Spread betting is basically a higher or lower kind of betting wherein the spread betting firm will make a prediction on a certain event and you bet the odds against it- whether it be higher or lower. Although in practice it may not be as simple as it sounds, there is a basic concept behind it. Different from traditional ‘fixed odds’ betting, where you pick a clear winner and that determines whether you win or lose, spread betting allows you to determine the margin of win or loss, enabling you to earn more the closer your prediction is to the actual score.
For a better understanding, if the betting firm predicts 3 goals in a certain match and you think that there will be more, you place your bet higher at a stake of £10 for every goal above the firm’s prediction. Now if 5 goals were scored you would have gained 2 times your bet (which is the number of goals over the firm’s prediction), at £10 per goal, and you’ve just made £20. If only 2 goals were made, then you would lose the difference of the prediction of the firm and the actual number of goals times your bet. So at a 3 goals minus 2, which is the actual number of goals, is 1, times your bet is a loss of £10.

One of the most popular- if not the most popular categories in spread betting, is in football or soccer. In spread betting where teams are involved, specifics play a large role in how much you stand to make (or lose). Bets can be placed for whole seasons, league positions, scoring totals and individual players scoring first and so on. And although it might look daunting, people who do their research are nearly always closer to the results that they predict than those who don’t!

You can balance out your risk by spreading out your bets. Like financial spread betting on stocks,you can place bets in the short- term such as with on-going games, or long-term such as the Premiership and the World Cup. The beauty of spread betting is that the teams you pick don’t even have to win, they just have to do better than the betting firm’s prediction

Although not without its risks, spread betting on football from a fan’s point of view is like having an emotional piece of the team, not dissimilar to company stocks, and depending on how a bet is placed (or invested) one can see how a carefully planned bet can get you gaining more than if youdid it impulsively. It is also not hard to see why it is so popular in the UK. Football is practically a national sport, like baseball is to the US, but unlike baseball, the leagues are diverse in nature, offering gamblers more options on who, how and where to place their bets- making for an interesting time!

Tips from the Top:
Without boasting (of course I am!)- I made money from sportingindex.com on
the first game of the season with Wigan only suffering a 1-0 loss to Chelsea,
last season’s Premiership winners. The “sell” prediction was a 3-0 loss. And it was only a last-minute goal in injury time, after Wigan had just hit the crossbar, by Hernan Crespo- that gave Chelsea the win!! My logic had been that the key to Chelsea’s real success last season, apart from Abramovich’s billions, was Murinho’s (Chelsea’s manager) meticulous planning. Wigan were an unknown quantity, having just been promoted and anybody who knows about Rugby League is aware of what a difficult place Wigan is to travel to. This, and the fact that Chelsea’s players- while extremely impressive, are also a set of very highly paid “stars” who will initially, while getting used to the new transfers brought in, play as ‘individuals’ rather than as a ‘team’.
In summary, when you ‘spread bet’, try and be ‘contrarian’- as the bookmakers will always over-protect themselves with the favourites, owing to some hefty laydowns on perceived certainties. Remember- they know no more than you do-and if you study all the different factors and angles, it can be an extremely lucrative form of gambling!