 048756 under DZBT Limited, and the operator’s BTTS pricing typically falls within the four to six per cent band on Premier League and Championship matches. The in-play product is depth-led on the bigger fixtures and lighter on the lower leagues, and the punter who backs BTTS in-play on a League One match may find the price has moved two or three ticks by the time the bet is placed. The cash-out product is DAZN Bet’s differentiator: where some operators offer cash-out only on the bigger markets, DAZN Bet offers it on the in-play BTTS market more often than most, and the punter who likes to trade positions mid-match has a usable tool.

For a punter who wants the cash-out, DAZN Bet is a stronger choice than Sky Bet on the in-play market and weaker on the welcome offer. The decision between the two is a decision between cash-out and welcome, and the punter who places fewer than one in-play BTTS bet a week does not need DAZN Bet’s depth.

5. Betboro — the in-play and the boosts

Betboro offers in-play markets and cash-out on football, racing and tennis, boosted odds on selected singles from £10 stakes, and responsible gambling tools including deposit limits, reality checks and self-exclusion. The boosted-odds clause names a £10 minimum stake, and the punter who backs a boost at less than £10 is not eligible. The in-play product is offered on the bigger football leagues and on the racing and tennis markets, and the cash-out is offered on football in particular.

Betboro holds Gambling Commission licence 044181 under Webmedia Development N.V., and the operator’s BTTS pricing sits in the five to seven per cent band on Premier League matches and wider on the lower leagues. The boosted-odds section is the differentiator: a boost on a popular fixture can lift the price from 1.91 to 2.20 and shift the margin meaningfully, and the punter who waits for a boost on a BTTS selection they were going to back has the same edge as on Midnite’s boosts. The deposit limit and reality check are part of the operator’s safer-gambling product, and the punter who sets the deposit limit on sign-up has the regulator’s recommended starting position.

For a punter who backs BTTS in-play on football and wants a boost on a singles selection, Betboro is a usable operator; for a punter who backs BTTS on the outright result before kick-off, the in-play depth is unused product and the boost is the differentiator.

6. DragonBet — the Welsh football and the rugby

DragonBet’s app is published by DragonBet Ltd and features Welsh football and rugby markets, racing, American football, in-play betting and bet builder markets. The Welsh football and rugby markets are the differentiator: a punter who backs BTTS on a Welsh Premier League match or on a Welsh rugby match has a market most other bookmakers do not price. The racing and American football markets are standard; the in-play product is offered on the bigger football matches; the bet builder is offered on Premier League and Championship.

DragonBet holds Gambling Commission licence 064908, and the operator’s BTTS pricing on Premier League matches sits in the four to six per cent band. The Welsh football market is the operator’s own product and the punter who backs it should expect a wider margin on the smaller leagues than on the Premier League; the published terms on the smaller leagues are thinner, and the punter who has not read them has not checked the operator’s BTTS settlement rules on the league they are betting on.

For a punter whose interest is on the Welsh leagues, DragonBet is the operator to compare against. For a punter whose interest is on the Premier League, the comparison is with Sky Bet, Betway and Midnite on margin.

7. Bet600 — the best odds guaranteed on racing

Bet600 pays Best Odds Guaranteed on horse racing: if the starting price is bigger than the early or show price taken, the bet is paid at the SP. BOG is a horse-racing concession and does not apply to football markets, and a BTTS punter does not benefit directly from Bet600’s racing product. Bet600’s football pricing is offered on the Premier League, the Championship and the European cups, and the operator’s BTTS margins sit in the five to seven per cent band.

Bet600 holds Gambling Commission licence 044731 under Tyche Tech Limited, and the in-play product is offered on the bigger football matches. The bet builder is offered on Premier League and Championship, and the welcome offer is a smaller free-bet package than Sky Bet, Betway or Midnite.

For a punter whose primary interest is horse racing and whose secondary interest is football, Bet600’s BOG is the differentiator; for a BTTS-only punter, the comparison is with the bigger operators on margin.

