Elsewhere on this site you can read about the combination bet that includes the Match Result and Both Teams to Score. This is a look solely at the Both Teams to Score wager, which is often expressed as BTTS by the bookmakers. In betting terms, a BBTS wager is about one of the easiest that you can place in terms of understanding what you’re betting on. It is a binary bet that asks you the simple question of whether you think both of the teams taking part in a match will score a goal or not. You will either win your wager or you will lose it, with no middle ground available on a betting market that is easy to understand but tricky to win.
What You’re Betting On
If you’re looking at placing a bet on the BTTS market, it is a wager on whether or not the two teams playing in the match in question will score a goal or not. That is to say, you’re not betting on how many goals will be scored or who will score them, but simply whether or not there will be a goal scored by each of the teams that are playing. A bet on Both Teams to Score Yes requires each of the teams within the specific game that you’re betting on to score a goal in order for it to be a winner. Both Teams to Score No, meanwhile, is a belief that one of the two teams concerned will fail to score a goal during the game.
One thing that it is important to point out about this wager is that it doesn’t matter who scores the goals. Whilst some bets will ignore own goals when it comes to whether or not bookmakers will pay out, the BTTS bet is one in which own goals count as much as goals scored by the correct player for their team. All that matters as fair as this bet is concerned is what the official scoreline is when the full-time whistle is blown. In other words, if Opta declare that the match has finished 5-0, say, then that means that both teams have not scored. If it were to end 1-1, both teams have scored in the match.
Things to Think About
If you’re considering placing a bet on the Both Teams to Score market then there are a couple of things that you’ll want to think about. Firstly, football matches rarely have as many goals in them as people think. The high-scoring games often stick in the memory because of how exciting they are, but matches with scorelines of 0-0, 1-1, 2-0 and so on are much more common than the 6-0 or 7-1 scorelines that crop up every now and then. This is important to remember when you’re looking at the BTTS market because the temptation will naturally be there to say that both teams will score when that might not be all that likely.
The best thing that you can do before you place a bet on this market is to have a look at the form of both teams. There is plenty of information out there about top level football, so you can see how well the two teams concerned have been playing in the weeks building up to the game. If one of the sides has been struggling to keep a clean sheet and the other has been scoring freely, you can be confident that one of the teams is likely to score. What you need to check, though, is whether the team that hasn’t kept many clean sheets has been so leaky because they’ve been focussed on their attacking play or if they simply aren’t very good.
It Usually Isn’t a Bet with the Biggest Odds
One thing that it’s key to think about is that you don’t normally get particularly big odds on the Both Teams to Score market. One way that you can enhance the odds is by refining the bet to look at whether both teams will score in a specific half or whether both teams will score over a given number of goals. You might see odds such as this, for example:
| Market | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Both Teams to Score? | 4/7 | 5/4 |
| BTTS 1st Half | 5/2 | 1/4 |
| BTTS Both Halves | 9/1 | 1/25 |
| BTTS No Draw in Game | 5/4 | 4/7 |
| BTTS 2 or More Goals | 7/2 | 2/13 |