Best Football Betting Sites in 2024

Bet365

If you know anything about online sports betting, you certainly have at least heard about bet365. Founded in 2000 in the United Kingdom, this company has been known among seasoned bettors for offering a wide variety of events in different sports, including (of course) football. Consequently, it's a very interesting choice (maybe the best one) for those who are interested in less-known leagues. There’s also a nice sign-up bonus here: once you get a code and make your first deposit (of a minimum of $20 and a maximum of $200), you receive that same amount of money back.

Pros & Cons

Bet365 Mobile App

Bet365 Sign-Up

1xBet

“Your birthday with 1xBet!”

Founded in 2007, 1xBet has become well-known among many football fans a few years ago, when it signed deals with English clubs Chelsea and Liverpool. Nowadays, this company is perhaps better known for sponsoring the prestigious Serie A (the top flight of Italian football). It should come as no surprise, then, to see that, in comparison to the vast majority of sportsbooks, 1xBet tends to offer excellent football odds — not to mention that its mobile version is considered one of the best apps in the market. Regarding their many bonuses, we found “Your birthday with 1xBet!” to be a sweet one: you receive a free bet for your birthday.

Pros & Cons

1xBet Mobile App

1xBet Sign-Up

Ladbrokes

Ladbrokes (or Ladbrokes Coral) is very popular in Europe, and it isn’t hard to see why: this British company — founded in 1886 — offers a good selection of events coupled with higher-than-average odds. Depending on where you live, however, it has a very noticeable downside: it’s strongly focused on bettors from Ireland and the UK. This can easily be verified by the fact that only people who live in those few countries are fortunate enough to be eligible to win Ladbrokes’ horse betting welcome bonus, in which one gets £20 in free bets when he/she signs up and makes a £5-bet in horse racing.

Pros & Cons

Ladbrokes Sign-Up

Ladbrokes Mobile App

Betway

Betway (Irish) Bonuses and Promotions page

Betway is an online sportsbook known for being a good place for bettors who are into live soccer betting, but maybe an ever bigger competitive advantage is that it presents some useful statistics about a match before it starts (such as each team’s win probability). Another aspect in which this company website stands out is its design, which (besides its elegancy) makes it easy to find an event. As for bonuses and promotions, that’ll depend (as with most other gambling sites) on the country where you’re based in. In any case, if you’re from Ireland, here’s a good one: you’ll receive a 100% match of your first deposit (up to €30) once you sign up.

Pros & Cons

Betway Sign-Up

Betway Mobile App

Betfair

Betfair Exchange page

This British company’s website could already be considered one of the best soccer betting sites by those who only cared about its sportsbook, but where Betfair distinguishes itself is for being the world’s biggest betting exchange market online. In simple terms, a betting exchange is a marketplace that allows bettors to buy and sell odds among themselves (as with stocks in the stock market). In this case, Betfair acts only as an intermediary, getting a commission on the winning bets. As for their (many) different promotions, there’s a page where you can see them all, as well as subscribe to receive offers by e-mail.

Pros & Cons

888sport

888sport Sport Promotions page

Although 888sport (pronounced “triple eight sport”) was founded only in 2008, it’s part of a holding based in Gibraltar whose first website (888casino) was launched in 1997. A nice thing to be said about this online sportsbook is that it allows you to find all of its available football competitions quickly. Also, if you go to its sports betting promotions page, it’ll instantly become obvious to you that they care a lot about attracting football fans. Here’s an example of what we’re talking about: for the entirety of the 2021–22 football season, you can win up to $8,000 if you predict the win-draw-win results of eight selected European matches.

Pros & Cons

888Sport Mobile App

888Sport Sign-Up

William Hill

William Hill's Free or 4

Despite having been founded in the somewhat distant year of 1934, this London-based company has done a good job of keeping itself up to date with changes in the market. Evidence of this is that William Hill was one of the first sportsbooks to have an app. They possibly also have one of the best betting sites overall, as it offers a good selection of live games to bet on. In terms of promotions, an interesting one for football fans can be found on their English page, and it’s called Free or 4: you can win up to £200 in free bets if you pick six matches in which the total number of goals scored ends up being exactly three or four.

Pros & Cons

William Hill Mobile App

William Hill Sign-Up

Paddy Power

Founded in Dublin in 1988, Paddy Power has a variety of outlets not only in Ireland but also in the UK. In regard to its online presence, we can say that it’s been an even higher profile sportsbook since it merged with Betfair in 2015 to form the holding company Flutter Entertainment (of which Sky Bet is also a part). Paddy Power has a good variety of betting options online, and it’s said to offer faster deposits and withdrawals than most other websites. One of its cons is that it’s unashamedly aimed at the UK and a few other markets; its sign-up bonus, for example, isn’t available for residents of most countries in Continental Europe and the Americas.

