Betting on soccer has been a long standing form of entertainment since the 1920’s. Soccer betting started with fans at soccer matches standing outside stadiums and wagering on the game using the ticket or pool system. A bettor would place a wager and would be given a piece of the ticket or pool in return for the bet. If the bettor won his or her play, they would return the portion of the ticket or pool and would be compensated for the win.
Times have changed and those days are well in the past! Soccer bets can now be placed from the comfort of our own home using offshore sportsbooks. Today, we will explain how to place a wager on soccer and also what the best soccer betting websites out there are. Our experts have prepared a list of top-ranked sportsbooks where soccer is one of the main focuses. Ready to bring your A-game betting on soccer online? Great, let’s get started.
Here are our top online sports betting sites for soccer:
Top Soccer Betting Sites
BetOnline
- Very generous bonus payment system
- Bonus codes for every major event
- Mobile compatible and accessible
Bovada
SportsBetting.ag
BetUS
The popularity of soccer is in upswing across the country, carried by the achievement of the United States women’s national soccer team who clinched yet another FIFA Women’s World Cup victory in Paris, France in 2019. This success has translated into bigger interest for soccer betting and the game itself.
Yet, you must be wondering. Which are the best soccer betting sites in the USA? Where can you place a wager and be safely on your way? Well, the answer is quite simple – at one of our recommended top 5 soccer betting sites! Should you take our word for it?
Absolutely, but we also want you to understand why one sportsbook is good and another one isn’t. Here are a couple of reasons why the sportsbooks we recommend are actually good for your chances of success as a bettor:
- Broad coverage of soccer events
- Great odds and lines on all major events
- All sorts of welcome/reload and one-off promotions
- Trusted sportsbook authorities with great reputation
- Quick and reliable payouts with no fees charged
These are just some of the aspects of the sportsbooks where soccer betting is one of the main focuses. We put a fair deal of importance by the reputation as well as the banking facilities of a sportsbook. All in the hopes of helping you pick a site that will boost your odds of success.
Four Steps to Star Betting on Soccer
As you can imagine, there are practical steps to take and improve your soccer betting game. Some of these steps are common sense, others are the result of trial-and-effort on our team’s part throughout the years.
- The first thing you need to do so you can bet on soccer is to find an offshore sportsbook you can trust. Of course, when you start looking, you will come across through hundreds of possible choices. Yet, the sportsbooks you can bet on and get maximum value for your time and money are fewer. Ultimately, you want to make sure that you have chosen one of the top soccer online sports betting sites.
- Next, you want to sign up for an account. All websites expedite the process, so long as you are willing to fill out the requested information and be on your way. You will need to provide a lot of personal data which is used by the sportsbook to verify that you are of the legal age to bet on soccer online. Remember to provide truthful information so as to avoid withdrawal problems later on.
- Once you have set up your account, it’s time to fund it. Based on what soccer sites you choose, your depositing and withdrawing options will vary. Normally, US bettors have access to bank cards, e-wallets, direct wire transfers, check payouts, hand-to-hand cash delivery, and even cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. In all cases, it’s important to not incur any additional fees for services rendered nor be limited in your options to withdrawal money.
- Once you have jumped through all the hoops, it’s time to bring your A-game in soccer betting. There is a whole lot of games out there and whether you bet on the EPL, La Liga, the Bundesliga or even good old MLS, you are good to go!
Top Offshore Soccer Sites
Years of experience have taught us how to find the best online sportsbook for betting soccer, without wasting daylight. The upshot? US bettors have access to some of the best sportsbooks that offer soccer lines and odds to date. With the increasing interest in the sport, betting is also reaping benefits. As a result, it remains imperative that you find your way to the top soccer sites out there and place your wagers at some great games and at great prices.
Below, we will list another four of our top online sportsbooks for betting on soccer. There are many other sportsbooks that we recommend for other sports but for strictly betting on soccer, we find that these are the best!
- Bookmaker – Bookmaker is one of the longest-running online sportsbooks that offers soccer wagering. With 30 years in the game and intact reputation, Bookmaker guarantees that your winnings are paid in a timely fashion. It’s no surprise that this operator ranks as one of the top online sportsbook, offering various soccer wagers, to wit USA – MLS, Premier League, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europe League and over 25 national and international soccer betting competitions!
- GTBets – When it comes to getting a wide variety of available soccer matchups, there is no better site than GTBets. GTBets offers soccer from all over the world and competitive odds, moneylines, spreads, totals, props and more. At GT Bets, you can place a soccer wager on events from the US – MLS, as well as over 50 countries around the world! Plus, there is a great range of promos to keep your bankroll solid!
- Intertops – Intertops offers you some of the best options for soccer betting. Want to place a future bet? That’s possible with Intertops’ comprehensive betting offer. Since the winners in many competitions, including the EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga and so on, are decided over a period of time, Intertops will offer you wagers well ahead of each game. You can place the soccer wagers you feel confident about ahead of a game and squeeze out a better value!
