Types of sports bets explained: A guide for beginners and experienced bettors

Types of sports bets explained: A guide for beginners and experienced bettors

When users enter betting platforms, they’re bombarded with markets, odds, and offers. Even well-designed sportsbooks can feel overwhelming due to the number of available markets, odds formats, and promotions.

Both beginner and experienced bettors often found multi-bet markets and promotional offers difficult to understand.

Given the financial risk of misinterpreting a market or promotion, it’s critical that users understand the industry, how leading sportsbooks consistently make annual profits, and the different types of sports bets.

Our sportsbook betting guide explains the most common sports bets, how to avoid making costly mistakes, and safer gambling strategies.

Key findings

• Moneyline is the simplest market, a straight wager on the winner, with no scoreline condition attached.
• Handicap and over/under markets set a line rather than a winner, changing both the price and what counts as a win.
• Draw no bet returns the stake if a match is drawn, but pays less than a standard moneyline wager on the same team.
• Accumulators and Bet Builders combine odds into large payouts and are correspondingly hard to land: five legs at 1.50 each carry a 13.5% chance of paying out.
• Odds carry a vig of 2-3%, requiring an average win rate of 52.38% to break even.

What are sports bets?

A sports bet is any wager placed on a sports outcome or a specific occurrence within that event.

While full-time markets, such as Chelsea to beat Tottenham, are the most well understood, the types of sports bets that users can place have evolved as a result of technological advancements. 

Today, most sportsbooks offer over 25 sports, each of which has dozens of events and available markets. 

According to the latest Bettingranker’s study as of May 2026, 54% of all wagers placed in Europe were made in-play in 2024, with the share continuing to grow into 2025–2026. 

Meanwhile 64% of surveyed Flashscore users had placed a Both Teams to Score (BTTS) wager and 59% had made Over/Under total goals bets, compared with 49% who opted for traditional match outcome markets.

Sports betting markets aren’t standardised across every operator in the market. Some platforms offer slightly different terms and conditions on BTTS and Over/Under markets, adding to the importance of understanding sports betting.

However, even users who thoroughly understand the different types of sports bets struggle to make a consistent profit. Sportsbook betting odds include a vig of 2-3%, essentially operating as a service fee while ensuring that bettors must win an average of 52.38% of wagers to make a profit.

Mathematically, it isn’t designed for users to profit from, but understanding betting strategy, value betting, and decimal odds can help gambling remain entertaining, financially manageable, and informed.

The most common types of sports bets

On betting platforms, popular European sports, such as football, rugby, and tennis, feature dozens of markets, including moneyline, point spread, total over/under, and draw no bet.

Moneyline bets

A moneyline bet is the most straightforward sports bet type.

Users place an outright wager on which team or player will win an event, such as Barcelona to beat Atletico Madrid or Jannik Sinner to beat Novak Djokovic.

Winning the wager is not dependent on backing a particular scoreline, such as 2-0.

On many moneyline markets, the favourite will have decimal odds of less than 2.00, while the underdog is likely to have odds exceeding 2.50.

British sportsbooks, such as bet365 and Sky Bet, list prices with fractional odds, such as 1/1, meaning that for every £1 a user wagers, they’ll win £1 plus their initial stake if the bet wins.

Handicap bets

In elite sports, outcomes can feel too predictable. For example, Barcelona won 28 out of 38 La Liga matches during 2025-2026, meaning betting odds on Hansi Flick’s team are usually short.

However, by backing Barcelona on a handicap market, bettors can receive greater returns by backing the Catalan club. On handicap betting markets, bettors have the option to give the team a -1, -2, -3, or greater handicap.

If a bettor backed Barcelona to win a given match with a -3 handicap, they’d have to win by four clear goals for the bet to win.

While Barcelona may have been priced at 1.43 to win the game on a moneyline market, gambling on the same outcome with a -3 handicap will have longer odds, potentially exceeding 10.00.

Handicaps can essentially level the playing field between favourites and underdogs. A -1 handicap may result in prices increasing to 2.00, reflecting a 50% implied probability of winning.

Totals (Over/Under) bets

When beginner bettors read Manchester United to score over 2.5 goals, it’s likely to create some confusion. After all, a football team cannot score half of a goal.

But over/under betting markets do not predict the exact number of goals a team will score. Instead, they set a line that bettors must predict will be exceeded or not reached.

In this example, Manchester United would need to score three or more goals for an over 2.5 goals bet to win, while two goals or fewer would result in a losing wager.

In rugby, sportsbooks offer betting markets on over/under a certain number of tries, often 8.5, while in cricket operators offer odds on numerous outcomes, such as over/under 22.5 runs at the fall of the first wicket.

Draw no bet

Draw no bet markets see players stake on either Team A or Team B to win. If the match ends in a draw, the bettor’s stake is returned, meaning that each possible match outcome, win, draw, or lose, produces a different betting result.

If the backed team wins, the bettor secures a payout. If the team loses, the bettor receives nothing. If the match ends in a draw, the bettor’s stake is returned.

Given that 27% of Premier League games during the 2025-2026 season ended in a draw, draw no bet markets help to minimise a user’s potential losses.

However, draw no bet odds are less valuable than backing a team on a standard moneyline market.

While draw no bet is a popular football market, it’s less commonly used in high-scoring sports, such as cricket, rugby, and basketball, where the chances of the game ending in a draw are significantly smaller.

