Bookmakers love football accumulator bettors. In fact, the rare time a bookmaker will highlight a big win is when your regular mug punter hits a huge accumulator.
The reason for this, is that accumulator bettors for the most part are a cash cow for bookmakers. Millions of punters every week put on a weekend accumulator hoping to hit a big win, with a small percentage ever seeing a profitable return.
Above is an article from Betfair’s own site highlighting a huge win on an accumulator. By the way the article is written, you would think that Betfair Sportsbook are happy when punters win. However when sports bettors do take a long term winning approach rather then rely on luck.
This happens.
However knowing that bookmakers love those that put on accumulators could actually be a benefit. What if you could find a way to make accumulator betting consistently profitable?
It would be a great way to go under the bookmakers radar of restrictions and limitations. Whilst making a nice profit at the same time. In today’s article we will go through a profitable football accumulators strategy that can allow you to make a long term profit.
What is a Football Accumulator
Let’s quickly go over a what a football accumulator is for those that may not know.
A football accumulator is a bet which combines multiple selections into one single bet.
One of the most common uses of an accumulator bet is to put together multiple short odds bets together in order to have a bet at more appealing odds.
| Number of Bets | Accumulator Name |
| 2 | Double |
| 3 | Treble |
| 4 | Four-Fold |
| 5 | Five-Fold |
Why Bookmakers Love Accumulator Bettors
One question you may have is why exactly do bookmaker’s love accumulator bettors?
It is a fairly simple answer.
On every betting market there is something called a bookmaker margin (Also known as payout). This is basically the amount of profit a bookmaker expects to make on market as a percentage, if all outcomes of an event are bet evenly according to their odds.
To illustrate how a margin work lets take a look at the upcoming Chelsea vs Man Utd game. Focusing on the payout column.
Bet365 have a payout of 95.8% which means if a punter backed all outcomes of the game with Bet365 they would lose 4.2% of their stake (100 – 95.8 = 4.2).
Bet365’s margin on this game is 4.2%, for every £10,000 they take on the game an expected profit of £420 is expected.
When a punter takes an accumulator bet that margin that Bet365 have is increased. If we use Bet365’s 4.2% margin on the Chelsea vs Man Utd as example, let’s have a look at what happens to the margin as the selections increase.
| Number of Selections | Bet365 Margin |
| 2 | 8.4% |
| 3 | 12.6% |
| 4 | 16.8% |
| 5 | 21% |
This is why generally betting on accumulators is a bad idea. Unless you can find a way to flip the odds into your favour with a profitable football accumulator strategy. When we are able to do this, we can actually increase the value on our side of the bet.
Which is exactly what we are going to go over now!
How To Make Profitable Football Accumulator Bets?
Suppose you want to be a profitable football accumulator bettor. In that case, you have to find selections that offer good value or utilize a bookmaker offer that makes the accumulator favorable to you. This is the only way to make a long term profit, other then getting very lucky and hitting a huge win.
Let’s go over the first method of finding selections that offer value!
The simplest way to do this is by comparing bookmaker prices to that of the exchange and sharp bookmakers. This is a simple strategy that highlights value with bookmakers who are slow to adjust their odds.
Value betting is a proven strategy that has made users millions in profit.
Looking at upcoming fixtures I can find three instances where Bet365 are offering odds above the lay price of the exchange. This is an indicator that all three selections offer value.
Simply combining these three selections in an accumulator bet is going to be a profitable bet long term. Given that the true odds of an event occurring are more accurately priced on the exchanges. Picking off bookmakers when they are offering better prices and putting them in accumulators is a simple but very effective strategy.
Using this method you can also take an arbitrage approach by taking selections that start at finish in different time periods.
Personally I am happy to know that I have decent value on my accumulator and let it run as a straight bet. Knowing that over the long term I will make money with the value heavily on my side each time I bet.
Best Football Accumulators Strategy
The next strategy that I want to go over is using bookmaker promotional offers to make accumulator bets that are profitable long term.
We can take Ladbrokes insurance on five-fold accumulators as an example.
Ladbrokes offer money back as a free bet if one of your accumulator selections loses. There are a few terms to this bet.
- 1 Free Bet Per Day
- Minimum Selection Odds 1.10
- Minimum Accumulator Odds 4.0
Despite the terms, this offer is still profitable with the right strategy. Again we look for selections that are similar odds to the exchange and combine them to make an accumulator bet that has value.
Whilst you can do this manually it would take a lot of time.
The easiest way to take advantage of those offer and all accumulator offers, is by using Oddsmonkey’s acca matcher tool!
The tool compares the odds from Ladbrokes to the exchanges and pinpoint’s the best accumulator bet that you could make. Oddsmonkey’s acca matcher also takes into account the money back insurance offer giving you an estimated value of your accumulator.
You can see this figure on the left.
Despite the fact the odds of the Ladbrokes accumulator add up to 4.2 and The exchange odds add up to 4.76. The £10 free bet if one selection loses makes this a value bet. The advantage is with us the punter.
For a £10 bet on the top-ranked accumulator. Oddsmonkey has estimated a value of £1.95. This means that in the long run you can expect this accumulator to have a return on investment of 19.5%. Which in betting terms is a great return on investment.
The best strategy for these types of offers is to go for volume. Making several accumulator bets every weekend across multiple bookmakers when Oddsmonkey identifies the odds are in your favour.
- Bet365
- Unibet
- Betfred
- Boylesport
- Coral
- William Hill
- Paddypower
- Party Poker
- BetMGM
Are all featured in the acca matcher software along with many other bookmakers.
Best Website For Football Accumulators Strategy
If you are looking for a website that offers the best football accumulator strategy then as we have just outlined Oddsmonkey has the best tools to enable you to do this.
Whether that is by purely finding value selections and combining them together in order to make a accumulator bet that has long term value. Or perhaps you want to take advantage of the promotions bookmakers offer on accumulators to create value.
Oddsmonkey covers both of these strategies along with advanced matched betting and value betting software!
(Click Here To Read Our Full Oddsmonkey Review)
If you would like to know which bookmaker’s are offering the best football accumulator promotions. We used Oddsmonkey to find the highest plus ev accumulator’s for this week.
Betway came out as offering the best value.
They run a weekly bet club where you must place a minimum of a 3 fold accumulator staking £25 or more. You then receive £10 in free bets to use. Oddsmonkey calculates the value of this offer at £7.28, this offer can be done every week.
Next up was BetMGM who offer a 30% boosts on accumulators with five selections. The acca matcher found the best five selections and from a £20 stake an expected value of £4.37 was calculated.
You can see on the right hand side using the 30% boosts put the accumulator’s total odds with BetMGM at 14.36. However taking the true odds from the betting exchanges, we can see this accumulator should really be priced at 11.79.
This is how to make money from football accumulator betting!
Conclusion:
The two football accumulator betting strategies outlined in this article are a great way to profit from bookmakers. One of the additional benefits of profiting from accumulator bets is that it can help disguise the fact that you are betting smartly.
As the majority of accumulator bettors are long time losing punters and profitable accumulator bettors are very rare. Bookmaker restrictions and limitations are frustrating for successful bettors. These strategies can help extend the life of your bookmaker accounts and still make a profit.
Overall if you are serious about making a profit from your football accumulating betting, you should really check out Oddsmonkey.