Football Trading -The Ultimate Trading Start Guide

Football Trading Start Guide
Have you ever had a dream that you could be the football trader you want to be on Betfair?
Are you just starting trading on the Betfair exchange and want to learn how to make money from the football markets?
Have you thought about football trading as your sport but want to know all the information before you start?
If you answered yes to these questions then you are in the right place and this is the football start guide for you.
Football is perhaps one of the most popular sports to trade on the Betfair exchange, one of the reasons is that is has so much money in the markets in brings in a lot of traders and also there is a lot of games that are shown on television at evenings and weekends it makes a great sport for people who are working to be able to trade.
Let’s start to break down in this guide then everything you will need to know to trade on the football markets.
What time of day is it on?
Football runs throughout the day every day, there are some far flung leagues in Asia and Australia that are on in the morning, it then quietens down in the middle of the day and then on a weekday evening it gets lively again. On weekends there is a lot of action from 9am through to the wee hours in some leagues when you have the south american leagues playing.
The football is broken in two seasons, the winter leagues and the summer leagues.
Winter leagues are the ones you will know, this is the english premier league down to the confrence, french Ligue 1, Italian leagues, spain etc…. These are mainland Europe.
Summer leagues are quite often where people think you need to stop trading but this is not the case, in fact there is a lot of football on during the summer when the main leagues you will know have stopped - I recently did a blog post comparing the two winter leagues and summer leagues and I think you will find the data pretty interesting to read that click here (https://betfairtradingcommunity.com/en/blog/why-you-should-still-trade-football-summer)
How much time do I need to spend trading?
Football traders usually spend 2-3 hours trading, depending on the games that they have selected for that day. This could be in a couple of sittings as well, most of the weekday trading will be spent on an evening then on a weekend it will be between 12 and 9pm - again depending on the markets you have picked, you can do the research in the morning and then get an app like Sofa Score save these games and then be alerted when something happens so you can react.
When are the big events on?
Any good football trader will tell you to ignore the cups, as football traders on the Betfair exchange we want data to help us piece together the potential outcomes - the data is skewed in cup competitions so my advice is to stick to the leagues. I have included a table below to show when the leagues run.
Summer Leagues
Winter Leagues
Every 4 years there is the World Cup and then between this every 4 years is the Euro’s which is an international tournament which takes place in the summer.
What are the key rules to be aware of?
There are three possible outcomes of a football match, Win, Loss, Draw. A match is played for 90 minutes and this is broken down into two halves of 45 minutes each.
VAR - Video assistant refreees are now implemented into football, they will be used for decisions on confirming goals and also giving of fouls and offside decisions.
More on specific rules can be found here: https://www.rulesofsport.com/sports/football.html
Key Terminology
BTTS - Both teams to score
Over / Under - Over under the number listed, 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 etc.....
Match odds - the odds for the match winners market, comprising of home, draw & away.
Pre match - what happens before the kick off
LTD - Lay the draw
HT LTD - Half time lay the draw
HT - Half time
FT - Full time
HT / FT - Half time / Full time
LCS - Lay current score
HT LCS - Half time lay current score
What are the most popular trading markets for football trading?
The most popular markets for football traders on Betfair are the match odds market where we have three potential outcomes, home win / draw / away win. Another popular market is the over and unders market, this is where you trading on over or under a specific goal amount, the most popular being 2.5 goals market. The next popular one is correct score market, this is one that I would not advise you as a newbie trading. I would focus on the match odds and the overs while you are getting started.
What are the popular styles of football trading on the Betfair Exchange?
Maybe the most popular style of trading the football markets for newer traders is the LTD, which stands for lay the draw. This method invovles placing a lay bet on the draw in a game where you think the game will not end in a draw, you then trade out when the favourite scores for a profit. A lot has been said about this method over the years but in my opinion it is still very profitable - caveat you have to have the right selection criteria for the matches here is a video explaining a LTD strategy I have used for years - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7gXirsIlE&t=68s
Another very popular way of trading is pre match match odds market, this invovles backing a team where you are thinking that their price will move lower before the match, mainly due to team news etc... for example if the top goalscorer for Liverpool was returning this might cause their price to shorten because the market perceives them to be stronger.
The overs and under markets are also popular, these involve a selection being over or under a certain number, for example the over 2.5 goals market in this market there needs to be 3 goals for this to be a winner, however with trading we don't need there to be 3 goals, we can do very well with 2 goals for example if we get in at the right time.
What do I need in order to start to trade the football?
To get started trading the football on Betfair, we recommend a few things these are:
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A notepad or word document - this will enable you to note down your trading plan for the day and the key stats you have researched on those games so you have a plan of what you are trading and what times etc… I personally use evernote for this.
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For the strategies we are talking about in this blog post the Betfair Exchange interface is fine to get you started, when you want to scale your trading up you can look to get some trading software.
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Access to Betfair via a smartphone or a laptop - ideally a laptop but if you only have a smart phone then that will work fine while you get started.
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A social network of traders like we have in Betfair Trading Community - It can be lonely trading but also you might want to bounce ideas off each other and learn others mistakes.
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To be willing to learn, it does take time to become proficient at trading but the journey is well worth it.
What popular strategies can I use to get started?
There are a lot of strategies that you can use to get started Football trading but I will just cover a couple of really super simple ones that you can follow. At Betfair Trading Community we advise to start with very low stakes or even without money and paper trade to see how you would get on and make sure you fully understand the strategies.
Let’s start with the #1 Profitable Betfair Trading Football Strategy - Click HERE to watch this in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unZtDiXKqWE&t=5s
The next one is also super simple and can be followed by anybody and is mainly focused on the pre match market - Click HERE to watch this https://vimeo.com/307247725
Live Betfair Football Trading Strategy Under 2 5 goals, Over 1 5 goals and LTD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA6YInVGjd0&t=1s
For members we have other great strategies here:https://betfairtradingcommunity.com/en/trading-strategies
Again, for members we have the forum which is full of great football trading discussion:
http://forum.betfairtradingcommunity.com:4567/topic/475/2019-football-tr...
http://forum.betfairtradingcommunity.com/category/11/cricket-golf-trading