Winning Football Trading Strategies for Betfair Traders

Football trading is in-play betting on football matches via a betting exchange, such as Betfair. Football traders take advantage of predictable price movement, entering once the match has started, exiting before it has finished or both.

As well as being able to back teams at better prices, with trading you're able to lock in profits and avoid the agony of late goals spoiling your bet. There are lots of Betfair strategies that work and I'll share a few of them with you shortly.

From a Betfair trading point of view, a football match is nothing more than a 90 minute stock market.

A traditional bookmaker offers punters the chance to back various outcomes. It might be the home team to win, over 2.5 goals, a particular player to score, or any one of dozens of other options at prices set by the bookie.

However, at a betting exchange it is the punters who set the prices on both sides of the book. In other words, you can choose to back an outcome as if you were using a traditional bookmaker or go opposite and lay it.

That's right, you can do what the bookies do!
 
Backing then laying  - or laying then backing - is how Betfair traders make their profit. Once you can accurately predict which way a betting market is likely to move, how much and when, you will be able to make money from it.

Don't worry, I'm going to explain exactly how Betfair trading strategies work and show you some real-life examples.

Price movement is all you need to make money with football trading. The only challenge is that you need to figure out which prices are going to move and in which direction so that you can "buy" or "sell" in the football stock market.

There are three main reasons why betting exchange prices move in-play:

Price movement also occurs before matches even kick off. There's no chance of a goal going in to move the market and no time decay, so pre-match trading strategies (also known as 'scalping') rely on other factors.

One of the most popular scalping strategies revolves around team news.

If Chelsea's top scorer isn't playing, for example, the markets will move once thenews breaks. While we know that Chelsea will name another international striker to play in his place, the markets react and present an opportunity to 'scalp' some profit.

When playing a lesser team, Chelsea will be expected to win anyway and the Match Odds market won't tend to move too much. However, the Over 2.5 Goals market may see a bigger shift.

Pre-match trading is especially profitable during early cup rounds when team news is announced.

If one of the elite Premier League teams is drawn against opposition from League Two, they will often field a weakened team. Once the market becomes aware, prices move and there are profits to be made.

Without significant inplay events such as goals, pre-match prices are much steadier but they do shift up and down.

Also, there is less risk so traders can use much larger stakes and some even use their entire bank.

Pre-match markets generally don't move too much and most 'scalping' strategies rely on making a tick or two of profit. The challenge - as always - is knowing which way the Betfair prices will move.

At Goal Profits, we have a 'Pre-Match Scalping Module' tool which monitors upcoming fixtures, tracks prices and identifies moving markets. Having all of that information on one page makes pre-match trading much easier and quicker.

Most new traders believe that they just need to buy a good football trading strategy and then they will make a lot of money.

Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that.

Think about it... if profitable football trading was so easy, then you wouldn't go to work on Monday morning! You'd be sat at home, pulling money out of Betfair like it's a magic ATM. But you don't do that, do you? Nobody does!

Amazingly, some people still fall for the promises of easy riches.

There are lots of shady characters online. They will tell you that they have unlocked various football trading 'secrets' which has allowed them to develop amazing trading strategies, so now sports trading for a living is no longer a dream and so on.

Don't fall for that rubbish!

While there are certainly low-risk football trading strategies, there's no such thing as a football betting system which never loses.

You will probably come across websites which try to claim otherwise, but ask yourself... if no mathematician has ever worked out a way to avoid losing footy trades, then how come a normal guy managed it in his spare time while working a 9-5?

It's just not believable in the real world.

Lay the draw (LTD) is the most popular in-play trading strategy and one that just about every football trader uses regularly.

Very simply, you place a lay bet on the draw and, once the favourite scores a goal, the draw price rises. This is because the favourite is now leading and more likely to go on to win the game. The draw is less likely, so the price is higher.

At this point, you can close out your trade for a profit. Even if the match ends in a draw, your profit is already in the bank.

When I first started trading, I would use lay the draw almost exclusively. However, LTD profits were so easy that its popularity went through the roof. As more and more Betfair traders jumped on the bandwagon, profit margins were squeezed.

When you have too many people wanting to back the draw after a goal is scored, market liquidity runs out and prices fall. That affected my profitability and meant it was more difficult to cover the losses which occurred from time to time. 

Betfair markets are always evolving and this was my first experience of it. I certainly didn't want to stop using such a fantastic strategy, I just needed to find a better way.