- BetOnline – BetOnline is player-driven online soccer sportsbook, and their motto is ‘focus on the player’. Whatever the the event you need covered, BetOnline will have it listed. This includes the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, and UEFA CL & EL, not to forget the Bundesliga of course. Other than that BetOnline breaks down the soccer wagers you can place by country. Pick from China, England, Finland, Denmark, and a number of other places where soccer is a beloved pastime.
Types of Soccer Bets
As with any sport, betting on a soccer game isn’t just picking a team and placing a certain amount of money. There is a number of wagers you can place and they are available across all soccer betting sites. While the most successful ones are probably always going to be match bets, there’s no harm in being familiar with all the rest.
- Match Result – These are the most common wagers, based on whether a team will win, draw or lose. Most soccer betting websites focus on providing you with match winner bets first, and only then introduce any variations thereof.
- Totals – In totals you place a wager on the total goals scored during a game. This betting is also known as Under/Over or U/O for short. Your wager will have to correctly predict whether the game will be under or over a fixed number of goals.
- Handicap – A handicap wager is an adjusted line that adds or subtracts from or to the points of a team in order to balance the game and give bettors an alternative form of soccer wager.
- Correct Score – In correct match score, a player picks the final score of a game and bets on it.
- Half Time Result – A bettor focuses on the half-time result and bets on that outcome.
- First/Last Scorer – These wagers are based on a specific player scoring either first or last in the game.
- Live betting – A bet that’s placed on a game already in progress. This is a type of a soccer wager best left for advanced players.
- Next Team To Score – Placing a bet on the next team to score.
- Next Player To Score – Placing a bet on the next player to score.
Soccer Betting Lines & Odds
The odds of the soccer game are usually released several days in advance of the game. Many times the odds will be released and then advanced information such as lineups, starters, weather and other info will cause the lines to either go up or down.
One essential part of improving your soccer betting game is to keep a close eye on injuries. Soccer players spend a lot of time carrying some form of an injury. Some players are forced to play in bursts, never sticking on the field more than 15 minutes whereas others often have to skip games.
Injury reports are crucial to determining what your next soccer wager should be like. The best soccer betting websites out there will make sure their odds reflect any confirmed injured players as well.
Live Betting on Soccer
On many of the available online sportsbooks out there, you can now bet soccer matches live and this is a big asset for advanced soccer players. The odds tend to shift and change constantly, so live soccer betting is definitely a challenging aspect of the industry.
As common sense dictates, when an underdog scores a goal first, the chances of them winning the match is much stronger than prior to that point. And just like that, online sportsbooks immediately increase the odds of the underdog winning. Yet, live betting gives you sufficient leeway to one-up the soccer betting site and show them how the correct assessment of a game before it even starts can bring you big profit further down the way.
Live betting is available at all of the online sportsbooks we have reviewed and approve of. The two sportsbooks that we specifically recommend for in-play soccer wagers are Bookmaker and Bovada. Both of these online sportsbooks have dedicated servers and web pages focused on live contests. Meanwhile, BetOnline offers a $25 risk free wager.
Soccer Betting Strategy
No matter what sport you bet on, finding a strategy that works is the most important aspect of betting. Have you heard of Soccermatics? If the answer is not, don’t worry. David Sumpter is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden is a big soccer fan and he devised winning strategies how to bet on soccer and be successful in the process. Ultimately, Mr. Sumpter establishes some guiding principles that makes soccer bettors successful.
However, in Soccermatics, he claims that there are patterns from one league to the next, and one year to the next. This confirms that soccer betting is a matter of understanding the game, and some hard maths skills. Sumpter turned a 25% profit in just half a season. Therefore, if you wager $1,000 over the first 3 months, you can expect a profit of around $250. Yet, Sumpter’s wife, who isn’t a maths whizz, managed to hit the same level of return without complex calculations. Beginner’s luck, Sumpter said.
Once you figure out what works for you and your style of betting, you will start making soccer betting more of a investment than a form of entertainment. However, as a kind reminder, the activity cannot be a steady source of income as there are too many moving parts. If you are great at predicting the outcome of soccer matches, however, you can always work as a tipster on the side. Meanwhile, here are 3 strategies that we recommend using while betting on soccer.
- Watch For Home Teams – Soccer stadiums fill with thousands of people for the smallest matchups so as you can figure, home field plays a huge part in soccer. Away matches take a toll on most players, and as a result – the players. There is quite a bit to consider here, including travel time, player mentality, weather conditions, and even the design of the stadium.
- Find Your Best Odds – With soccer, more than other sports, you will see odds going all over the price range. You can look at one online sports website and find the odds for a game at -120. Then you can look at another website and find that same team at +150. There is no real reason why this happen other than one website has more money laid on that specific team. However, such discrepancies are becoming less common, as the best USA soccer betting sites are in fact buying from top data vendors, such as SBTech in a bid to make sure their odds are always on point.
- Leave Your Emotions At Home – Many times, we see bettors bet on their home team or favorite team simply because of the emotional attachment they have to that team. This is the single biggest mistake a bettor can do. Our rule of thumb is to completely avoid wagering on matches that feature a team we really root for, unless we can objectively see the value of the bet.
