Both Teams to Score Strategy

You may have heard of the term “Both Teams to Score” (also known as BTS or BTTS) in football betting, which refers to a market where you are choosing whether both teams will score at some stage in football match or not.

Below we’ll examine some top strategies for betting on the market and how you can gain an edge over other bettors.

What is the Both Teams To Score (BTS) Market?

In essence the Both Teams to Score market is very straightforward – it only requires that each side hit the back of the net at least once in a game.

It does not make any difference if they go on to score more than one goal each or which side wins the game – all that matters is if both sides score. It should be noted that the market refers to the result in 90 minutes and excludes extra time and penalties.

You will normally see the market set up as either “Yes” or “No” – with “yes” meaning you think both teams will score and “no” meaning you think they won’t both score.

Here is the market explained in table format:-

Score	BTS
0-0, 1-0, 0-1, 2-0, 0-2, 3-0, 0-3 etc	No
1-1, 2-1, 1-2, 3-1, 1-3, 3-2 etc	Yes

So it’s a pretty simple market and quite a popular one to bet on for that reason.

Should You Bet on Both Teams To Score?

There are quite a few positive aspects to the BTS market for those considering whether to bet on it.

In the first instance, it doesn’t matter who wins the game, only that each side scores a goal during the game. You can enjoy the game not worrying about who will win and celebrate the goals going in, hoping that both sides hit the back of the net at some stage. Sometimes your bet can be won very quickly in an open, attacking game of football. On other occasions you might have to wait until the very end to see if the BTS bet lands.

Modern day football tends to be quite offensive, with lots of chances created and shots on goal. One potential approach to the market is to focus on teams that play attacking football but also have a leaky defence, meaning their opponents may take advantage and score at least once.

Typically the odds on the BTS market tend to be between 1.50 and 2.50, with lots of games being around the evens mark (2.0). That scenario implies a 50% chance of both teams scoring, meaning a good strike rate would be expected, something that can help with building a betting bank and reducing losing runs.

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Disadvantages of the Both Teams to Score Market

Whilst there are some advantages to the BTS market, there are also some potential disadvantages and things to be aware of if you are getting involved in the market.

Firstly, it can be a little frustrating if one team scores early on in a game and you are left waiting for the other side to (unsuccessfully) try and find the back of net. This can become very frustrating if they are coming forward, having lots of cracks at goal and forcing the opposing keeper into numerous saves but just can’t quite find a way through. You may even think they’ve scored only for VAR to take it away and chalk the goal off!

Secondly, it is worth paying attention to team news if you are planning to bet on the BTS market. Certain teams can be very reliant on key strikers or creative players and if those players are missing it can reduce the chances of them scoring.

At the same time, if a key defender or the first-choice goalkeeper is out, that might make a team more likely to concede, thus making BTS more likely.

Best Tipsters for Both Teams To Score Strategy

As it is a popular market these days, there are quite a few tipsters providing selections on the Both Teams to Score market. You can check out the top ones on our Best Footy Tipsters list.

Both Teams to Score Betting Strategies

Okay, let’s get on to looking at some strategies for betting on the Both Teams to Score market and how you can potentially get an edge over other punters on it.

Strategy One – Using the Stats & Breaking Down Home and Away Form

One possible approach to tackling the BTS market is to use the stats to assist you.

If you go to the website soccerstats, you can click on the leagues at the top of the homepage. For this example we will use the most popular league in the world, the English Premier League, which can be found by clicking on the English flag (EN) on soccerstats’s top menu.

Under Premier League there is then a sub menu of options, from which you would click on “goals.”

On that page, you then scroll down a bit until it takes you to the table showing “Both teams scored.”

This table is the summary of BTS for the season, from which you can see some perhaps surprising stats. Leicester City had the most games finishing with both teams scoring, with 68%. West Ham were next with 63%, which might surprise people who would expect some of the more fancied names like Arsenal and Spurs to be higher up the list.