Nowadays, rather than look at the full 90 minutes, I split each match into two 45 minute halves. It reduces liabilities and increases profits which works a treat! The downside, of course, is having less time to find a goal.

Lay the draw is a strategy I use almost daily, sometimes combined with other markets. Our Team Stats software does a fantastic job of identifying opportunities and I often share them with other Goal Profits members in our chat room.

I've written a very detailed explanation of how to lay the draw here.

While lay the draw is fairly safe and steady, correct score trading strategies are much more exciting!

There are many ways to trade the correct score market and, because the prices are much higher than Match Odds, the profits can be substantially more. However, that can also mean more risk because laying - especially early in a match - is expensive.

The Match Odds market has 3 possible outcomes - win, lose or draw - whereas the Correct Score market has 19!

Unless you have a crystal ball, you don't know whether a match will end 0-0, 4-4 or any score in between and this is why correct score betting is tricky.

Trading correct scores (instead of betting) is much more reasonable and most traders target groups of scores, aiming to get close enough to them at the right time to make a profit.

As with most football trading, a patient approach is essential.

It is very easy to create large liabilities - for example, laying the current score at half-time - but then you're relying on goals so that those liabilities don't become losses which seriously dent your trading bank.

It's possible to patiently chip away at liabilities and often end up with a 'scratch' trade - no profit or loss - but aggressive trading will result in large losses from time to time, there's no doubt about that.

Thanks to the availability of live football stats and video, the popularity of in-play trading has risen in recent years.

Almost any betting exchange market can be traded as long as there is enough liquidity. In other words, that there are traders looking to back and lay so you're able to get your bets matched.

As well as Match Odds, the Over/Under 2.5 Goals market is especially popular and regularly has enough liquidity for trading, even in smaller leagues. There are a number of trading systems based around both overs and unders.

Some football traders specialise in backing Under 2.5 Goals, hoping to 'scalp' a bit of profit while a match remains 0-0. Time decay works in just the same way here, moving prices as the minutes tick by.

If an early goal goes in, they may trade out for a small loss or hope to get back to scratch before a second goal is scored.

For me, football is about scoring goals and I sit firmly on that side of the fence. Goals win games, so hoping for nothing to happen feels uncomfortable when I have my hard-earned money at risk. I just don't do it.

Of course, exchange betting is just like the game of football... all about differing opinions. While I may be backing Over 2.5 Goals, if there's not someone else looking for Under 2.5 Goals then my bets are not going to get matched!

You already know that a betting exchange matches a back and a lay bet. One wins, the other loses.

Profitable football trading is simply a case of winning more than you lose, but in order to do that you have to take money from other people who are aiming to do exactly the same to you.

It's a ruthless game of cat and mouse and you cannot allow emotion to get in the way of your decision making. As soon as you lose control - perhaps to the temptation to chase a loss - you will lose money.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett once said, "the Stock Market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient" and it's exactly the same on Betfair, Smarkets, Matchbook or any other betting exchange.

If you log in on a Saturday afternoon looking for entertainment, you will lose money. Of course you will have winning days, but overall you will lose.

You must be patient and disciplined enough wait for opportunities to outsmart the market.

Even the best Betfair strategy in the world will fail if you don't have the patience to use it at the right times! You will get bored and risk your money on something you shouldn't (which we've all done at one time or another).

Professional Betfair traders avoid losses as much as possible. While you may argue that all bettors, traders and gamblers do that, it's subtly different.

Avoiding a loss is not the same as trying to win a bet. It's a strange concept for most who are new to trading because their mindset is geared up towards winners, winners and more winners.

A simple football betting system usually has two outcomes; win or lose. When you trade, however, there are always three possible results; win, lose or scratch.

A scratch trade is one in which you neither make a profit nor a loss though remember this... every time you make scratch, you have won your stake back and had a free bet.

Essentially, scratch is a winning trade and once you see it that way, trading becomes much easier.

Don't assume that the more trades you pile into, the more profit you’ll make; it's all about patience and discipline.

There will be days when nothing quite fits and you don't trade at all. That's fine. It's better than getting frustrated, laying the draw when you shouldn't and hitting a loss. You then have to find a winner or two just to get back to where you were in the first place!

FOMO (fear of missing out) is a bank killer and it threatens us all.

Think about the last time you 'knew' a team was going to score but you didn't back them. You've probably said to yourself, "I knew that was going to happen!" except, of course, you didn't know it at all.

What do you think happens in your brain the next time you see a similar situation?