8. Geoff Banks — the ante-post and the live prices

Geoff Banks’ app is published by GB Sports Advisors Ltd and offers live in-play prices and ante-post prices on future events. Ante-post is a horse-racing concession and does not apply to football; a BTTS punter does not benefit from Geoff Banks’ ante-post product. The live in-play prices are offered on the bigger football matches, and the operator’s BTTS margins sit in the four to six per cent band.

Geoff Banks holds Gambling Commission licence 054095, and the operator’s smaller scale means the BTTS market on a League One fixture may be unpriced or priced less competitively than on Sky Bet or Betway. The punter who backs BTTS on the lower leagues at Geoff Banks has read the published terms and accepted the thinner product.

For a punter whose interest is on the bigger football leagues with a smaller operator, Geoff Banks is a usable bookmaker; for a punter whose interest is on the lower leagues, the comparison is with a deeper bookmaker.

9. BetUK — the app-store presence and the exclusions

BetUK’s free bets exclude virtual sports, esports and non-UK/IE horse racing, and minimum odds apply. The exclusions narrow the qualifying markets on the welcome offer, and a BTTS punter does not see the exclusion bite — BTTS on a Premier League or Championship match is inside the qualifying set. The minimum odds push the qualifying selection away from the shortest-priced favourites, and the standard 2.0 minimum applies.

BetUK is published by LeoVegas Gaming p.l.c. and holds Gambling Commission licence 039198, the same parent company as BetMGM. The operator’s BTTS margins occupy the four to six per cent range on the bigger matches, and the bet builder is offered on Premier League and Championship.

For a punter who backs BTTS on the bigger football matches and wants a smaller-scale welcome offer, BetUK is a usable bookmaker; for a punter who backs BTTS on virtual sports or esports, the exclusion bites and the bookmaker is the wrong choice.

10. Copybet — the best odds guaranteed on racing

Copybet offers Best Odds Guaranteed all day, every day on all UK and Irish racing, and pays first past the post on horse racing even if the winner is later disqualified. BOG on racing is the differentiator; a BTTS punter does not benefit directly from Copybet’s racing product. Copybet UK Limited states it is licensed and regulated in Great Britain by the Gambling Commission under account number 53774, and the operator’s BTTS margins average four to six per cent on the bigger football matches.

Copybet’s name comes from the copy-betting product the operator offers: a punter can copy the bets of named tipsters on the platform at the prices the tipster took. The product is closer to a betting exchange than a traditional bookmaker, and the punter who copies a tipster pays the tipster’s commission and the platform’s margin. The product is not for the punter who wants a pure BTTS bookmaker.

For a punter whose interest is in copy-betting and who wants a BTTS option on the same platform, Copybet is a usable bookmaker; for a BTTS-only punter, the comparison is with Sky Bet or Betway on margin.

The landscape of BTTS bookmakers in Great Britain

The table is built around the licence, the holder, and what each operator’s own published terms say on the relevant subject — BTTS settlement rules where the operator publishes them, and the welcome-offer or product term where it is the most specific statement the operator makes. A column of “cover price” was considered and dropped, because the BTTS price on a particular fixture is not a property of the operator and changes minute by minute; what changes is the operator’s BTTS settlement rule and the operator’s product terms, and those are what the table reads.

What the licence landscape shows

Every operator in the table holds a remote general betting standard real events licence, and every operator is on the Commission’s public register against the licence number shown. The register is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence, and any quoted count of GB-licensed operators must carry the date the register was consulted. No count is given here without that date, and the punter who wants a count of their own searches the register on the Commission’s website.

The licence landscape has hundreds of remote betting licence holders, and the ten operators in the table are a selection for readers of this page rather than the whole licensed market. A punter who backs BTTS at an operator not in this table has read that operator’s licence number on the Commission’s register and accepts the comparison on margin and settlement terms. The licence proves regulation; it does not prove product quality, and the comparison is on the terms each operator publishes.

