Making a profit on the football is a hard task and only a few manage to do it in the long run. In order to do so, it is worth thinking about what the easiest football bets to win are. 

Some bet types and markets are easier to win on than others, providing low-risk, high-strike rate opportunities. Using these markets can give us a high proportion of winners and allow us to build a bank relatively quickly.

It is also worth thinking about whether the easiest bets to win are also the most profitable. There would be little point winning lots of bets but for those bets to not represent value and for you to make a loss overall. 

You want to ensure that you are getting the best value for your bets and maximising the potential to make a profit. 

Thankfully however it is possible to do this whilst also selecting some easy bets to win. We will take a look at how to do so below. 

 

Why High Strike-Rate Bets are a Good Thing

When we talk about bets that are easy to win, what we are talking about are low odds, high strike-rate bets. 

These are easy bets to win because they have a high likelihood of happening and will win most of the time. What we are talking about are odds-on shots, or odds below 2.0 in decimal terms. 

There is a popular misconception in betting that these bets are poor value and you need to be seeking out long-shots at 20/1, 50/1 or more. 

In reality the truth is actually quite different. Numerous studies have shown that there is a “favourite-longshot bias” in betting which means that there is more value on favourites than longshots. 

A study of English and Scottish football for example found that betting at short odds produced a negative return of -2%  but when backing at over 4/1, the losses were worse at -15%. 

When you take into account the bookies’ over-round or exchange commission, then a return of -2% is almost like breaking even. And that’s presuming you just backed all the short odds favourites blindly without any thought or form study.

The upshot of all this means that easy bets are also good bets. So in most cases, you are getting value on our bet and not handing the bookies a big advantage before you start, like you normally do with longshots. 

Plus having a high proportion of winners allows you to build your betting bank more quickly and tends to feel better psychologically than having long losing streaks when backing longshots.  

So let’s get onto looking at what sort of bets are the easiest to win in football and how we should go about capitalising on them. 

 

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Over 0.5 goals (laying 0-0)

One of the easiest bets to win in football is betting for there to be over 0.5 goals. Basically this means there needs to be at least one goal in a game for you to win your bet. You can achieve the same effect by laying 0-0 on the exchanges as an alternative option.

The chances of there being at least one goal in a game are very much in our favour, with only 7% of matches across the top five European leagues finishing 0-0. So that means backing over 0.5 goals has been the outcome 93% of the time. 

Of course, the flipside of this is that the odds on over 0.5 goals will normally be very low – often between 1.05 and 1.10. 

If we take a game that is expected to be high scoring for example, like RB Leipzig vs Stuttgart in the Bundesliga, the odds of over 0.5 goals is just 1.04:

In the end this match finished 2-1 to RB Leipzig, with the first goal coming after just 25 minutes, so the bet was an easy winner. 

When betting on there being at least one goal in a game, it is not unusual to have long winning streaks of 10, 20 or even more winners in a row. 

Conversely however, a loser or two can hit the betting bank quite hard, so it is important to ensure you have a sufficient betting bank if following this strategy and don’t stake too much to start off with.

There are some factors we can look at when deciding whether to bet on over 0.5 goals that can help us improve our returns. 

Often the over 0.5 goals market will be derived from how high-scoring the teams playing each other are in general. So they might be teams that have a lot of games finishing 4-2, 3-1 etc. 

However, the specifics of this market mean we should be focusing on ensuring that they have a low number of 0-0s in particular. 

We can do this by looking at a site like Flashscores or soccerstats for records of the teams’ previous 20-30 matches, to give us a decent sample size.

There are some teams that whilst they can be high-scoring in some games, also have a higher than average number of 0-0s when they are rather lacklustre. Other teams don’t have many really high-scoring games but seem to always avoid the dreaded 0-0. Looking at teams’ histories like this can help us weed out any would-be banana skins. 

Teams like Bayern Munich for example have an extraordinary history of avoiding 0-0s, going from 10th February 2020 to the start of 2023 (and still going, at the time of writing) without a goalless draw in the Bundesliga. That is the best part of 100 games!

We can also look at factors such as the teams’ head-to-head record to ensure they don’t have a history of 0-0 scorelines and at team news to see if any key players are likely to be out. 

You can also apply this strategy to over 1.5 goals, which means there must be at least two goals in a game for your bet to win. You won’t have quite as many winners on this market as the over 0.5, but it can still prove profitable. The service Banker Bets has a specialist over 1.5 goals strategy that finds value opportunities in this market. 

Overall with a decent amount of research we should be in a good position to take on the over 0.5 goals market and achieve a high winning rate of easy winners. 

 

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Handicap Bets 

If you are looking for another easy football bet to win then look no further than handicap bets. 

These are markets that are often overlooked by the majority of punters but can yield some very steady returns if used correctly. 

Taking the example of RB Leipzig vs Stuttgart again, in this game the home side are 1.41 to win the game. 

If we take a look at the handicap markets though, we can see they are 1.11 in the +1 handicap market. 

This essentially means they are given a one goal headstart before the game even kicks off. So as long as they don’t lose the match, the bet is a winner. A draw is fine and means the bet will still win.

You can also achieve the same effect by laying Stuttgart or backing “Double Chance” (home win+draw option), if one of those is your preference.

In these markets what we are looking for is teams who don’t lose many games. You may be familiar with sides who whilst not being the most explosive and winning a huge proportion of matches, also tend to be tough to beat, usually with a mean defence and a strong attitude. 