You start thinking about when you 'missed out' and the little voice in your head tells you that you'd better not miss out again. You feel like you're owed something by the market because of that last time, you get tempted in by 'fear of missing out' and - very often - you lose money.

Remember that the market owes you nothing, it never does and it never will.

If you hit a surprise 0-0 and lose money, you're not owed a profit to make up for it. If you let that FOMO mentality tempt you into chasing losses, you will lose more money.

If you research a trade and decide that it's not quite strong enough to risk money on, then that's your decision. If it goes on to 'win' then you haven't 'missed out' on a thing. It was a weak trade and sometimes weak trades win, but more often they don't.

Don’t kick yourself, don’t get mad, applaud your discipline knowing that long-term it was the right thing to do. You can't let FOMO trick you into thinking that the market owes you something.

In order to win money on Betfair, you have to be as ruthless as the markets and keep emotion well away from your trading.

A great way of staying disciplined is to put a trading plan together before you login to Betfair.

Go through the fixtures for the day and build a shortlist of matches which you are interested in. Once you have done that, dig deeper into the stats and look for any reasons not to trade.

You might find that the team you're going to bank on has a series of poor results against similar opposition, perhaps they are in a run of indifferent form or maybe the underdogs have been playing above themselves recently.

You can afford to drop potential trading opportunities because they don't look quite right, but what you cannot afford to do is ignore warning signs and trade them anyway. Remember, a winning football trader is patient and disciplined.

If there are no fixtures which up being tradeable, so be it. There will be more tomorrow... and the next day... and the next...

Once you have your plan for the day, it's set in stone and does not change.

It's very easy to hit a couple of losses and let your brain trick you into thinking that you're owed a winner to make up for it. Perhaps there was a missed penalty which cost you a profit earlier on so you look for another trade to even things up.

Emotionless markets don't work like that and you can't either!

Your brain starts making excuses why a weaker match is suddenly strong enough to trade, you lose more money and feel even worse. It's so avoidable, yet everyone gets sucked in at some point.

If a trading opportunity was not strong enough earlier in the day when you judged it with a clear mind, it's certainly isn't strong enough later on when you're feeling frustrated about a loss.

Take losses on the chin, learn what you can in order to improve your trade selection process and come back tomorrow with a fresh mind. You will learn a lot from losses and they will always happen to every trader, so accept them.

Betfair football trading takes a bit more time than betting – of course it does – but you get so much more control over your money that a bit of effort is well worth putting in.

An experienced trader will be able to reduce losses and increase profits which makes trading significantly more profitable overall than set-and-forget betting could ever be.

Let's be honest though, trading really doesn't take too long at all. I mean, an entire football match is only 90 minutes and many Betfair trading techniques focus on either the first or second half which immediately cuts that in half.

You can login to Goal Profits at half-time during midweek, research the matches with favourable half-time scores using Team Stats and open a trade or two before the second halves even kick off.

Once your trading position is open, what do you have to do anyway? You're usually waiting on a goal, so you can go watch TV, read a book or do some housework and a score site such as Flashscore will tell you when a goal goes in.

You can even download the Flashscore app to your phone and go outside to wash the car. With Betfair on your phone, you might not even need to come back inside the house!

"I don’t have time to trade" is such a poor excuse, yet those looking for a reason to make quitting acceptable still use it.

If you really want to be successful at trading, you’re going to find a way to make it work for you, just as every pro trader did.

Once you have practiced trading and made some profit, you will be ready to progress onto one of the exchange betting strategies which has a bit more going on.

Membership of the Goal Profits football trading community includes full access to our football trading course. It's going to help accelerate the time it takes for you to learn how to trade, but you should still be patient and have reasonable expectations.

Remember that Betfair is full of very clever traders whose sole aim is to take your money. Don't make it easy for them!

Let's assume you start trading today with a £1,000 bank and split it into 100pts of £10 each.

You only need to make 10pts profit per month from football trading for two years, resetting your bank to 100pts at the end of each month, to grow your bank to £9,850.

If you carry on for another year, your bank will be worth £30,913 and it accelerates from there.

This is what compounding does for your bank.

Breaking it down, that's £10 x 10pts = £100 profit in your first month. If the month has 30 days, then you need to make £3.33 daily in order to hit your first target on the way to turning £1,000 into £30,913. That's absolutely achievable!

Of course, if you're brand new to trading then it might take you a few months before you can regularly hit your monthly target.

Maybe it takes a year of learning before everything clicks into place, but then you turn £1,000 into £30,913 over the following three years. Would you be happy with that return? I'm sure you would be!