Several brands run under one parent, and the punter who sees LeoVegas Gaming PLC listed against both BetUK and BetMGM should know that the two are sister brands under one licence holder. The Commission’s register lists the trading name separately from the licence holder, and a punter who wants to know which brand runs on which licence checks the register by name. Two trading names under one licence holder carry one licence and one set of safer-gambling obligations, not two.

How a winning BTTS bet returns, in plain numbers

Take a £10 stake on BTTS Yes at decimal odds 1.90. The return is £10 multiplied by 1.90, which is £19. The net profit is £10 multiplied by 1.90 minus £10, which is £9. The £9 is the punter’s winnings and the £10 is the stake returned. A £10 stake on BTTS No at the same price returns the same £19 if No lands and zero if Yes lands; the calculation is mechanical and the result is the stake times the price, with the stake subtracted to give the profit.

A two-leg combination at 1.80 and 2.00 carries a combined price of 3.60, and a £10 stake returns £36 if both legs land. The combined price is the product of the legs, and the margin is the product of the margins — a four-leg accumulator at four modest favourites compounds into a margin closer to twenty per cent, and the punter who stacks legs to chase a headline price is paying the bookmaker more than the headline implies.

A £10 free bet at 2.00 returns £10 in profit if it lands, because the stake is not the punter’s and is not returned with the win. The expected value of the free bet is the stake times the price minus one, divided by the price, multiplied by the payout share of the market. A £10 free bet at 1.90 has an expected value of £10 multiplied by 0.90, divided by 1.90, multiplied by the market’s payout share — a market priced at 1.90 / 1.90 has a payout share of roughly 95 per cent, and the expected value is £4.50. A £10 free bet’s headline reads £19, the profit lands as £9 on a win, and the expected value across many free bets at that price is £4.50. The headline is the headline; the expected value is what the offer is worth.

The expected cost of clearing a bonus is the turnover multiplied by the margin of the market. A £50 bonus at a 10x wagering requirement means £500 of qualifying bets, and a market at a five per cent margin costs £500 multiplied by 5 per cent, which is £25. The punter who clears a £50 bonus on a five per cent margin market expects to pay £25 to do so, and the bonus is worth the clearing cost only when the bonus exceeds the clearing cost. A £50 bonus at £25 of clearing cost has an expected net value of £25 before any other term; a £10 bonus with the same £25 clearing cost results in an expected net value of negative £15, and the punter who clears it is paying the operator.

Where the punter gets the best price

The biggest variable in BTTS pricing is the time of the bet, not the operator. A bet placed three hours before kick-off carries a wider margin than the same bet placed at kick-off, and the difference is one to three per cent on Premier League matches. A bet placed the night before carries a wider margin still. The punter who wants the tightest margin bets the match in the last ten minutes before kick-off, when the team news is in and the price has tightened.

The second variable is the operator’s product. A bet builder carries a tighter combined margin than the singles on the same selections, and the punter who backs a three-leg bet builder on a BTTS Yes plus a home win plus an over 2.5 goals combination has paid one margin instead of three. The bet builder is the cheaper product on the same selections; the punter who backs the singles has paid three margins.

A fourth variable is the boost. A price boost on a popular BTTS selection can lift the price from 1.91 to 2.10 and shift the margin to a tighter band, and the boost is the punter’s edge when the boost is on a fixture the punter was going to back anyway. The advantage disappears when the boost is on a fixture the punter would not otherwise back; the boost then becomes a marketing term for a longer price on a less probable selection, and the punter pays the wider margin on a selection they did not choose.

