Football accumulators are now firmly embedded in Lad culture. There used to be a time when betting was seen as a silly thing to do, but now that it’s been given a mainstream platform, more people are placing football accumulators than ever before.
The thing with football accumulators, is that they allow people to dream big. We always see the bet slips shared on social media of that lucky punter who placed a £1 bet and won tens of thousands!
This of course, creates a situation where people try to emulate that success. Everyone classes themselves as knowledgeable about football, so it should be easy, right? Well, not quite…
What are football accumulators?
A football accumulator is a bet that involves multiple selections. You choose a number of teams to bet on and add them all to your bet slip. You need them ALL to win, to be able to win your bet.
Find out more about accumulators in this post.
Because you require every selection to win, it also means the odds are much bigger. Take the following accumulator as an example:
We’ve chosen 4 different selections, all with quite high odds. The accumulative odds for this bet are 357.33. Should we place a £1 bet, we’ll get a huge payout of £357.33!
It’s simple to calculate the returns, too. All you need to do is multiply the price of each selection by the next one. So in the above example, it is:
5.5 x 2.75 x 4.50 x 5.25 = 357.33
Can betting on football accumulators be profitable?
Bookmakers absolutely love football accumulators, which should perhaps tell its own story. They are one of the most profitable income streams for a sportsbook, and act as a great promotional tool when happy customers share their bet slips which go viral. Bookmakers are all-too-happy to share these bet slips themselves, and profess how great accumulators are.
But did you know that behind the scenes, every bookmaker has sophisticated algorithms judging the betting patterns of each customer?
They literally rate customers on a scale ranging from ‘great punter’ to ‘mug punter’.
The usefulness of this is that they can limit the amount of money that ‘great punters’ can bet, and offer more and more promotions and higher limits to ‘mug punters’.
Betting on an accumulator weights the algorithm heavily towards judging you as a ‘mug punter’; someone they love to have as a customer.
Football accumulators are fun but to win on a regular basis, you have to be very lucky. Which is why bookmakers make a lot of money from them.
Take our earlier accumulator as an example. The odds were just over 356/1. That means the chances of your accumulator winning is just once in every 356 times. Ouch!
How can you improve your chances?
One of the keys to successful accumulators is to not back the favourites each week. This is exactly what the bookmakers love.
Every weekend, thousands of people bet on the top 4 or 6 teams in the Premier League to win. This strategy has the bookmakers laughing all the way to the bank, as quite often, one or two teams slip up, at very short prices!
Research is key. If you focus on finding bigger prices and ‘outside the box’ selections, you should see your success increase. This also allows you to keep the accumulator as small as possible, while still keeping the price big.
Use stat sites and look for trends in more obscure markets and you can find juicy prices. If you go for the lazy route and back the short priced favourites then you will keep making the same mistakes.
Also, consider removing the number of things that can go wrong by backing selections in markets with fewer outcomes.
Most people back selections in the traditional Win-Draw-Win market. But consider backing bigger priced teams in a Double Chance market and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by the outcome.
Where can you find the best football accumulators?
Here at OddsMonkey, we have some fantastic resources geared towards helping you find the best value football accumulators around. We can show you how to win consistently and generate real profit without worrying about striking it lucky.
Use our AccaMatcher to search bookmakers and build your own accumulators. Choose your favourite acca type and guarantee yourself a profit if you use the Lock-In method. For more information, take a look at the AccaMatcher and see how you could profit from placing football accumulators.
