Betting on the outcome of a football match is one of the most simplistic bets you can place. You’re essentially trying to work out whether the home team will win, the away team will or the game will end in a draw. The value of such bets often isn’t great, so one of the ways that you can look to add value is by adding another aspect to your wager.
One such thing to add is the Both Teams to Score market, often referred to as BTTS. If you place this bet you need both predictions to come true in order for your wager to be a winning one, given that it is effectively a mini accumulator.
Match Result Bets
The first thing we need to do here is to break this bet type up so it is more easily understood. A bet on the match result is a wager on one of three options:
- Home Win
- Draw
- Away Win
This is often called the 1X2 market, with bookmakers referring to the home team as 1, the away team as 2 and the draw as X. The bet you’re placing is, as is always the case unless otherwise specified, on the result at the end of the 90 minutes of the match. You select which of these outcomes you think is most likely to happen and, provided your selection is correct, you’ll win that half of the bet.
Both Teams to Score (BTTS) Wagers
The Both Teams to Score market is equally as easy to understand, given the fact that it is a binary bet. That is to say, you choose either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and you will either be correct or you won’t be. It doesn’t matter what the scoreline is, we just need to know whether both teams have scored or not. A 10-0 win would mean that a bet on ‘No’ would be a winner, because there have been loads of goals but only one team has scored them rather than both teams. Equally, a 10-1 score would mean that a ‘No’ bet on the BTTS market would be a losing wager as both of the participating teams have scored.
The key thing to remember when it comes to Both Teams to Score bets is that it is the scoreline that matters, not the scorer. That is to say, if the goals scored by one of the teams have all come as own goals, they still count towards the final score achieved by that team. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t the players of that team that has scored the goals. In simple terms, if one team has a 0 in the score then bets on BTTS ‘No’ will win because both teams haven’t scored. If there is no 0 in the score then bets on BBTS ‘Yes’ will be winners as both of the teams will have scored at least one goal.
Here is a list of some random scorelines, along with whether both teams have scored:
- 3-1 – Both Teams Have Scored
- 2-0 – Both Teams Have Not Scored
- 0-0 – Both Teams Have Not Scored
- 4-2 – Both Teams Have Scored
- 10-0 – Both Teams Have Not Scored
A bet on BTTS ‘Yes’ will require both teams to score at least one goal to win, so if one of the teams fails to score then it will be a losing bet. A bet on BTTS ‘No’ means that it will be a winning bet as long as at least one of the teams doesn’t score, whereas if both teams score then it becomes a losing bet.
You Need Both Sides of the Bet to Win
The most important thing to remember when it comes to Match Result & Both Teams to Score bets is that we’re talking about a bet on both aspects of the result. That is to say, you’re effectively placing a mini-accumulator in which you need to correctly predict the outcome of the match and whether or not both teams will score in order for your wager to be a winning one. If you were to bet on a Home win and BTTS ‘Yes’, for example, then you would win your bet if it finished 3-1, but lose it if it ended 1-3.
That is because in the first example you correctly predicted a home win and that both teams would score, whereas in the second you got your BTTS bet right but the home team lost, resulting in your bet losing. Similarly, a wager on an away win and BTTS ‘No’ would be a winner if the match finished 0-3, but would be a losing one if it ended up 1-3. That is because the away team won in the first example and both teams didn’t score, whereas in the second example the away team got the win but both teams scored.