What a £10 free bet is worth on BTTS

Take a £10 free bet at decimal odds 1.90 on a BTTS Yes selection. The stake is not returned with a win, so the profit is £10 multiplied by 1.90 minus £10, which is £9. The expected value across many free bets at that price is £10 multiplied by 0.90, divided by 1.90, multiplied by the market’s payout share — a market priced at 1.90 / 1.90 has a payout share of roughly 95 per cent, and the expected value is £4.50. The £10 free bet is worth £4.50 on average, not £10, and not £19. The headline is the headline; the expected value is the offer.

A £10 free bet at 5.00 — a longer price the punter might back if they want a bigger potential return — has an expected value of £10 multiplied by 4.00, divided by 5.00, multiplied by 95 per cent, which is £7.60. The longer the odds, the higher the expected value of the free bet, because the profit scales with the price and the stake is fixed. A £10 free bet at 1.50 has an expected value of £10 multiplied by 0.50, divided by 1.50, multiplied by 95 per cent, which is £3.17. The free bet is worth more at longer prices, and the punter who backs a long-odds selection with a free bet has extracted more value than the punter who backs a short-odds selection.

The catch is that longer prices carry lower probabilities. A free bet at 5.00 wins one in five times on average; a free bet at 1.50 wins two in three. The expected value scales with the price, but the variance scales faster. A punter who backs five £10 free bets at 1.50 expects to win three and lose two, with a return of £30 in profit and £20 of stake returned only on wins — net profit around £15. A punter who backs five £10 free bets at 5.00 expects to win one and lose four, with a return of £40 in profit on one win and nothing on the four losers — net profit £40 with high variance. The expected values are £15.85 and £38.00 respectively; the realised outcomes depend on which side the variance falls.

The choice between a short-odds free bet and a long-odds free bet is a choice between two variances and two expected values, and the punter who picks the long odds has picked the bigger expected value and the bigger swing. There is no right answer; there is the punter’s appetite for variance.

Where the bonus cap matters

Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x, so a £10 bonus at 50x needs £500 of qualifying bets before the bonus becomes withdrawable; under the cap, no more than £100 of qualifying bets is required to clear the same bonus. A £50 bonus at 10x needs £500 of qualifying bets; a £50 bonus at 50x needs £2,500 of qualifying bets, and the cap closes off the more punishing rollover. The cap does not close off the rollover; it closes off the worst version of the rollover.

The cap also bans mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types such as betting, casino, bingo and lottery, for example “bet on football to get free spins”. The Midnite welcome offer, with its £25 in free bets and 50 free spins, is structured as two products on one welcome rather than a mixed-product promotion, and the free spins are an additional product rather than a condition for the free bet. The punter who reads the welcome offer’s terms has read whether the offer is a single-product or mixed-product promotion, and the difference matters under the post-January 2026 rules.

Whether the 10x cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition is not established, and a free bet that pays out as cash on a win does not require a turnover. The punter who sees a welcome offer that promises “free bets, no wagering” should read the operator’s own terms for the bonus condition, because “no wagering” can mean either “no rollover before withdrawal” or “free bet, stake not returned”. The two are not the same.

What the punter pays to clear a welcome offer

A £30 welcome offer at a 10x wagering requirement means £300 of qualifying bets, and a BTTS market at a five per cent margin costs £300 multiplied by 5 per cent, which is £15. The punter who clears a £30 bonus on a five per cent margin market expects to pay £15, and the bonus is worth the clearing cost only when the bonus exceeds the clearing cost. A £30 bonus at £15 of clearing cost has an expected net value of £15 before any other term.

A £40 welcome offer at the same 10x requirement means £400 of qualifying bets, and the clearing cost is £20 at the same margin. The expected net value is £20. A £25 welcome offer means £250 of qualifying bets, and the clearing cost is £12.50. The expected net value is £12.50.

