When looking at betting markets for a game of football there are a lot of terms that crop up that you will recognise from the game itself, such as the ability to bet on the number of corners, goals, cards, etc.
Some bet types are less obvious though, and BTTS is one of them.
It’s actually just an initialism for the phrase ‘Both Teams to Score’; so the first letter of each word in the phrase has been used to represent the betting market.
This is just to save space on the betting websites and apps that are offering the markets, and it’s not something you are likely to hear a commentator saying.
What is the BTTS Bet?
It’s a simple and popular bet that is broader than something like a bet on the exact score line, or which players will find the back of the net.
The BTTS market is just a bet on whether or not both teams will score at least one goal each during 90 minutes of football. Be aware though that the bet ends after 90 minutes (plus injury time), so in a game that includes extra time such as the semi-final of the Champions League, any goals scored after 90 minutes would not count.
When you see this market, your options will simply be ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, and the odds for each option will be displayed alongside.
If you are looking at Man City vs Grimsby Town then you might quite reasonably decide that the Mariners are unlikely to score, so you would pick ‘No’.
However, in a game with two teams who often score but also let goals in, you would want to hit ‘Yes’ to bet on the BTTS market. Leicester vs West Ham would have been a good game for a BTTS bet in the 2022 season, since Leicester had a 68% ratio of games where both teams scored, and West Ham had a 63% ratio.
The teams don’t need to be evenly matched though.
In our first example game, even if Man City trounced Grimsby Town 9-1, a BTTS bet would still win because even though Grimsby took a hammering, they managed to sneak one through.
Is BTTS a Good Bet to Make?
It’s certainly a good option to have in the betting arsenal, and there are loads of stats available to help you make decisions with BTTS too.
It’s good value as well because the bet is alive until the very last seconds of the game, so in terms of interest and excitement it will keep you engaged for the whole 90 minutes. Then again, two early goals from either side could see your bet win after just a few minutes of play, but you probably wouldn’t mind your bet ending so early if it was a winner.
A lot of people use BTTS to create accas/bet builders, and because the odds can vary massively depending on the fixture, it’s a wager that can be added to a bet builder to either bulk it out with little extra risk, or to add some serious weight if you spot odds where you think the bookie has missed something and a minnow are likely to score a cheeky one. You can also make an acca using only BTTS markets for a number of different games.
It is possible to bet on BTTS on its own of course, but you can also use it in combination with another bet to create meatier odds; so in a Man Utd vs Liverpool fixture you could bet on Liverpool to win and BTTS – Yes.
So it’s a very flexible market for football betting, and it’s a market that doesn’t really apply to many other sports either.