Soccer Betting Tips
Betting on soccer can be a real challenge, so keeping in mind some practical advice can’t hurt. To begin with, soccer betting is based on several things – knowledge, understanding and maths. Not everyone is a fond of maths, and then they need to compensate with a deep visceral understanding the game of itself. The good news is that works.
There are some other alternatives to consider as well, such as paid services or listening to a tipster. Some people even purchase software that creates simulations and gives them an average number to bet based off. The best advice anyone is ever going to give you about soccer betting in the USA or Europe, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, is that there is absolutely no way of knowing how a game would turn out.
This is to say that all the games that offer to pay you a decent – or even minimum return – on your bet would always be based on risk.
3 Advanced Soccer Betting Tips
Some of the most advanced soccer betting tips that we feel is the most important to your success are found in this section of this soccer betting guide. These tips are based on experience. While they are just a guiding principles, we hold them to be accurate and helpful. Ultimately, we hope that adhering to these bets when applicable would help you improve your own betting game.
Don’t Blindly Bet Home Teams Simply Because They Are Home – The home advantage gives teams a big boost, but how big of a boost really? Just think about Liverpool facing Barcelona in UEFA CL 2019 and turning a 3-0 into 4-0 on their home turf. Yet, nobody would have backed Liverpool as a winner at that time, after they lost three nil in Barcelona.
Bookmakers are well aware of the fact that the home team usually plays better and they give a slight advantage to that team – when the teams are somewhat evenly matched. Of course home teams also falter – especially against better teams or even when they feel the pressure to perform better. Another such example would be Manchester United who had a disastrous 2018/2019 EPL Season with the now ousted Jose Mourinho.
Consider Betting Draw – There truly are not many games that end up as a draw but when they do, the odds are usually much stronger than playing a team to win outright. If you are lucky enough to bet on draw on a day that happens, you stand a good deal to pocket some decent profit on the way!
Become An Expert At One League – There are dozens of leagues that you can bet on but it would be nearly impossible to learn everything about each one. Even when looking at BetOnline’s offer, there are already 20 leagues that you couldn’t possibly follow in detail.
Therefore, you should pick one league and become an expert in that league. Learn what you can about the team, management, players, stats and team form, where they play well, where they don’t play so well, and so forth. And most of all, don’t bet on soccer leagues that you aren’t familiar with. Don’t be afraid to pass on a game as well. Better safe than sorry.
Mobile Betting
Mobile devices have made it easier to wager online using a cell phone or tablet. Several of the online sportsbooks now offer apps and the ability to wager online at any time and from any place. This makes betting on soccer available not only when you are in front of your computer at your house, but pretty much wherever you are at anytime. It’s a sort of flexibility that the majority of players appreciate.
All of the online sportsbook that offer soccer we list here also offer a comprehensive mobile platform. Do you need an app specifically to make your wagers count? We don’t think so, although it’s a comfort we wouldn’t turn down.
Soccer Leagues to Bet On
Soccer is broken down into various leagues, usually by location. Each country around the world has some sort of a league going. Different divisions of the league see clubs of different skill levels compete. For instance, in England you have the English Cup (a sort of a feeder league) and the English Premier League. In the Cup, you get teams that aren’t yet to the point where they can compete with the best teams in the EPL. Since England is the home of soccer, each city has a team – or even two, which gives the country enough players to hold multiple competitions. The best leagues to bet on are understandably the ones you are the most familiar with.
Some of the most popular league include the already mentioned English Premier League, Major League Soccer (MLS) or the USA soccer competition, as well as various UEFA Leagues, La Liga, CONCACAF, and FIFA. Each of these leagues attracts thousands of people to watch in some way, and understandably, a fair bit of the people who watch also place wagers on soccer events. The best US betting sites for soccer have long learned how to capitalize on such events.
The Season
The soccer season really varies depending on what league you are talking about. For the most part, you can find some sort of soccer league, around the world, to bet on regardless of the month of the year. Soccer is one of the best sports to wager on because there is always something going on, whether it’s one of the big competitions, a friendly or show match.
The English Premier League regular season runs from the beginning of August through May. MLS or Major League Soccer regular season starts in March and runs through December.There are also leagues like FIFA, CONCACAF, various UEFA Leagues and La Liga.
Biggest Events to Bet On
The biggest event to bet on in soccer is, without any doubt, the FIFA World Cup. To help you put this in perspective, soccer betting sites in the USA and beyond registered the whopping US$36 billion in total profit on the FIFA 2018 World Cup. This is just the profit, not the total amount wagered.
The FIFA World Cup originally came into existence in 1930 and takes place every four years, with the next World Cup taking place in 2021. There are hundreds of games that take place for the FIFA World Cup including the qualifying tournaments that lead up to the championship, which is awarded every four years. Meanwhile, any of the leagues we have already mentioned generate sufficient interest and are definitely worth to place a soccer wager on.