The numbers above assume the punter wagers only the bonus amount; in practice, a welcome offer that pays free bets rather than cash bonus means the stake on the free bet is the free bet itself, and the qualifying bet on the welcome offer’s first step is the punter’s own stake at minimum odds. The welcome offer that asks for £10 at minimum odds of 2.0 has a qualifying bet cost of £10 multiplied by the margin on the qualifying market — roughly 50p at a five per cent margin. The clearing cost of the free bets themselves is the free bet stake times the expected loss rate on the markets the free bet is wagered on, and the punter who wagers the free bet on a five per cent margin market at a 1.90 price pays 50p of expected cost per £10 free bet.

The punter who sees “£30 in free bets” on a Sky Bet welcome page and reads only the headline has missed the qualifying-bet cost, the clearing cost, the minimum odds, the expiry and the debit-card restriction. The £30 is the headline; the cost is the cost. None of the numbers above is exact — the margin varies with the market and the operator — and the punter who wants an exact clearing cost reads the operator’s terms and works the calculation on the specific market.

What the regulator does and does not do

The regulator sets the rules the operator must follow, and the punter who backs BTTS at a licensed operator has the protection of those rules. The regulator does not guarantee a price, does not guarantee a winning bet, and does not guarantee that a free bet will pay out. The punter’s edge is whatever edge they bring to the market; the regulator’s role is to keep the market honest.

Three regulator actions are worth knowing. The first is the licence verification, which the punter does on the Commission’s public register by name, trading name, domain or account number. The second is the safer-gambling tools, which the operator must offer and the punter can set on the operator’s site. The third is the dispute-resolution route, which is the route a punter takes if the operator declines to pay a winning bet; the route runs through the operator first, then the Commission-approved dispute-resolution body, and only then the small claims court. The punter who has read the right fee number on the register has the route; the punter who has not, has not.

Three regulator limits are also worth knowing. The regulator does not set a maximum stake or a maximum payout; the operator sets its own. The regulator does not cap the bonus value beyond the 10x rollover cap and the mixed-product ban; the headline can be £30 or £10,000. The regulator does not enforce the BOG on football, because BOG is a horse-racing concession the operators chose to offer and the regulator has not extended to football. The punter who treats the regulator as the guarantor of every term has mistaken the regulator for the operator.

What the BTTS market costs in summary

A BTTS market is a binary football market priced Yes or No, settled on the regulation ninety minutes plus any stoppage time the referee adds, and offered by every UK-licensed bookmaker on the bigger football leagues. The margin on a BTTS market is typically four to six per cent on the bigger leagues and wider on the lower leagues, and the punter reads the margin off the prices themselves rather than from the operator. A 1.90 / 1.90 market carries roughly a five per cent margin; a 1.80 / 2.00 market carries roughly a 5.6 per cent margin; a 1.50 / 3.50 market carries closer to seven per cent.

A winning BTTS bet returns the stake multiplied by the decimal odds, with the profit being the stake multiplied by the odds minus one. A combination bet multiplies the legs into one price before any stake is applied, and the margin compounds with each leg. A free bet does not return the stake, and the expected value of a £10 free bet at 1.90 is roughly £4.50 on a five per cent margin market. A welcome offer’s clearing cost is the bonus multiplied by the wagering requirement multiplied by the margin of the qualifying market, and a £30 bonus at 10x on a five per cent margin market costs £15 to clear.

The cost of a BTTS market to the punter is the margin plus the variance. The margin is what the bookmaker keeps on every pound wagered; the variance is what the punter keeps in their own bankroll. A punter who backs ten BTTS selections at 1.90 with a £10 stake on each has staked £100 and expected to receive £95 on average, leaving £5 of margin to the bookmaker and the remaining £95 split across winners and losers at the market’s implied probability. The £5 is what the bookmaker earns; the £95 is what the punter plays for; the breakdown between winners and losers is the punter’s own variance to manage.

The bookmakers on the Commission’s register are the bookmakers the punter can compare. Sky Bet, Betway, Midnite, DAZN Bet, Betboro, DragonBet, Bet600, Geoff Banks, BetUK and Copybet each hold a remote general betting standard real events licence, each publishes its own terms, and each carries BTTS as part of its football product. The punter who wants a benchmark reads Sky Bet’s terms first and the others’ terms after, and the punter who wants the tightest margin reads the prices on the morning of the match.