Pros & Cons

Paddy Power Mobile App

Paddy Power Sign-Up

BetVictor

BetVictor's £/$/€100 Matched Bet Offer

Founded by British bookmaker William Chandler in 1946 (when the sports betting market wasn’t even regulated in the UK), this company is nowadays known for offering good odds overall, particularly for football. This reputation and the fact that their withdrawal limits tend to be higher help to explain why BetVictor is one of the most reputable sportsbooks among more experienced bettors. For new customers (except those who live in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, or Finland), there’s the “£/$/€100 Matched Bet Offer”: by betting on any sports event on odds of at least 2.00, you will be credited with up to $100 in free bets.

Pros & Cons

BetVictor Mobile App

Pinnacle

There’s something to be said about sportsbooks in general before talking about Pinnacle in particular: to protect themselves from big losses, bookmakers tend to limit the amount of money a bettor can wager on a certain event. Pinnacle, however, doesn’t do that, and for a very simple reason: by welcoming long-term winning bettors (known as sharps), they analyze these people’s betting patterns to improve their own estimations about a certain event's probabilities. Besides, this sportsbook has much lower margins (we’ll talk more about this concept later), which means that their odds are higher than average. As a downside, you won’t find many bonuses or promotions here.

Pros & Cons

Pinnacle Mobile App

Pinnacle Sign-Up

Is Betting on Football Legal?

When talking about online football gambling, a question that is often made is if it’s considered a type of legal betting or not. Usually, it is as legal as any other type of sports betting in the country/state you’re based in. So, is it legal in your country? If you're in the Middle East or Northern Africa, the answer is probably no (Islam prohibits gambling); in most (if not all) of Europe, the answer is definitely yes; in the United States, the answer is that it depends on the state you live (although it should be observed that, in most American states, online gambling is at least not criminalized). As you can see, this is a discussion that could easily lead to a whole other article.

Telecom Asia Sport Criteria for Credible Football Betting Sites

We’ve already listed some of the best football betting sites at your disposal and briefly mentioned some reasons why you may prefer one to others. But, whatever your choice ends up being, there are some points for you to take into consideration before opening an account in any of them.

Types of football bets

When thinking about football betting online, most people think in terms of what is called a moneyline bet (also known as 1X2), which is when you simply choose one of the three possible outcomes of any match: a victory of one of the two teams or a draw. There are, however, many other types of bets, such as props (we’ll talk about this later), that won’t be found in all sportsbooks.

Football betting bonuses, promotions, and rewards

We’ve given you just some examples of the many bonuses that are available (either for new customers or older ones) in different online sportsbooks. So, if this is a relevant matter to you, searching for coupons and offers on the internet will definitely be a good investment of your time.

Banking options: deposits, withdrawals, and payouts

Whatever the sportsbook(s) you select, at least some of the deposit and withdrawal options that are offered will be within your reach. But, since you certainly have your preferences in this regard, it’d be wise to search for those websites that offer more convenient options to you.

Customer service and support

A great thing about online betting is that you can bet at any time of the day (and anywhere); yet, some online sportsbooks don’t have 24/7 customer service. If you decide to open an account with such a sportsbook, then, be aware that any problems you might face could take longer to get solved.

Safety and security

Let’s start with the obvious: by registering at a website, you are giving personal information to a third party. So, how do you know it won’t be used in ways that harm you? It’s hard to know this for sure, but most of the sportsbooks recommended earlier have been around for quite a while, which could be considered a good indication of their trustworthiness.

Usability

Some websites and apps are easier to use than others. We don’t want to overemphasize this point because, if you pick the same sportsbook regularly, you’ll end up getting used to it. Still, that’s one more criterion for you to think about, particularly if you plan to make most of your bets on a smartphone

Currencies and languages

You should be aware of the fact that some websites accept a wide range of currencies, while others accept just a few. As for the second point here, this is usually of less importance, but, if English is not your mother tongue, it's understandable that you may feel better about a website in which you could select your preferred language.

Sportsbook list of languages

Handicap, Asian handicap, and other types of bets

As it’s been suggested some paragraphs before, to bet on soccer online can be a much more sophisticated type of online betting than simply picking the winner of a certain match by the end of its 90 minutes. This is a given if you’re from a country such as England (where many people have been used for decades to betting on pretty much anything), but, if you live in a region in which there isn’t much of a culture of sports betting, you’ll probably be surprised to know about some of the betting options we’ll discuss in the next paragraphs.

Unsurprisingly, almost everyone who starts to bet on soccer games tends to prefer betting on matches that involve a high-profile team full of well-known players. Quite often, what happens is that these teams face much weaker opposition; consequently, the odds given for the victory of the richer team are not always very attractive.