BTTS

In 56% of 2025-2026 Premier League matches, both teams scored. As the league’s mid-tier teams, such as Crystal Palace, Brighton & Hove Albion, and Brentford improve, betting on BTTS can feel like a safer wager than a moneyline market.

BTTS bets win if both teams score at any point during the 90 minutes. In knock-out tournaments, such as the World Cup or Champions League, selected sportsbooks may allow BTTS conditions to be met in extra time if the game is goalless after 90 minutes.

Three of the four Premier League teams with the fewest number of matches when both teams scored during 2025-2026 – Wolverhampton Wanderers, Nottingham Forest, and Arsenal – finished in 20th, 16th, and 1st-position, respectively.

Teams that are near the top or bottom of the table are less likely to play in games where both teams score, as they’re either defensively solid enough to keep a clean sheet or not potent enough to find the net.

As with draw no bet markets, BTTS is less common in cricket, rugby, and basketball, as both teams are almost certain to score in each game.

Accumulator bets & Bet Builder

On accumulator markets, bettors back several outcomes from different events. For example, a five-fold accumulator could include Liverpool, Celtic, Nottingham Forest, Borussia Dortmund, and Atletico Madrid to win.

The odds of each selection are combined to create a large payout, often exceeding 20.00 on five-fold wagers. To win the accumulator, each selection must win.

However, winning multi-leg markets is challenging. Even a five-fold accumulator including five selections, each with odds of 1.50, only has a 13.5% chance of paying out.

While accumulators include outcomes from different events and leagues, Bet Builders are same-game parlay bets.

In a Bet Builder, users back several outcomes from the same sporting event, such as Declan Rice to score, Arsenal to have over 4.5 corners, and Bukayo Saka to have a shot on target. As with accumulators, each selection must win for the bet to payout.

Many sportsbooks offer promotional Bet Builders on the day of high-profile sporting events. However, promotions are often designed to sound easier to achieve than the data suggests.

For example, Saka averages 0.90 shots on target per 90; when that leg is combined with other finely balanced selections, the multi-leg wager becomes difficult to win.

In-play betting

43% of all UK bettors confirmed that they accessed gambling platforms via mobile platforms.

Due to mobile apps’ on-the-go design and rapid updates, combined with bettors viewing a second screen as they watch live sports events, in-play betting has become popular among digital users. 74% of in-play bettors use a mobile device.

In live markets, bettors respond to rapidly changing odds while the event is in-play. For example, if Arsenal score to reduce a deficit to 2-1, a bettor might respond to the perceived momentum swing by backing the Gunners to win the game.

However, studies suggest that bettors overestimate the importance of momentum in live betting, often prompting them to place wagers on outcomes that are numerically unlikely to occur.

In pre-game betting markets, strategic users are encouraged to research the event’s underlying data and trends prior to placing a bet. During in-play markets, when odds and game dynamics are changing rapidly, completing the same level of research is challenging.

Beyond the difficulty of producing meaningful in-play research, live betting odds often have a larger margin added to the odds, making it harder for users to make profits in the long-term.

However, many bettors report placing in-play bets as an entertainment-driven activity to increase the enjoyment of sports events.

Comparing sports bet types

Choosing the right bet type

Bet type suitability varies by user. The main factors:

• Experience level: moneyline and over/under markets have fewer conditions to interpret than multi-leg wagers.
• Sport knowledge: handicap and BTTS markets depend on scoring patterns, form, and team profile.
• Risk tolerance: single-outcome markets and multi-leg markets carry very different probabilities of returning anything at all.
• Bankroll management: stake size relative to total funds, and how many wagers are open at once.
• Betting goals: entertainment across a weekend of fixtures is a different requirement from a single market a user has researched.

No bet type performs consistently across all users or all sports.

Common mistakes beginners make

Most costly errors come from misreading a market.

• Misunderstanding odds: reading 1.43 or 1/1 without converting it into implied probability.
• Chasing large accumulator payouts: treating a high combined price as achievable rather than unlikely.
• Ignoring value: backing an outcome at any price rather than assessing whether the odds reflect the probability.
• Betting unfamiliar markets: placing wagers on sports or market types the user has not previously followed.
• Overlooking sportsbook rules: BTTS extra-time conditions, dead-heat rules, and void-bet terms differ between operators.
• Confusing similar bet types: draw no bet, handicap, and moneyline all resolve differently on the same fixture.

Responsible sports betting

Understanding how markets work is only part of the picture, how a user manages the activity matters just as much. 

• Setting limits: deposit, loss, and time limits applied before a session begins rather than during it.
• Understanding risk: the margin built into odds means sustained profit is not the expected outcome.
• Gambling for entertainment: treating stakes as spend on the event, not as invested funds.
• Using responsible gambling tools: reality checks, time-outs, and self-exclusion are available on licensed platforms.
• Avoiding emotional betting: in-play markets in particular reward speed over research, and momentum is routinely overestimated.

The bottom line

Modern sportsbooks offer a wide range of markets built around different sports, strategies, and levels of experience, from single-outcome moneyline wagers to same-game Bet Builders.

Understanding how each market works matters more than the size of a potential payout. Settlement rules, line definitions, and operator terms determine whether a bet wins, and informed betting begins there.

FAQs

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