Frequently asked questions on both teams to score betting

Where can I bet on both teams to score?

Any UK-licensed bookmaker offers BTTS as part of its football product, and the bigger operators — Sky Bet, Betway, Midnite, DAZN Bet, Betboro, DragonBet, Bet600, Geoff Banks, BetUK and Copybet — all price the market on Premier League and Championship matches. To check that a specific bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence, search the Commission’s public register by business name, trading name, domain or account number; the register is the whole test of who holds a licence, and a brand whose name does not appear there is not licensed to serve customers in Great Britain. Credit cards are banned for gambling funding in Great Britain, so a deposit on a licensed operator is made by debit card or a non-credit bank-based method, and a deposit by credit card or credit-card-funded e-wallet is declined by the licensed operator at the source.

What does to score in both halves bet mean?

“To score in both halves” is a separate market from BTTS. BTTS asks whether each team scores at least once in the regulation ninety minutes. To score in both halves asks whether a named team — usually the favourite — scores in each half of the same match. A team that scores once in the first half and once in the second half settles the bet as a winner; a team that scores twice in the first half and not at all in the second half settles as a loser, because the team did not score in both halves. The market is usually priced on the favourite only, with the outsider’s “score in both halves” priced at much longer odds. The settlement window is the regulation ninety minutes, and extra-time goals do not count unless the bookmaker specifically prices an extra-time market.

What is a both teams to score bet?

A BTTS bet is a single football match selection priced Yes or No, settled on the regulation ninety minutes plus stoppage time the referee adds. Yes wins when each team scores at least once in that window, including own goals credited to the side that conceded them; No wins when one or both teams fail to score. The bet is independent of the match result, and a 4–2 home win settles the same way as a 1–1 draw. A combination bet stacks BTTS with other selections from the same match in a bet builder, and an accumulator stacks BTTS with selections from independent matches. The bet is offered by every UK-licensed bookmaker on the bigger football leagues and is priced Yes and No on every Premier League fixture.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register is the whole test of whether a bookmaker holds a licence, and it can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. Every licensed operator is listed there against the licence category and the licence holder’s name, and the punter who wants to check a brand searches the register and reads the entry. The register does not list every trading name of a multi-brand licence holder, and the punter who sees a brand name that is not on the register should check the parent company’s licence entry rather than assume the brand is unlicensed. A search of the register on the date of the check is the test the Commission expects the punter to do.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

The return on a winning bet is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 stake at 1.90 returns £19, of which £10 is the stake returned and £9 is the net profit. A £10 stake at 2.50 returns £25, of which £15 is the net profit. A combination bet multiplies the legs into one price before any stake is applied, and a two-leg combination at 1.80 and 2.00 carries a combined price of 3.60, so a £10 stake returns £36 if both legs land. A free bet does not return the stake, and a £10 free bet at 1.90 returns £9 in profit if it lands. The calculation is mechanical, and the punter who knows the price and the stake can write the return before the bet is placed.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The bookmaker’s margin is the slice of every pound wagered that the bookmaker keeps on average across the market, calculated from the prices themselves. For a two-way market priced at decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90, the implied payout share is 1 ÷ 1.90 plus 1 ÷ 1.90, which is roughly 1.0526, and the margin is 1.0526 minus 1, which is roughly 5.3 per cent. For a market priced at 1.80 and 2.00, the payout share is 1 ÷ 1.80 plus 1 ÷ 2.00, or 1.0556, and the margin is 5.6 per cent. The smaller the margin, the better the price for the punter, and a margin between two and five per cent is the band on the bigger outright markets. The margin is what the bookmaker earns before the bet is settled, and the punter who reads the prices has read the margin.

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