To illustrate such a common occurrence, let’s see the odds for the round-11 match of the 2021–22 Premier League season between Chelsea and Burnley, at Stamford Bridge. At that point in the season, the Blues were in the first place, while the Clarets were in 18th place. And the moneyline odds at bet365 a few days before that match were as follows:

Handicap Betting

Moneyline odds

Here, the Blues were so clearly the favorites to win this game that you’d have to bet quite a lot of money on them if you wanted to get a decent return on your investment. To make things more appealing to you, you could select different strategies, one of them being the introduction of a handicap of -1, as if Burnley would have already started with a one-goal advantage:

3-way handicap

This way, you’d have a much better return on your investment than if you had simply picked the home team on the 1X2 market. But, of course, a higher return necessarily means a higher risk: with this handicap, if Chelsea ended up winning by exactly a one-goal margin, you would have lost your money (because this would’ve been considered a draw).

To avoid this type of situation, you could have made that same bet with an Asian handicap. The difference now is that, if Chelsea ended up winning by a difference of exactly one goal, you’d simply receive your money back. Since that’d be a less risky option, the return would also be lower:

Asian handicap

The Asian handicap can get a little more sophisticated than that because you don’t necessarily have to choose a whole number (like 0, -1, or -2). But, if you’re just getting started with sports betting, it’s better to leave that discussion for another time; after all, there are other ways to make betting on a football match even more exciting:

In-play betting/Live betting

This is probably the most relevant type of betting to understand the online sports betting revolution we’ve been witnessing for more than a decade now. Here, you can bet on a match as you watch it, with the live odds constantly changing to reflect what’s going on in the field.

Proposition bets/Side bets/Props

Here, you can bet on events that are not directly related to the outcome of a game. Some examples of this include who’s going to score the first goal, how many yellow cards will there be, and so on.

Outrights/Futures

Some would consider this as another type of proposition bet. Here, your bet is related to long-term events involving the teams or the players — the most common of these being which team will win a specific tournament.

Odds for the winner of the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League

Two Sports Betting Essentials

Whatever the games you choose to follow, you must be aware of the principles of learning how to bet — and win — on any kind of sport. There is at least a handful of them, but here I’d like to highlight two in particular: the concepts of value and juice.

Having at least an idea of what your expected value is when making any type of bet or investment is essential. To do that, you have to estimate what you consider to be the probability of a certain event to happen and whether the odds that are given by a sportsbook seem to overestimate or underestimate that probability.

Let’s say, for example, that you believe there’s roughly a 60% probability of team A beating team B in a given match. Such a percentage is the equivalent of decimal odds of 1.66 (1 / .60). Therefore, if a certain sportsbook offers you odds higher than 1.66 for team A victory, this means that such a bet would have a positive expected value (better known as +EV) for you in the long run.

Now, once you combine the probabilities of all the possible outcomes of a certain match, the sum of them should equal 100%, right? This, however, never happens in sports betting, and the table below will you help you to visualize that:

Moneyline odds

These are pre-match odds for a Primeira Liga (Portugal’s first division) game between Santa Clara and FC Porto. First, let’s convert those odds into percentages:

• 7.00 equals to a 14.3% probability;
• 4.33 equals to 23.1%;
• 1.44 equals to 69.4%.

Now, let’s add the probabilities of all of these three possible outcomes: 

14.3% + 23.1% + 69.4% = 106.8%.

There you have it: a combination of the probabilities of the three possible outcomes exceeding the 100% mark (which would represent fair odds). Hence, 6.8% is this particular bookmaker’s margin of profit — better known as juice.

Margin calculator

How Popular Is Real Money Online Football Wagering?

If you’ve gotten this far, I probably don’t need to convince that soccer gambling is one of the most popular types of online betting nowadays, and the most popular type of sports betting. And, because the game of football is constantly evolving, it’s likely that it will continue to hold its appeal in the next decades.

What Are the Most Popular Football Competitions?

The most popular leagues in the world are the top five European leagues right now: Premier League (England), LaLiga (Spain), Bundesliga (Germany), Serie A (Italy), and Ligue 1 (France).

Alternative Sports Betting Sites

In recent years, more and more companies associated with other types of online gambling have gotten into online sports betting as well. Some of these platforms are quite well known in their respective niches, and they are probably safer options for you to bet than lesser-known online sportsbooks. Examples here include PokerStars, Royal Panda, and Leo Vegas (the latter two being primarily online casinos).

Conclusion

We hope this article has been of value not only to those who are still familiarizing themselves with soccer betting online but also to those who want to get a little deeper into it. Part of what makes sports betting so fascinating is that there’s always something to ponder on.