You might want to delve a little deeper than this however in developing your strategy and break things down further.

For example, below is a table representing the home results in terms of the both teams to score stats.

Looking at the home table, we see that West Ham top it with an astonishing 79% of their home games finishing “Yes” on BTS over the season.

Chelsea come next with 63% of their home games finishing BTS, but that is quite a bit below West Ham’s total.

Perhaps more surprisingly, Southampton had 58% of their home games finish with a positive BTS result, but it may well have been priced above evens for a number of matches.

Now we have a look at the away stats:

On the away side of things, Leicester City are the runaway leaders with an amazing 84% of their away games finishing with both sides scoring. That would have produced a very tidy profit if backed throughout the season.

What can really pay off in these instances is to go for matches where both sides have a high percentage of games finishing with both teams scoring.

And you can enhance things even further by going for a side playing at home with a strong home BTS record (e.g. West Ham) against a side with a high away BTS percentage (e.g. Leicester).

You can use these tools on soccerstats to research data on leagues all over the world and you may find some opportunities that really stand out.

Bear in mind that the odds for the BTS will often be around evens, so if you are backing sides with around a 70% BTS record, you may well be securing significant value.

Strategy Two – Using Expected Goals (xG) Data

Another both teams to score strategy is to delve even deeper still into the stats and look at expected goals data for football matches.

In case you aren’t familiar with the term, we have written a specific article here explaining what expected goals is, but in short it takes into account all the shots at goal in a game, where they were taken from etc and calculates how many goals a team would be expected to score, on average, based on how they played in a game. It is quite a useful way to get a more accurate picture of how well a team performed offensively beyond just how many goals they scored.

There are various sites now such as Understat that provide xG data so you can use those to figure which teams may have been under-performing or over-performing the actual goals they have scored.

Perhaps a team has been hitting a few blanks lately and not been scoring. However, you delve into their xG data and see that it is actually above 1.0 for quite a few of those games, maybe even higher. So you conclude they are actually creating chances and having shots at goal but just haven’t quite had the rub of the green recently. As they have failed to score in some of their recent games, their BTS odds are actually quite high. So this could be a value opportunity to back them.

If you can find two teams like this, you might have identified some really good value. You can also obtain data on expected goals conceded, so this can provide you with even more valuable information to identify teams who may have kept clean sheets but actually had lots of shots and chances against them.

There are lots of ways you can use expected goals data then to delve beyond simple scorelines and find value opportunities, giving you a potential advantage over other punters.

Strategy Three – Going In-Running

An alternative both teams to score strategy is to wait for the game to go in-play and then look for opportunities as they arise.

What you are looking for ideally is a situation where one team has scored and you are waiting for the other team to hit the back of the net.

You can use tools such as the In-Play Scanner to let you know where there are sides creating a lot of pressure and a goal seems imminent. It will give you a live rating based on the likelihood of a goal being scored which can be very helpful.

Then if you wait until between half time and 60 minutes, the odds on BTS will start to rise and you can obtain some decent value.

So you place your bet and then just sit back and wait for the goal to be scored – hopefully!

Watching a game yourself can also be one of the best ways to identify in-play BTS opportunities. It might be that a side is one goal down but creating lots of chances, having wave after wave of attack and their opponents are clinging on thanks to some luck. The odds on the BTS will keep drifting though the longer the game goes without a goal, so you can find some great opportunities towards the end of games by watching them closely for scenarios like this.

Summary – Both Teams to Score

Both teams to score – also known as BTS or BTTS – is a popular market to bet on. If you are backing BTS “Yes,” ideally you want sides who are both strong offensively but weak defensively.

There are different strategies you can employ, including using home and away stats, expected goals data or waiting for games to go in-play and seeing what opportunities develop.

As ever, if you are going to use a both teams to score strategy, please gamble responsibly and only bet what you can afford to lose.

And good luck with your bets!

If you are looking for more top football strategies, check out our over 1.5 goals strategy here.