As we say, in this bet it doesn’t matter if the match finishes in a draw, we would still win our bet. So the key is to look for sides who don’t lose many games and could present value on the +1 handicap market. 

For example, in the 2021/22 season of La Liga, Sevilla only lost 4 out of 38 matches, drawing 16. That solid record was not enough to win the title – they finished fourth – but it was built on the best defence in the league with just 30 goals conceded. 

It is teams like Sevilla in that 2021/22 season who are ideal for the +1 handicap market and should be sought out. 

If you want an even easier bet to win though, you could look for the next handicap market up. 

That is the +2 market and gives the side in question a two goal headstart before the match kicks off. 

So your selected team could lose by one goal and you would still win your bet. 

Obviously in these situations the odds are very skinny indeed.  

In the case of the RB Leipzig match referred to above, they are just 1.03 on the +2 goals handicap market. 

To capitalise on this market, we would be looking for sides that if they do lose a game, don’t tend to do so badly and at least keep things tight. So just losing by one goal is fine, as our +2 bet would still be a winner. 

Again this would tend to be sides who are strong defensively and have a good mentality, so aren’t likely to lose by a big margin. 

Using this market would see a very high proportion of winners and would certainly quality as an “easy bet to win” but one loss would wipe out a lot of winners so it is to be approached with caution. 

There are various other handicap markets you can use like the +3 market if you want a really easy bet to win – although bear in mind for sides that are already strong favourites like RB Leipzig above, there often won’t be odds available on the back side as it is regarded as such a certainty. 

There are also Asian handicaps which give you a wider variety options than just the +1, +2 markets etc.

A service that uses handicap markets as part of its repertoire of bets is Bookie Insiders Football, which made an excellent £2053 profit in a trial we ran of it here on the site. Using a combination of xG stats, team news, form and other indicators they have been able to use handicap and other markets effectively to generate long-term profits.

In summary then, handicap bets can give us some easy wins even if the team we have backed don’t  actually win the game. We can improve our chances by researching teams who are tough to beat and taking advantage of the way these markets are set up. 

 

Backing First Half Goals

An alternative strategy if we are looking for some easy winners is to look at first half goals. The most straightforward market to look at in this context is over 0.5 first half goals (FHG for short).

In this market the odds will often be short, although not quite as short as in the handicap markets and over 0.5 goal markets discussed above. The odds tend to fall in the 1.2 – 1.5 range in this market.

In the RB Leipzig game, the odds for over 0.5 first half goals is around 1.30:

So with these kind of bets we could expect a win rate of around 75%. As mentioned, in that game the first goal was scored after 25 minutes so the over 1.5 FHG bet was a winner. 

As with the other markets analysed above, we are looking for certain teams who may be particularly suited to backing in this market. 

For example, teams who tend to score a lot of first half goals would be worth focusing on here. As the market just tends to be derived from the other goal markets – over/under 1.5 and 2.5 goals etc rather than specifically on whether the teams score (and concede) in the first half, it means there can be value from finding such sides.  

If we think of Liverpool under Klopp when they were at their peak, they were known for being “fast starters” in matches – particularly at home – and bombarding the opposition with attacks right from the kick-off, with the crowd roaring them on. 

Using stats can also assist us here in finding value, via a site like soccerstats:

From this first half table from the 2021/22 Premier League season we can see that our theory about Liverpool is borne out by them topping the first half charts. It may surprise people to see a team like Southampton on this table as well though, with a high number of goals scored and conceded in the first half. 

There may also be instances where you expect a team is going to come out the blocks fast because it has to win a game, so think it could be worth backing the over 0.5 FHG. 

Or that a certain match-up makes it more likely. There can be lots of angles on this market, but again with some good research we should be able to find value situations and capitalise to land some relatively easy wins. 

 

Beating the Bookies at their Own Game

Rather than looking at specific markets to find the easiest football bets to win, we can use an alternative strategy to turn the bookies’ advantage over us on its head and create some very easy winning bets.

We can do this through a process known as matched betting, which consists of using the bookies’ free bets and bonuses to secure risk-free or low-risk betting opportunities. 

Using matched betting allows us to pick off easy winnings from the bookies, time after time. If we have a free £25 bet on a football match for example, we can place that free bet at the bookies, whilst laying it off on the exchanges. Thus we make a profit whatever happens if we have set it up correctly. 

There are matched betting packages like Profit Maximiser that show you exactly how to do this, with video tutorials and email support, as well as bringing together all of the bookies offers so you can quickly see what opportunities are available each day. 

In our own trial of Profit Maximiser, we made a very healthy £2,469 profit from doing lots of these matched bets. 

There are even people who do matched betting for a living, and others who do it part-time for some additional second income. 

Even if you are only able to do a few offers per month, it is still probably the easiest way to win football bets without having much (or any) risk. 

It is only really viable in countries that allow bookies to offer free bets and bonuses however, so it is best to check if they are able to do so in your jurisdiction first before signing up.  

 

Conclusion – Finding the Easiest Football Bets to Win

Finding easy football bets to win is possible if you focus on the right markets. There are a number of opportunities to do this by looking at the markets we have outlined above – over 0.5 goals, handicaps and first half goals for example.

Bets on these markets have high win rates and are normally decent value – certainly much better value than longshots at least. 

With some additional research you can improve your chances of winning and really capitalise on these high strike-rate bets. 

As with all betting, if you are betting on these markets please gamble responsibly and only risk money you can afford to lose. 

Looking for some easy opportunities to win? Then check out our list of the Best Football Tipsters here and follow their expert advice.